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The achievement motive in Black experience has worked wonders

[ Posted On: 2007-04-22 ]

Is black academic excellence a form of imitation of white values? Although the formulation could be made less provocative, it contains an important issue.

Has the achievement motive among African-Americans been severely damaged by the history of enslavement and racism? How can African-Americans now transcend those inhibitions?

The achievement motive in a people has factors, which can inhibit or encourage advancement. A spirit of ambition is potentially nourishing. But the history of racism has narrowed the areas in which African-Americans can excel.

As it stands now, two of the areas in which African-Americans have become celebrities and superstars are sports and entertainment. Television star, Bill Cosby, became a giant among entertainers during this phase.

The international major area in which African-Americans from the 20th century have risen to the ranks of celebrity and superstars has been the show business, the performing arts and entertainment.

Such achievements have ranged from film star Sidney Poitier to television comedian Bill Cosby, from television hostess Oprah Winfrey to singer Michael Jackson.

Sporting achievements are in the arena of physical performance Ð from boxing to basketball. Entertainment has ranged from physical talent like vocal power to personality traits and charisma in stagecraft. Such achievers have included Paul Roberson's powerful voice and Sonja Henie's swimming skills.

Music, song and dance have been particularly strong areas of Black performance.

Another major area of Black achievement has been in ethics and religion Ð Blacks as moral beings or homo ethicus.

In this regard, Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi understood Black people fully. Precisely because Black people were the most humiliated in modern history, their pain qualified them as standard bearers of his passive resistance. As he put it, "It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to the world."

Mahatma Gandhi himself never won the Nobel Prize for Peace, but some of his Black disciples subsequently did. These included American Martin Luther King Jr and Albert Luthuli and Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Also illustrious as a Black moral leader has of course been, Nelson Mandela.

In sum, the achievement motive in the Black experience has worked wonders in four major areas of endeavor.

These areas have been sports, the performing arts (especially music, dance and skills of the theatre), works of the verbal imagination (especially poetry and the novel) and fourthly moral and religious endeavors.

There is genuine concern about whether the achievement motive is strong enough in Black economic roles. "The American Dream' is often interpreted in economic terms. Partly because of the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination in the job-market, Black economic priorities and skills have been distorted.

As slaves in the Americas, Black people created wealth but did not themselves make money. As liberated people from the 20th century onwards, Black people have often made money without creating wealth.

Although there are indeed millions of hardworking Blacks engaged in wealth creation (as farmers or factory workers), a disproportionate number of Black people are engaged in the service sector (as porters or transportation workers), or in the underground economy, as drug traffickers, or as the Black mafia Ð making money, but not creating wealth.

Great achievers as Black people have been in sports, in the performing arts, in the literary field and in moral leadership in the public space, Blacks have underperformed in the wealth-creating roles of the economy and in genuinely productive entrepreneurship.

There is one additional and crucial area in which Black people have under-preformed. This is the complex area of mathematics, the natural sciences and the new computer revolution. Perhaps many young African-American students in colleges do genuinely believe that to excel in mathematics, physics or computer-science is to "play the white man's game." Such skills are tragically racialised in the perception of such young Blacks.

It may also be true that cultures differ in "mathematicality' and receptivity to the calculus. A number of Asian cultures have produced exceptional mathematical performance and computer skills.

India is widely regarded as the Garden of Eden of ancient mathematics. More recently, India has become a powerhouse of the new information technology.

In cultural mathematicality Indians and Koreans may be ahead, not only of Black and African cultures, but also ahead of such Euro-Latin cultures as the legacies of Italy, Spain and Portugal.

But cultural resistance to mathematics and the calculus can be overcome. Indeed, African and Black cultures need to transcend numerophobia, (the fear of numbers). Quite frankly, I do myself suffer from numerophobia, but I am relieved that my first-born son (now in his forties) is sophisticated in computer-skills, and my fourth son (still a teenager) is fascinated by mathematics. A new generation of Black people can indeed transcend some of the phobias and anxieties of their ancestors.

The Black achievement motive may need more than mending. It will need a transformation in the direction of scientific innovation and practical creativity.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Prof. Ali Mazrui is Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Kenya.

| View Profile & All Articles By: Ali A. Mazrui |

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