title: White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies And the Crisis of Race And Higher Education
author:  Noliwe M. Rooks 
description: The first university-level black studies program, now 36 years old, grew out of student unrest, activism and a strike organized by both blacks and whites at San Francisco State. Similar programs spread quickly across the country, largely through the financing of the Ford Foundation, which shaped the programs' future through selective grant giving. Never entirely at ease with its sources of power and institutional identity, African-American studies today faces declining student enrollment and a demographic shift away from black Americans toward students with African or Caribbean backgrounds. In this concise, compelling volume, Rooks, the associate director of Princeton's African American studies program, recreates the social and political contexts of the discipline's history, paying particular attention to its past reliance on white philanthropy and involvement. The field must confront this legacy, she argues, if it is to escape the paradox where "Blackness... means too much and, at the same time, remarkably little"a vagueness that allows university administrators to use programs as "an Affirmative Action strategy... despite the fact that the students it serves and the faculty it houses are often not African American." Perhaps too specialized for general readers, this volume is a must for anyone working in the field. <i>(Feb.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  # Negro Self-Help
  
  
  ### Booker T. Washington
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  FROM time to time in the past a great deal of matter has been furnished to the
  public, with the praiseworthy
  
  
  purpose of portraying the individual struggles and sacrifices of colored
  youths to secure an education. These
  
  
  efforts of struggling young men and women, with no inspiration in family
  tradition and fortune, and with little or no
  
  
  money with which to secure the knowledge they crave, is one of the most
  encouraging as well as pathetic
  
  
  features I have come across in my educational work during the past twenty
  years. As a hopeful indication of race
  
  
  character, and I may safely so describe it, it must be of peculiar interest to
  the average American interested in the
  
  
  Negro people.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On the other hand, much matter has also been furnished the public concerning
  the aid given the Negro race by
  
  
  philanthropic white people; atten