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Black Studies is a relatively new academic field. It encompasses disciplines spanning the social sciences such as history, sociology, psychology, and political science, as well as the humanities, including music, art, literature, and religious studies. Different academic institutions may use different terms to describe it depending on their particular focus, but, whether called Black Studies, African-American Studies, or Africana Studies, the discipline generally has its roots in a radical movement for fundamental educational reform.
The discipline of black studies is a direct challenge to the European-centric framework and its justification for the subjugation, enslavement, and colonization of Africans and their descendants throughout the world. The comments of the well-known 18th-century philosopher David Hume are fairly typical as an example of how Africa and its people were framed in the eyes of European colonizers. As a footnote in his Essay and Treatises written in 1768, he writes:
I am inclined to suspect that blacks… are naturally inferior to whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, not even an eminent individual in action or speculation. There are no ingenious manufacturers among them, no arts, no sciences. (Harris 1987, 19)
The need to reclaim one’s heritage in the face of such a derogatory dominant narrative is at the very core of the development of Black Studies as an academic discipline. As such, self-definition becomes critical. The different departments that have sprung up across the country vary in the terms they use to describe themselves. Whether they are called Black Studies, Africana Studies, or African-American Studies, the naming process is very deliberate and has particular meaning to the people who undertook to establish the various academic departments. The different focus that each of these departments may have makes appointment a matter of political control, which is a critical principle of self-determination and self-definition.
“African American Studies” focuses on people of African descent throughout the Americas, including North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, as well as northern countries such as New Newfoundland and Greenland. So the term “African American” makes “African American studies” a more historically specific branch of the discipline that describes the experience of Africans in the Western Hemisphere with a relatively narrow lens. (Columbus 2003) While there tends to be some focus on the continent of Africa, there is no specific focus on people of African descent in Europe or Asia.
The term “Black Studies” represents a more politicized view of the discipline. The institutionalization of black studies, that is, the formal establishment of black studies within academic settings, came about largely as a result of what became known in the 1960s as the “Black Power” movement. (Columbus 2003) Malcolm X and The Nation of Islam, in an attempt to regain their sense of self-definition, urged the “so-called black” to become “black.” Black was redefined as a popular and positive affirmation of oneself.
“Black studies” reflects the politicization of the discipline in that its primary goal is the discovery and dissemination of information related to what blacks have experienced and achieved, and the use of education and knowledge to defend and vindicate the breed against its detractors. This rethinking was a symbolic victory for the masses of Black people, but it also brings with it certain problems and challenges.
Like Black Studies, Africana Studies is not limited to the experience of people of African descent on the African continent or the Western Hemisphere, but is much broader, focusing on the African diaspora as a whole. (Colón 2003) The African diaspora refers to the outlay of people of African descent throughout the world. It is well known that Afro-descendants had a presence in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as widespread contact between Africans and Asians across the Indian Ocean. There is some evidence to suggest that there was a pre-Columbian disbursement of Africans across the Atlantic well before 1492.
However, the systematic and widespread dispersal of Africans around the world took place on a much more massive scale in the last 400 years as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and subsequent colonization of the African continent. African Studies focuses on pan-African ties and the experiences of people of African descent not only on the African continent and in the Americas, but also in places like England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia, and elsewhere. from Europe and Asia. It does, however, without the political context that you find in the “Black Power” movement.
Terminology aside, Black Studies, African American Studies, and Africana Studies are similar in that they arose largely in response to a systematic misrepresentation of the experience of people of African descent in such a way as to popularize the notion that they are inferior. . It is in response to miseducation that, as Malcolm X explained, has reoriented Blacks’ worldview in such a way as to prevent them from identifying with their true history, culture, self-awareness, and well-being; and de-education, where black people have been deprived of access to education altogether. (Colón 2003) As such, a core value in African American Studies is an underlying social mission that requires the application of theory to methodology and the blending of knowledge with activism toward the practical resolution of Black community problems. That is why Black Studies has historically always been so closely aligned with activism and social justice.
Bibliography
Columbus, Alan. “Black Studies: Historical Background, Modern Origins, and Development Priorities for the Early Twenty-First Century.” The Western Journal of Black Studies, vol. 272003: 145-155.
Harris, Joseph E. Africans and their history. New York: Mentor Publications, 1987.
Watch African Elements (Episode 1: What is Black Studies?). 2011. www.africanelements.org.