African-American Studies Objective

1. To investigate the African-American experience from within the context of criteria established by Afrocentric scholars.
2. To investigate the African-American experience from a comparative basis, i.e. the established criteria of Eurocentric scholars.

Inherent in that approach is one of the primary objectives of an institution of higher learning: to develop the critical and analytic skills of all students in assessing factual and subjective information. A subsidiary objective is to provide students with the skills to understand, carefully and adequately, the particulars of `race' as they extend to universal (national and international) implications. Further, African-American Studies is also an approach to understanding self, community and nation through concrete examples taken from the African-American experience. Since universal ideas are equally implicit in all humans, regardless of social status, gender, sexual preference, religious persuasion or race, African-American Studies is an attempt to illustrate how African-Americans are the `same but different' in terms that transcend time, place and generic differences. Although African-American Studies will use the context of the African Diaspora as a means to explore predispositions about gender, status, religion or race, the overall objective is to help students become critical thinkers.