Page 108 - Cultural Studies Volume 11
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102 CULTURAL STUDIES

            William Pinar in an instructive essay entitled ‘Notes on understanding curriculum
            as a racial text’ (1993). He asks the question ‘who are we as Americans?’ and the
            answer he provides exemplifies not a revision but a transformation in teaching on
            pluralism in the United States: ‘[the] African-American’s presence informs every
            element  of  American  life.  For  European  American  students  to  understand  who
            they  are,  they  must  understand  that  their  existence  is  predicated  upon,
            interrelated to, and constituted in fundamental ways by African Americans.’
              Pinar  emphasizes  that  educators  have  to  acknowledge  in  order  to  pass  on  to
            students the inseparable, intertwined historical experience which black and white
            Americans share and have been profoundly affected by, and this in turn must be
            seen  in  the  context  of  the  relationship  between  the  North  and  the  South.  John
            Philips  underscores  these  insights  in  a  provocatively  titled  essay,  The  African
            heritage of white America’:

              In  conditions  of  culture  contact  in  the  New  World,  common  aspects  of
              European  and  African  culture  tend  to  reinforce  each  other.  Previously,
              when the same cultural traits survived among both blacks and whites, they
              were  considered  to  be  European  cultural  survivals  among  whites  but
              African cultural survivals among blacks. It would be easier to consider a
              dual origin for these cultural traits in both cases… African culture among
              whites should not be treated as just an addendum to studies of blacks but
              must  be  included  in  the  general  curriculum  of  American  studies.  Black
              studies must not be allowed to remain segregated from American studies
              but must be integrated into our understanding of American society, for our
              understanding  of  white  American  society  is  incomplete  without  an
              understanding of the black and African impact on white America.
                                                           (Philips, 1990:237)

            I  refer  again  to  poet  Ishmael  Reed  who  relates:  ‘I  told  a  professor  of  Celtic
            Studies  at  Dartmouth  of  my  Irish-American  heritage;  he  laughed.  This  was  an
            intellectual at one of our great Ivy League colleges.’
              Where  Philips’s  integrationist  model  and  Pinar’s  approach  to  examining  the
            constitution  of  the  American  self  as  a  racial  self  are  adopted,  the  influence  of
            educators like the Dartmouth professor may not be neutralized, but at least it will
            be called into question. The task of an educator is to cultivate an awareness of
            how knowledge is made as well as restructuring ways of seeing. And I propose
            that  the  guiding  principle  for  criteria,  selection  and  organization  of  material
            should be ultimately aimed at the lofty goal of furthering social justice. Having
            said that, one cannot overlook the terrible lack of correlation between knowledge
            and  the  dissolution  of  prejudice;  this  is  a  subject  which  should  perhaps  solicit
            some of our attention. More knowledge and information does not make for less
            ignorance or bigotry.
              The overall advantage that should be accentuated is that where inter-demands
            that  we  examine  interaction,  processes  and  the  power  relations  that  inform
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