[1]More College Students Choosing To Major In Black Studies." NPR. February 03, 2010. Accessed March 02, 2018. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123332814.
Friday, March 2, 2018
Where are the White Africana Studies Majors?
There has been a belief that Africana Studies majors only have to be black people. FALSE. Why has this become a norm? White people it is your obligation to learn about what your involvement is with the history. It is your history too. Africana Studies at Rhodes is majority made up of students of color. Where are the white people? Whites are the reason for all of the oppression that Blacks went through and still go through today. People are so focused on their own major that “they can not afford” to take too many classes outside their major. Others do not want to be a “target” but if you are worried about being a target than there is something that needs to change, and you need to check your privilege. In an NPR interview of Elizabeth Alexander who is the chair of African-American studies at Yale talks about when she tells parents that have concerns about their white child majoring in African-American Studies, “And so what I say to those parents - and I have talked to some of them - is, I tell them about what we're doing and I tell them all the different things that the graduates of our major are doing, because they are excelling in every conceivable field. It also offers them a very wonderful example of the power of critical thinking, because one of the things that you learn in the long study of black people in this country is that it is a country that is not always fair, but wherein we see people responding with tremendous creativity and ingenuity to the denial of full equality”.[1] It is extremely beneficial to take not one but multiple classes of Black History. There is not enough covered in previous education and in Black History Month. This year marks the 50 year anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King and there is a celebration of this anniversary but there is still not enough conversation. My sociology professor, Zandria Robinson, has taken an Intro Sociology class and has put an MLK focus onto it which makes you actively apply what sociologists believed about to the Civil Rights movement. There is not enough of these classes. When you pull up Rhodes website for Africana Studies all of the students on the page are students of color. Why are white students not using their resources and educating themselves about not just Black history but their history as well?
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I agree that more white students should pursue Africana Studies minors at Rhodes, though I am probably slightly biased as I am a white Africana Studies minor at Rhodes. The classes that I have taken in pursuit of my minor have broadened my perspectives on American history, music and culture. Before coming to Rhodes, I spent my life in a small, white rural community in central Ohio. My graduating class was over 90% white, as was the town I grew up in. All of my teachers were white, all of people I worked with were white, the city council is entirely white, you get the picture. Spending the first 18 years of my life in a racially homogenous community undeniably shaped my worldview, and by the time I graduated I wanted something new. One of the classes that I took my freshman year was Jim Crow South with Professor McKinney, and from the first week of classes, I was hooked. I declared my Africana Studies minor a year later and have loved every class that I have taken for it.
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