Class Notes 2/26

Here are my class notes from today's class discussion on Dubois' model and its viability in the 21st century! I hope these are helpful. These are great points that could be used in the upcoming paper!!!

2/26/19

  1. Class Discussion on The Talented Tenth and Nouveau Talented Tenth and “What it’s like to be Black on campus?”
    1. What kind of education does W.E. B. Dubois believe is central to uplift/racial progress and why?
    2. Is Dubois’ model viable in the 21st century?
      1. Not our own experience, but is this idea that something should shape American culture today? How do we decide who should be in this talented tenth group? What kind of education should they get and why? What should they do with it?
      2. Is it exclusionary in some other way?
    3. Is U.S. higher education equipped to meet the needs of students of color? (Talented 10th or not?
  2. Response to the above questions
    1. Individual response
      1. An education that can meet the needs of a black student in all ways. This means having African-American educators and faculty, programs, finances in terms of funding, goals, and the drive to fulfill the African-American experience. Acknowledging that there is a problem and opening this to discussion
      2. Surpassing the minimum on representation and ensuring that no one is underrepresented. It should agreeably be a fair representation of class, race, gender across the board in my opinion.
      3. In my opinion, higher education is not currently equipped to be able to fulfill the needs of students of color. Consistently, I have read and heard from students that they feel underrepresented in and out of the classroom on college campuses across the nation. From my own experience, I have noticed this trend in higher education- post bac/grad school/law school/med school, to show a trends in the statistics
    2. “WEBD puts all his eggs in one basket.”
      1. I understand this perspective even though I believed it could have been fitting for the time. It is a trickle down effect
    3. If the idea of the talented tenth is the path toward racial progress, then the problem with his argument is but colleges and that environment is problematic space. How would Dubois respond to this with the idea of double consciousness?
      1. In “The Talented Tenth,” Du Bois (1903b) called for Black people to be saved by its exceptional men These men would be the top-tenth of the community to identify and extrapolate the best of the race in an effort to “guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the worst” (Du Bois, 1903b, para. 1)(297).
        1. Dubois’ concept is take top 10% of the community become educated and become leaders of the community upon their return
          1. It propagates from the top down kinda idea
        2. There doesn’t seem to be a unified black community like that today for his idea to work in this way.
        3. If we said that education is a path towards justice, are college campuses designed to do that today? If we believe this is true, what kind of education are we talking about? What does Dubois believe they should be learning at these institutions?
          1. Du Bois (1903a, 1903b) advocated that Black people be trained in the classical liberal arts tradition, arguing that “education must not simply teach work— it must teach life” (Provenzo, 2002, p. 92). He viewed education as a central facet of life for Black people (Du Bois, 1948). Stated differently, Du Bois saw education as instrumental in preparing Black people for the racist, discriminatory, and hostile world that was (and is) America.”(295).
          2. Do we believe that a structured liberal arts education proposed by Dubois? Have we failed him or does the proposal aim towards this?
            1. What does a liberal arts education look like in 1903?
              1. Old brit classes, rhetoric, history and much more (looking at Northwestern and Harvard)
                1. All ideas and history by white folks
                2. This is all stuff that a well-educated person should know during this period
            2. Today, liberal arts students of the college are forced to adjust instead of the college to adjust to us
            3. The college teaches students to adjust to it instead of being able to adjust to them
      2. The mold for education
        1. It is catered towards white people, their history is more important than African-Americans and so on
          1. It is like one of those Russian nesting dolls
        2. When you look at curriculum, and someone set and wrote it, there is an assumption that those items matter less because they are given less importance. Curriculum is a social construct as it is created and made to a certain mold of desire.
      3. Institutionalized racism
        1. Revitalize history in textbooks––they are written by the victors
          1. Who control the textbook market?
            1. State of Texas
              1. Appeals and meets the needs of Texas Board of Education
        2. Certain things that are potentially troubling do not go into your book
          1. Financial, political, (conservative politics of education in Texas), and social problems
        3. The way school curriculum is structured and recognized people of color
          1. Dubois has this idea that education is the engine of social change
            1. These elite African-Americans will produce the change we need according to Dubois
        4. The institution does not want to adapt to the population
            1. Underrepresentation of different type of people on campus
              1. College campuses have the ability or are equipped to meet the students of color but is there a backlash (in some sorts) from other students (white)
                1. They do not want negative media attention
                2. Kinda like a black lives vs all lives matter
            2. What would be a way for colleges to promote diversity in a positive way?
                    1. Inclusive vs Diverse
                      1. Inclusive
                        1. including or covering all the services, facilities, or items normally expected or required. (web search)
                      2. Diverse
                        1. the existence of a variety of cultural or ethnic groups within a society. (Web search)
                    2. Equity of the college
                      1. the quality of being fair and impartial. (web search)
                    3. Tokenism type of experience
                      1. People of color and the discussion needs to occur especially in classroom settings
                1. The banking model of education
                  1. Students are treated like piggy banks and professors are treated like depositors
                    1. Professor gives you the things you need to know and then you go off into the world and they do good
                2. Investigation model of education
                  1. Give students a big problem and the professors and students are working together
                3. Who is delivering it and how are they delivering it? Institutional and structural reasons why there are so few faculty that are POC?
                  1. There are so few people and it occurs as a constant reminder
                    1. The student has to go searching to be taught
                  2. Just having the class offered, and a POC teaching the class, but there is still teaching or curriculum that is teaching it in a way that is in a way like “I am going to tell you about the black experience in America”
                  3. Almost always about the white person’s experience
                  4. Education is a trope by Dubois

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