Beyond the African American Big Ten

African American history, literature, and culture are really American, African, European history that we have not figured out what to do with or where to place. It as if a group of people long ago decided that they would systematically deny entry of African American contribution into the historical record or the literary canon. Of course we have the "Big Ten" of African Americans that most students learn about, but their knowledge of even those ten are superficial at best. If we ask a random sampling of 100 college students or grads to name as many African American historical or literary figures from before the twentieth century, I would safely say that they could not name more than ten. If we asked for ten African American contributors to the Civil Rights Movement beyond Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, they would be hard pressed. Why is this?

It has become the status quo to relegate extensive examination of people of color into separate departments and programs, housed in the dark corners of humanities and liberal art studies. This separate but equal treatment of black/multicultural studies should still indeed be seen as progress. However, these programs come too late in a student's academic life, if at all. This separation becomes negative when it is the only place one can learn about the significance of people of color and their role in the building and shaping of the world we live in today. How can educators, historians, and social anthropologists approach African American studies in a way that is not piecemeal but that fits into the framework of the broader areas of studies in other fields? Couldn't philosophy scholars integrate discussions about the influence of North Africa in their discourse and studies about western philosophy since the Greeks studied there? Couldn't music educators include Ghanaian drumming into their works on classical music? Could historians discuss, in more depth, the contributions of blacks, in America's "founding" or development?

Of course there will always be a branch of studies dedicated to ethnic and multicultural studies, that does not mean that those studies that are not hyphenated should be whitewashed. We must make sure that the contributions of people of color are not relegated to specialized courses only. We must get beyond the “Big Ten” list of African Americans studied year after year in school systems and college campuses across the country. We must also put into context the role of imperialism, colonization, racism, slavery in World history in a way that has not yet been done in liberal education curricula.

As we consider how this new curricula will look, we need to examine what we are already doing. Who are included in the Big Ten of African Americans Studied before the 20th century? Can we find 10 of us in any history or literature book?