Reani King

Importance of Education on Understanding the African-American Experience 

It has long been my understanding that education plays an important role in the understanding of the minority experience. As a child, coming from an extremely racist family, I was afraid to tell my father of my friendships with African-Americans at school; however, I was able to tell my mother which was a relief. Later, my family moved to a town where there was a sign saying, “Nigger don’t let the sun set on your ass.” I remember never seeing a black person in that particular city. I never knew why that sign existed until I got older.

As a parent, I have always stressed the lack of difference between races. My daughter came home one afternoon and told me that the other kids were making fun of her because she had a black boyfriend. She was five. I told her that those people were just uneducated. I asked her what color his blood was and what color her blood was. She told me, “red.” I stressed to her that was all that mattered not the color of the skin.

Today the sign from my childhood no longer exists in that city, nor have I seen it anywhere else, but I do know that the sentiment behind it remains strong. Today, I live in a small town where people with small minds still live. The only thing separating the predominately African-American sector and the predominantly white sector is a state highway.

I would like to show the importance of education on the minority experience by looking at both sides of the debate, African-American and White. I will be looking at texts that give the minority a voice such as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Declaration of Independence, I Have a Dream, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Amiri Baraka

            Amiri Baraka is known as a poet, dramatist, activist, orator, jazz critic, social critic, and essayist. He was born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey, on October 7, 1934. He earned a B.A. in English from Howard University in 1954, and entered the U.S. Air Force where he served until 1957. He married Hettie Cohen, a white Jewish woman in 1955. Together they began the literary Magazine Yugen, and had two daughters. He also founded Totem Press in 1955.

After the death of Malcolm X, in 1965, Baraka refuted his former life, solidified his hatred for whites, and divorced Hettie leaving his daughters behind as he became engrossed in the black community. Over the next two years, he moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. In 1967, he married Sylvia Robinson, a poet, now known as Amina Baraka. Together he and Amina had five children. In 1968, Baraka converted to the Muslim religion, and changed his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka. From 1968 to 1975, he was chairman of the Committee for Unified Newark. In 1969, he founded the Congress of African People, a national Pan-Africanist organization (poets.org). In 1972, Baraka helped organize the National Black Political Convention. In 1974, Baraka adopted a Marxist Leninist philosophy and dropped the spiritual Imamu from his name.

Baraka has an extensive list of accomplishments. Among his accomplishments is the play Dutchman, which won an Obie Award, and was made into a film. Dutchman is an archetypal play that portrays the ways in which the dominant white culture disrespects, and destroys the blacks who speak out against their oppression. Thus helped thrust Baraka into “The Revolutionary Theater” which Baraka says should: “Show up the insides of these humans, look into black skulls. White men will cower before this theater because it hates them” (Klauss, 1083). He has also received numerous literary honors including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Baraka has taught poetry at the New School for Social Research in New York, literature at the University of Buffalo, and drama at Columbia University. He has also taught at San Francisco State University, Yale University, New Haven. He taught African Studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook from 1985-2000. Baraka is now retired and living in Newark, New Jersey; however, he continues to read his poems in jazz sessions.

Primary Bibliography

Drama

Dutchman, 1964

The Slave, 1964

Arm Yrself or Harm Yrself, 1967

Home on the Range, 1968

Police, 1968

The Death of Malcolm X, 1969

Rockgroup, 1969

Four Black Revolutionary, All Praises to the Black Man, 1969

Junkies are Full of (SHHH…), 1970

Jello, 1970

BA-RA-KA, 1972

Black Power Chant, 1972

The Motion of History, and Other Plays, 1978

Selected Plays and Prose of Amiri Bakara/LeRoi Jones, 1979

The Sidney Poet Heroical, in 29 Scenes, 1979

 General Hag’s Skeezag, 1992

Poetry:

Spring and Soforth, 1960

Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, 1961

The Dead Lecturer, 1964

Black Art, 1969

Black Magic: Collected Poetry 1961-1967, 1969

It’s Nation Time, 1970

Spirit Reach, 1972

Wise Why’s Y’s: The Griot’s Tale, 1995

Funk Lore: New Poems 1984-1995, 1996

Fiction:

System of Dante’s Hell, 1965

Tales, 1967

Secondary Bibliography

Amiri Baraka-The Academy of American Poets.

     http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C.

Amiri Baraka. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/baraka.htm.

Amiri Baraka. Stages of Drama Classical to Contemporary

            Theater. Fifth Edition. Ed. Carl H. Klaus, Miriam

            Gilbert, Bradford S. Field Jr. Bedford/St.Martin’s:

            New York, 2003.

Website Reviews

In a website presented by BBC News concerning racism in education, studies showed that although teacher racism still exists in schools, there are also cultural factors involved. According to Dr. Tony Sewell, a lecturer in education at Leeds University: “Black children are caught in a cultural trap.” He suggests that there should be more support for white teachers for dealing with black students.

            This website is very informative in regards to racism and education. It also provides other links concerning education stories. One describes a program to boost the numbers of minority teachers. Although the BBC website is located in England. The same types of racism issues can be superimposed to the U.S.

http://news.bbc.uk/hi/english/education/newsid_994000/994160.stm

            On The Daily Beacon, a newspaper based in Tennessee, website there is an article concerning racism in secondary schools. The Black Student Association, Black Law Student Association along with other black student groups walked around the campus in a silent protest. The article described acts of racism which occurred on campus.

            The article includes several goals submitted to the administration of the school aimed at doing away with the racial prejudices, such as hiring more minority faculty. Isaac Conner, President of the BLSA stated the school should implement, “a racist speech and conduct clause in the student handbook and [add] a diversity and anti-racism class to the curriculum.” This website article was rather alarming, finding that violent acts of racism still occur at institutions of higher learning. The ideas that the students proposed to the administration are all very sound ideas that will help educate all students about the minority situation.

www.dailybeacon.utk.edu/article.php/8141

            The most informative website found was a review of a book Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society. It contains different definitions of racism. The website also discusses reverse racism and that many people feel that reverse racism is very much alive. The website also looks at the invisible privilege of the whites.

            The review website touches on the need for anti-racism in education and the morality concerning being a “good white” in a racist society. This web book review is very informative and educational. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to research the subject of “whiteness” to read this review and/or buy the hardcopy of the book of essays it reviews.

http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev76.htm

In the course of higher education, I have become more aware of the feelings of the minority population, especially that of the African American people. Although I have different ideas concerning minorities than my family, and have seen a decrease in racism, I am also aware that there is still a great deal of racism occurring throughout the educational institutions.

As a child, my family never explained racism to me and it was not discussed in school. If it was, I was unaware and felt that it did not have any direct effect on my life.  After I had children of my own and they started asking me questions, I began to realize I really didn’t understand enough about the plight and anger of the African Americans to answer questions about them.

Reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl I was in awe of Linda’s strength and resolve throughout the narrative. It was heart-warming to find that she did not know that she was born a slave until she was six years old and that until she was put into Dr. Flint’s house, she was treated very well. She saw and endured several horrific hardships at the hand of Dr. Flint including becoming pregnant by a lover in order to stave off Dr. Flint’s advances. Linda also invokes pity by having to hide in a garrett for years while watching her children grow up without contact from her. Although she had very little formal learning, Linda had a very strong moral upbringing, which is an education in itself.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou showed me a world to which I have never been aware. When the “white trash children” humiliate Big Momma, it made me angry for her. Again, at Maya’s graduation ceremony, when the white man spoke about what the blacks had in store for them after graduation. “We were maids, farmers, handymen, and washerwomen” (152). The idea that blacks are put into stereotypical jobs seems unreal to me. I know many excellent Doctors, lawyers, and College professors who are black.

It seems that I have lived a sheltered life in regard to minorities. I remember studying the Declaration of Independence in History throughout my school career and have understood that “all men are created equal” in the eyes of God; however, through further exploration and education, “all men are created equal” does not always include the people who are not white. I have gained a new awareness of the importance and implications surrounding Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

As a returning student, I have learned more about the history behind the anger and distrust felt by the African Americans about their treatment by the dominant white society. I have gotten bits and pieces of minority literature over the years, but by taking American Minority Literature, I have begun to put together my personal perspectives through the different perspectives given by Dr. White. Through this class and my research, I have discovered several different perspectives on racism. I agree with the BLSA at the University of Tennessee, that there should be a class specifically designated to teaching diversity and anti-racism within the institutions of higher learning. Hopefully, the study of minorities will become an important implementation into the education of our children so that as a nation we can outgrow racism and learn to teach the history of minorities and embrace what they have to offer.