Past Futures

Our readings are demanding a lot of reflection and returns to the text as we try to deconstruct the various imaginings of black futures in the United States. Carter G. Woodson presents an interesting combination of DuBoisian and Booker T. Washington perspectives in his "Mis-education of the Negro." He urges and supports small, independent entrepeneurship, volunteerism and, like DuBois, a classical education for blacks -- but with a caveat that added to that pedagogy is a framework of need-based content drawing on contemporary realities as he saw them at the turn of the century. We are struggling with contextualizing this view with Eugene Robinson's "Disintegration" which proposes that in the 21st century there are 4 major sub-groups among African Americans: the Abandoned, the Mainstream, the Emergent and the Transcendent.  Question: Is Woodson's perspective still applicable, still useful? If so, why? If not, why not?

Is volunteerism still possible in the black community (read Abandoned) if done by blacks? What are the constraints (ie security, police agression, etc.)  Can Emergents be the credible inheritors of the black American cultural and ideological struggles of the 20th century?