Afrocentric Traditions by Jr. Conyers

Author:Jr. Conyers [Conyers, Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781412804783
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 774398
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

Toward a Progressive Africana Studies Social Science

The growing prevalence of a new wave of post-Civil Rights era scholarship that promotes dubious explanations of the persistence of racial inequality introduces a degree of urgency into the process of reassessing current approaches to social science research within Africana Studies. Thomas (2000) describes this general pattern as the “Social Science retreat from Racism” and observes that in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, theories assigning blame for continuing inequality to blacks themselves rather than contemporary racism have become increasingly popular. He describes these as “anything but race” perspectives, and various sources of black disadvantage are trumpeted including “social class, cognitive ability, lack of work ethic/morality, human capital, spatial mismatch, and family structure.” Tucker (1996: 7-8) offers a more ominous perspective, warning “whenever scientists have concluded some group to be genetically inferior, some of the investigators have wound up in either organizational or informal alliance with right-wing political groups, often fascists or racists who have been more than pleased to use scientific authority as a source of prestige for their own doctrines.”

Stanfield (1993: 32-3) offers a similar perspective on how the contemporary social science establishment is approaching issues of racial inequity while also issuing a manifesto for defensive action:

Research in the social sciences is one of the last areas in U.S. society in which social inequality is taken as a given. It is assumed that researchers have expertise that is beyond the comprehension of those they study…. Unless we find adequate ways of liberating the research process in the social sciences, there will be mounting questioning of the relevance of scientific inquiry, especially from the empowering institutions and communities of people of color in the United States and abroad. No longer can social scientists hide behind the ivy-covered walls of academia and their research laboratories, assuming they can study whomever the want to, whenever they please.

Scholar-activists committed to developing progressive Africana Studies social science must mount two related but different types of challenges to the neo-conservative intellectual assault. The first involves updating and extending research strategies used by Du Bois and Frazier, namely adapting new methodological techniques to develop alternative studies that refute “anything but race” findings. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Grounded Theory are, respectively, quantitative and qualitative methods that should be explored for their potential in supporting liberatory social science scholarship. The second challenge involves defying assumptions that undergird social science and its role as a privileged source of information role in shaping social policy and interpreting social reality. Asante’s construct of Afrocentricity and Stewart’s (2003a) “jazz” model of Africana Studies are discussed as examples of alternative theories of systematic knowledge production consistent with the vision of Africana Studies.

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