Reviews Maulana Karenga's "Introduction to Black Studies" (1982). Discusses the academic and social relevance of the discipline and its growth out of economic, political, and historical forces. Concurs with Karenga's Afrocentric approach but notes the difficulties in its implementation within the current academic climate. (GC)

Concludes that black studies programs should develop an octopus-like academic structure which reaches out in several directions, simultaneously: initiating and illuminating, discerning and fostering, observing and directing, collecting and disseminating; all with one goal in view, exploring the black experience within a universal perspective.…

Discusses the proposition that the black studies movement is but a continuing aspect of our general battle for survival and liberation in a fluctuatingly hostile environment, and that a part of what is seen today in the black studies movement is but a fluctuation in a fight and an expression of black collective awareness dating back to the…

Black studies is an attempt by African-Americans to understand their African cultural heritage and value system. The goals of Black studies are: (1) to enable a reevaluation of information from a perspective which takes into account traditional African humanistic values; (2) to encourage creativity motivated by a positive understanding of one's…