Speaker focuses on black studies

By Grant Miller

One of the most profound movements that has ever been launched in America is the black studies movement, according to the president of the National Council for Black Studies.

Council President Selase Williams spoke to an audience of about forty people at NIU Wednesday, giving them the history, possible definition and the future of black studies.

“Similar to the Civil Rights movement and the Black Convention movement and the Women’s Suffrage movement, black studies stands to be as important a movement in this country as any other,” Williams said.

Williams, a professor at California State University at Northridge, has “spent much of his life committed to black studies,” said Professor Admasu Zike, director of Black Studies at NIU. “NIU has been in strong support of black studies,” said Zike.

“These days there are a number of issues surrounding black studies and Afro-centricity,” Williams said. “Some are surprising, some are joyful. On the other hand, there are some things that should cause you great concern.”

“Long before the 60s, there were scholars who had produced works which rightfully belonged in the full bibliography of the works of black studies,” Williams said. “They were great thinkers who paved the way for black studies.”

Williams spoke for an hour to a racially-mixed group on a variety of topics concerning black studies. After Williams was done speaking, he fielded questions from the audience.

He offered students who were not fully aware of all the authors and great thinkers of black studies to go to the library and “check their books out.”

Williams said the theory of black studies is that “cultures are constructed with different world views, value system, behavioral patterns, and ways of knowing the world.”

He also offered a proposed definition of Black Studies which was “the human science that systematically studies the various aspects of the African world experience from its earliest beginnings to the present.”

Williams said the future of black studies is still a developing discipline. “There is a great deal of literature that needs to be developed and a great deal of analysis,” he said. “The more effective we are in establishing that literature, the more effective we will be in educating our people.”