Curriculum, Policy, and African American Cultural Knowledge: Challenges and Possibilities for the Year 2000 and Beyond

Abstract

In this article, the author discusses the role of an autochthonous critique that challenges the regime of truth operating in prevailing educational discourses that perpetuate dominant social structure and power relations. The author argues that the contemporary challenge for the curriculum field and educational policy is to create pedagogy and implement social action that reflects new visions of humankind and influences the emergent popular and intellectual culture. The author argues that the African American community is ultimately responsible for the education of African American children. Finally, the author implies that perhaps the greatest threat to the African American community is the kind of miseducation that produces dominant society- appointed "New Negro" leadership, whose ideological and political perspectives are antithetical to the African American community, and whose embrace of dominant societal worldviews results in a self-imposed alienation from their own Black communal roots, culture, and people.