Over at a new blog, Minding The Campus, John McWhorter outlines his vision of what African-American studies should be. A taste:
Black people can do their best even under imperfect conditions--and if that reality is irrelevant to an African-American Studies curriculum, then we must question the value of said curricula to those whom they purport to speak up for: real people in this real world. This real world which will never be perfect--even for descendants of African slaves. In 2009, the study of blackness must be the study of a race most of whose members are now victors, not victims. Certainly the victims must be studied--but only within a genuine commitment to saving them, not chronicling them as helpless until America turns upside down in a fashion no one could seriously imagine will ever happen.