White Money Black Power - Book Report/Review Example

White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education An Introduction Cultural memory helps in strengthening community bonds. Hence, reading about the history of any community program helps us in associating with it and makes its purpose clearer to the masses. This is the case with White Money/ Black Power. The book aims at reviving the struggles associated with the formation of the Black Studies programs so that it can stimulate an interest in the future of the African American program. Right now the African American Studies program is going through a phase of identification crisis where Black academics wants to stay away from such types of programs because they feel that it would question their intellectual power. These programs are largely controlled by White institutions that are loath to give scholarships to the under privileged Blacks. A majority of Blacks feel that the Black Studies programs are not given the same amount of recognition that its counterparts acquires and therefore they either drop out of this program midway or do not enroll at all. So, by reading about the struggles that helped in the formation of the Black Studies program the African American would feel a greater degree of respect towards the objectives of the programs and enroll in them in a greater number. Hence, the book White Money/ Black Power has a place of importance in the lives of African students as it makes them acquainted with the wide spread struggle that ensured in its establishment. The African American Studies program had a very interesting beginning. This program was greatly influenced and assisted by the prestigious Ford Foundation, specifically its president Mr. McGeorge Bundy who made it the priority of his job. The white students also played a significant role in the formation of the movement. The revolutionary start of the African American Studies, its position in the American academy and its status today has been chronicled effectively in Noliwe M. Rook’s book “White Money/ Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education.” Book Summary Noliwe M. Rooks, associate Director of Princeton University’s African-American Studies program explores the record of African American Studies in the US and then questions their further potential in her book White Money Black Power. The writer analyses the history into two parts. In the first part she describes the chaotic beginning of the program that encompassed the San Francisco State University’s campus along with the preliminary support that it received from the Ford Foundation. The remaining part of the book deals with the question of the life of such types of programs as it strives to swim against the strong tides of declining ratio of Negro students’ enrollments and the pessimistic stereotypes. Such types of programs have become an essential element of the study of African American history in the scholastic society. The 1990s saw a change in its name from “Black Studies” to the newer “African American Studies”. The stage is set on the grounds of San Francisco State University in the latter half of 1960s. Rooks paints a distinct picture of this movement where students from quite a large number of cultural backgrounds stood together in support of it. Other than Blacks, students from the ethnicity of American Indians, Whites, Latinos and Asian Americans also took part in the struggle against the armed police forces to demand the establishment of a Black Studies Department along with a separate Ethnic Studies Department so that the requirements of “third world” students are met in a fulfilling manner. The years ranging from 1968 to 1971 are specifically important as it saw the creation of about 300 Black Studies Department across college campuses in the different corners of the country. As suggested by the title, Rooks stresses the importance of the large hearted White institution- Ford Foundation for its efforts and generosity in the success of the movement. The high scale demand of the students belonging to multicultural ethnicities forced the college administration to succumb to their demands. However, when the Ford Foundation acquired a new president for itself in the form of McGeroge Bundy, it witnessed a policy change. Bundy made racial inclusion the topmost priority of the foundation. He realized that the country was suffering from racial problems and made it his goal to rectify this problem by meeting it in a headlong manner. The college administrators are given credit for the preliminary direction that they awarded to the Black Studies programs and for the creation of intellectuals among African Americans. But, in the long run the intellectuals in the African American community felt that the curriculum was not complete in itself and that it lacked direction. A majority of them believed that the Black Studies programs should be well equipped to help the African Americans merge into the mainstream education so that they could undergo university studies and be eligible to work in regular jobs. At one instance Rooks recounts an incident that happened in Yale in the year 1968. It was the year in which Mr. Bundy showed his enthusiasm for Black Studies programs by making an announcement about curriculum plans associated with this course. These curriculum plans for acquiring degree in the Black Studies programs helped in becoming a guideline towards the future programs developed throughout the country. Rooks marks Mr. Bundy’s conference as significant because it revealed the dedication of Ford Foundation towards this program that would eventually see a donation of almost $20 million through the entire existence of the program. Rooks continues with her discussion in the second part of White Money/Black Power where she appraises the existing condition of the African American Studies programs prevalent in the college campuses across the state. Much of what she has analyzed comes in the course of her own individual experience as she was appointed to the post of creator and director of this African-American Studies program in the year 1995 at University of Missouri-Kansas City. Here she discusses the accounts of various scholars and directors of the program and then adds that the program in the present scenario is cloaked by misapprehensions and typecasts. To note down an example, the students of this program question the value and practicability of acquiring any degree through it, while the administrators of the college credit the program with African-American’s recruitment tool. These types of stereotype thinking have led to a decrease in enrollments among the African Americans in the past few years. Hence, factors such as these would witness a struggle in the African American studies to redefine and assert its authority and validity amongst all the concerned parties. On going through the book we can’t help but applaud Rook’s efforts in recounting and describing the entire background of African-American Studies. However, in the second edition her work has become a little convoluted as she discusses the future of this program. Rooks seems hesitant in spending any amount of time in investigating the potentials of this program and only devotes a quarter of her time in analyzing this component that helps in making the work culturally relevant in the present scenario. The book’s only drawback is its short analysis of the future prospects of the program; however the history part has been dealt in an exceptional manner. The writer notes down the multicultural roots of the program to contradict the traditional image of the present times. The exceptional way in which Rooks has recounted the history of the program to her readers ensures that the African American program has a scope of survival in the glorious years to come. Critical Analysis We find that in the book Rooks have placed a strong emphasis on the role of Ford Foundation in the creation and development of the Black Studies programs. However, despite all the laurels that Rooks places on this highly respected organization, she fails to give it an adequate introduction. She does not provide us with any preamble or any history before talking about the works of this foundation. She assumes that her readers are well aware of all the merits about this organization and continues her discussions in a familiar manner. This obvious oversight in stating the background of Ford’s history is totally in contrast to the high amount of research stated while describing the programs’ initiation. It seems that Rooks has exaggerated to some extent the role of White students in the foundation of the African American Studies. She is seen as attempting to paint a white portrait in a seemingly all black canvas. The writer amplifies the role that the Ford Foundation and its president, McGeorge Bundy played in the formation of the program and made them appear as the patron saviors. Similarly, she overplayed the contribution of White students in the formation of the Black studies program and stated that their role overshadowed the efforts of Native Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans. While one can agree that the San Francisco State College (which has now turned to University) has indeed done a lot to support the movement, they tend to question the claim that the role of White students was much greater in the formation of the African American program as compared to other students. Hence, because of its faulty perception the book loses some of its importance in the disciplinary discussion. Rooks has divided the book into two segments. The first segment deals with the history of the African American Studies program while the second segment deals with the heritage of the period of foundation. Let us analyze the first segment. The book White Money/ Black Power contains a narration of the foundation of Black Studies that primarily involved White students but also engaged Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans in the raging protest movement. The writer claimed “Although the familiar narrative chronicling the beginning of Black Studies generally centers on Black student protest and violence, in reality, at San Francisco State, Black, white, Native American, Asian, and Latino students rose up together, joined forces, and made or supported unequivocal demands” (Rooks 2006: 4). This statement gives rise to the assumption that the entire clan of White students stood up in support for the Black studies. However, one scholar found a different version of the scenario. In his 1971 report, “The Black Student Revolt at San Francisco State College and the Emergence of Dr. Hayakawa”, Karagueuzian notes that “PL (Progressive Labor Party) was not interested in the issue of Black Studies or in Nathan Hare. Nor was PL interested in an autonomous Black Studies Department. The Marxist-Leninist organization wanted to use the strike to convert students to its doctrine, by first getting them to admit that the system, which includes every institution in this country, serves the interests of only a handful of Americans.” (61) At another instance Rooks is seen as bestowing full credit to the Fords Foundation and its director for the survival of the movement. She notes “If McGeorge Bundy and The Ford Foundation had not crafted a strategy to address such concerns and offer solutions to the problem of campus administrators, the field might never have survived beyond that initial rush” (Rooks 2006: 59). The writer puts forth two points of arguments to underline her claim. In the first instance the “integrationist rationale” gained an advantage over other types of competing programs “jockeying” to catch the attentions of the concerned officers and the “Board of Trustee members” so that it would appear “to dominate the field of Black Studies as it assumed its position in academic institutions” (Rooks 2006: 22 & 65). However, Rooks rightly states that the main concern of this rationale was to use Black Studies just to integrate the higher level education of American curriculum, the student body and the faculty members and that it disapproved an autonomous Black Studies department that wanted to use the scholarship programs to help in the liberation of Black community. Rooks present us with an incorrect assertion that the main objective of the integration rationale was to dictate the discipline. An example can be cited here in the form of a research done on 200 existing Black Studies programs that prevailed in 1973. This research invalidates the claim as Nick Aaron Ford discovered that a “vast majority” of the programs contained objectives that emphasized on the “need to promote sympathetic interest and dedicated involvement in the improvement of the black community (local, national and world-wide),” a blatant Black Power thrust (Rooks 2006: 57). In the second part of her rationale, Rooks credits the Ford Foundation and its President McGeorge Bundy as having provided a wholehearted support to the integrationist rationale thereby appeasing the administrators of the academy and “providing a much needed economic lifeline for the new discipline” (Rooks 2006: 66). This statement may give rise to the assumption that Fords had supported quite a large number of programs to support this movement, but studies show that the years ranging from 1969 to 1972 only saw 24 programs to be funded. Hence, we see that the writer overstated the role of Fords Foundation in the history of Black Studies. Moreover, Fords was projected in a clear light as it was projected as a sympathetic institution eager to help and fund the cause. But, in reality Ford has a policy to offer help only to conventional interdepartmental programs which had a Eurocentric base away from social responsibility. It did not offer support to revolutionary, autonomous and Afrocentric departments. Hence, it declined to help a number of Black Studies programs. Rooks quotes this contention of Robert Allen “By selecting certain programs for funding while denying support to others, government agencies and foundations could manipulate the political orientation of these programs and the direction of academic research. With hundreds of such programs competing for limited funds, effective control of the future of Black Studies was thereby shifted away from black scholars and students, and instead…to the funding agencies—college administrations, government and foundations. Departments that were thought by the establishment to be dangerously independent or radical could thus be crippled or destroyed without the necessity of resorting to violent repression. (Rooks 2006: 117). To keep up the positive image that Rooks has created of Ford, she disrupts Allen’s theory by saying “This was certainly a very real, though unintended, consequence of the strategy pioneered by Bundy and the Ford Foundation” (Rooks 2006: 117). However, there was nothing unintended about is as stated by Hare (1970), “Whenever the oppressed, for whatever reason, begin to feel too weak to fight their real enemy, the oppressor himself, they turn upon themselves, squabbling over this or that theory while leaving the oppressor free to do just about anything he chooses. The oppressor is the enemy, and he attacks while we argue and continue to play bid whist. The enemy is attacking all the time, in many and subtle ways. The Ford Foundation pumped $2 million into four leading universities with the most ill-conceived, establishment-oriented black studies programs in the country. (4) Another writer, Blassingame (1969), notes that “Many colleges are not seriously committed to black studies because they feel the demand will die out shortly. Consequently, rather than setting aside university funds to establish the programs, they turn to foundations for support. This, of course, is not conducive to long-term planning. As our experience with Latin American studies reveals, the cycle of foundation interest in such programs is, at most, ten years” (23). Conclusion The book White Money/Black Power is an attempt to narrate the history of the foundation’s formative years in an informative and interesting manner by adding all the little details associated with the Black Studies programs. The book reveals the high amount of research entailed by Brooks in recounting all the minute descriptions so as to bring to light the high amount of struggles associated with the formation of this program. On going through the book we can’t help but applaud Rook’s efforts in recounting and describing the entire background of African-American Studies in a chronicle and steady manner. However, in the second edition her work has become a little convoluted as she discusses the future of this program. Rooks seems hesitant in spending any amount of time in investigating the potentials of this program and only devotes a quarter of her time in analyzing this component that helps in making the work culturally relevant in the present scenario. The writer notes down the multicultural roots of the program to contradict the traditional image of the present times. The exceptional way in which Rooks has recounted the history of the program to her readers ensures that the African American program has a scope of survival in the future years. White Money/ Black Power is a must read for anyone who wants to explore the relation that politics and philanthropy have with academic projects and intellectual production. The writer realizes that by struggling with the union of antiracist movements that ranged from a number of locations (such as the philanthropic organizations, the streets and the academy) ranging from late 1960s to early 1970s; the readers could discover resources that can explain as well as deal with the current challenges being witnessed in the Black Studies programs. Work Cited Ford, N.A. Black Studies: Threat-or-Challenge. Port Washington, New York: National University Publications, 1973. Rooks, N. White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (2006). Karagueuzian, D. The Black Student Revolt at San Francisco State College and the Emergence of Dr. Hayakawa. Boston: Gambit Inc., 1971. Blassingame, J.W. “Black Studies: An Intellectual Crisis.” In The African American Studies Reader, edited by Nathaniel Norment, Jr. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2001: 22- 30. Hare, N. “A torch to burn down a decadent world.” The Black Scholar 2, no. 1. (1970), 2-5. Read More