Two good goals are in collision in African Studies in the United States--the fostering of certain black interests and the untrammeled pursuit of scholarship. I think that neither needs to give way before the other, provided a division of labor can be devised which secures the autonomy of scholarship from politics. This is the gist of the remarks that follow. In proceeding with these remarks, I shall refer to the governance of the African Studies Association and the disproportionately small number of black inquirers in a field concerned with an area with which blacks have a special tie, only as these matters seem to me to have implications for the autonomy of scholarship.

The view has been expressed that the conduct of inquiry about Africa needs to be radically revised so that black people will have control over their own history and its interpretation (Clarke 1969, p. 9). Adherents of this view, in elaboration, say they wish to have “the study of African life…undertaken from a Pan-Africanist perspective,” which “defines that all black people are African people and rejects the division of African peoples by geographical locations based on colonial spheres of influence” (Clarke 1969, p. 11). I think this view is representative of thinking sufficiently widespread to warrant considering it with the utmost seriousness in any effort to deal with the future of African studies in the United States.