ABSTRACT
I chose to begin this chapter with an excerpt from W. E. B. DuBois’ (1903/1997) Souls of Black Folk. I can imagine some people understanding DuBois’ words to represent Black separatism and Black supremacy, that Black people have certain characteristics because of their race, and that European Americans have made only evil contributions to world history. I understand DuBois differently. Because race has been used to justify the oppression of Black people, DuBois holds that “the Negroes” must prove themselves a world-class people by exploiting their talents-not racial talents, but cultural talents developed in response to their environment and through the continual interaction with “work” and “liberty” or working for freedom. By so doing, Black people will justify their right to exist in equality and be evaluated without suspicion as valuable members of the human race. Centering on race, racism, and culture as heuristic tools in rhetoric and composition and literacy education, I understand that the ground upon which I tread is dangerous, since race and racism are unpleasant topics and cultural diversity is in vogue. My arguments will perhaps be resisted and opposed even more because the approach that I have espoused has an
African American-centered or Afrocentric orientation which generally has a negative popular reputation because of certain scholars’ revisionist claims about African civilizations or theories that could be interpreted as separatist.1 African American-centered is applied here to mean the course of study of subjects (i.e. English language usage, literacy acquisition, rhetoric, writing, and education, for example) from the point of view of African American experiences. Like many other American linguistic minority groups, African American Vernacular English speakers who wish to become participants in mainstream institutions have to master spoken and written forms of elite White American languages of commerce. Unlike most other American groups, African Americans’ experiences of slavery, fight for social equality, and selfdetermination have established a history of mistrust of American institutions. African American literacy scholars such as Ogbu (1992) discuss this condition in terms of caste-like minority status, whereby many African Americans develop oppositional attitudes and behaviors because their upward mobility in Anglo American society requires that they eradicate “their mother tongue, mother culture, mother wit-the feminized discourse of voice, identity and native knowledge” (Cooper, 1995: 3). These experiences are often left unexplored or are presented unsystematically in school settings even as their omission hinders healthy identity development, broader understanding of the human condition, and acquisition of empowering literacies for many African Americans and others. African American experiences of racism and cultural conflict are centralized in an African American-centered approach to literacy, rhetoric, and composition. These experiences are explored and negotiated alongside what DuBois calls “the greater ideals of the American Republic” to develop a broader understanding of rhetorical situatedness and invention or reinterpretation of strategies, to combat perpetuation of ineffective rhetorical practices and unequal access.
