Synopses & Reviews
Sixteen of America's leading scholars offer an uncompromising critique of the academy from their perspective as African American men.They challenge dominant majority assumptions about the culture of higher education, most particularly its claims of openness to diversity and divergent traditions.What is remarkable about the chapters that make up this book--despite the authors' different paths to success, their disparate fields of study, and their distinct voices-is their almost unanimous message that higher education is inimical to African Americans.They take issue with the processes that determine what is legitimized as scholarship, as well as with who wields the power to authenticate it. They describe the debilitating pressures to subordinate Black identity to a supposedly universal but hegemonic Eurocentric culture. They question the academy's valuing of individuality and its privileging of dichotomy over their cultural styles of community, humanism and synthesis. They also range over such issues as culturally mediated styles of cognition, the misuse of standardized testing, the disproportionate burden of service placed on African American faculty and a reward system that discounts it.Given stature of these authors, and their outspoken message, this book demands attention from leaders and faculty in predominantly White institutions, as well as from Black scholars and graduates aspiring to a career in higher education.
Synopsis
"This book provides an occasion to examine the complex conjuncture between the White supremacist realities of the American Academy and the often threatening presence of brilliant Black men in the Academy. This challenging book should also serve as an inspiration for a new generation of Black men deeply devoted to the life of the mind in or outside the Academy." --From the foreward by Cornel West.
Sixteen of America's leading scholars offer an uncompromising critique of the academy from their perspective as African American men. They challenge dominant majority assumptions about the culture of higher education, most particularly its claims of openness to diversity and divergent traditions.
They take issue with the processes that determine what is legitimized as scholarship, as well as with who wields the power to authenticate it. They describe the debilitating pressures to subordinate Black identity to a supposedly universal but hegemonic Eurocentric culture. They question the academy's valuing of individuality and its privileging of dichotomy over their cultural styles of community, humanism and synthesis. They also range over such issues as culturally mediated styles of cognition, the misuse of standardized testing, the disproportionate burden of service placed on African American faculty and a reward system that discounts it.
Table of Contents
A message from our elders /Lee Jones --The data speak : no rest for the weary /William B. Harvey --The psychological dilemma of African American academicians /Na'im Akbar --One by one, or one : Africans and the academy /Asa G. Hilliard III --Examining the pitfalls facing African American males /Cyrus Marcellus Ellis --Equity and excellence : is there room for African American Ph. D.'s? /Charles Rankin --Come so far, but so far to go : interview with Dr. Joseph White /Joseph White,Kamau Siwatu --Understanding the socialization process /William H. Watkins --Culture, style, and cognition : expanding the boundaries of the learning paradigm for African American learners in the community college /Irving Pressley McPhail --The role of Black colleges in educating African American men : an interview with Nathan McCall /Nathan McCall,Tony Anderson --Afrocentricity and the African American male in college /Molefi Kete Asante --Affective computing : the reverse digital divide /Clarence "Skip" Ellis --Visualizing the framework for access and success : democracy demands that we care /Frank W. Hale, Jr.--From Na Ezaleli to the Jegnoch : the force of the African family for Black men in higher education /Wade W. Nobles(Nana Kwaku Berko I aka Ifagbemi Sangodare) -- Theprerequisites for academic leadership /Charlie Nelms.