Black Cultural Centers and The Racing of Space

Black education (secondary and post-secondary) in the United States developed in the crucible of anti-Black oppression (political disenfranchisement, social degradation, economic exploitation) rooted in the othering of African Americans as a subhuman species lacking the human qualities necessary for education and fundamental human rights. These vehemently deleterious anti-Black mandates formed the basis of a bilateral American system of higher education, rooted in education for democratic citizenship and education for second-class citizenship. This educational model stems from what Mills calls <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt5hh1wj" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The Racial Contract</a> (1997). This contract, according to Mills, “is a set of formal and informal agreements among Whites to privilege themselves as a group through domination and exploitation of non-Whites as a group” (Mills, 1997, p.11). Thus, the Racial Contract provides the basis of a “society that is not made up of free and equal individuals, as intimated in the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and other foundational American preambles, but rather a “partitioned social ontology…divided between persons and racial sub-persons” (Mills, 1997, p. 16). <a href="https://medium.com/pan-african-voice/black-cultural-centers-and-the-racing-of-space-b5584aa533d2">Learn More</a>