Nathan Hare

Black studies will be revolutionary or it will be useless if not detrimental.

Nathan Hare (April 9, 1933 – June 10, 2024) was an American sociologist, activist, academic, and psychologist.

Quotes

A Torch to Burn Down a Decadent World (1970)

Hare, N. (1970). From the publisher: A torch to burn down a decadent world. The Black Scholar, 2(1), 2–5.

• An analysis of black studies throughout the land shows hardly any worthy of the name, in spite of hard work on the part of many dedicated black people. They are stymied by cunning opposition from the oppressor and his collaborators which we must understand in order to dissolve.
  • p. 2

• Black studies was never meant to be a means of merely learning about our past. It was a pedagogical innovation, not meant to be restricted to the study of blackness alone. It was to be a new approach to scholarship and teaching which would prepare black students to function in the hard times ahead for us while clearing the way for the ultimate humanization of a decadent American society. Black studies will be revolutionary or it will be useless if not detrimental.
  • p. 2

• Here is one of the most widespread pretexts around which many black individuals rally in collaborating with the college oppressors. In succession one by one they claim to take it upon themselves "to save the program" (by which they mean to save, or make, their personal careers). They say they fear that the college will permanently ban any kind of black studies unless they can manage to lead blacks to fall in line.
  • p. 3

• A militant today may be a moderate tomorrow, though our task of course is to ensure that it also works the other way around.
  • p. 4

• The Ford Foundation pumped $2 million into four leading universities with the most ill-conceived, establishment-oriented black studies programs in the country.
  • p. 4

• We must pull the traditional black scholar into the arena of black liberation and permit the street intellectual, excluded from the pages of white scholarly journals, to have his long neglected say.
  • p. 5

• Education ... is a torch with which to burn down a decadent world of corruption and oppression so that the green grass of freedom and justice can begin to grow.
  • p. 5