Asa Hilliard: Conceptualizing and Constructing an African-Centered Pedagogy

Intergenerational Conversations and Connections

Hilliard’s modern leadership in the African-centered education movement did not develop in a vacuum (Rogers, 2007). His orientation to the education of Black folk draws from and is grounded in a thorough understanding and interpretation of his intellectual ancestors. Hilliard continues the discussions and debates initiated by thinkers that span across diverse political and ideological spectrums such as Carter G. Woodson (1933/1990), W. E. B. Du Bois (1903), and Amilcal Cabral (1974). A close scrutiny of the relationship between Hilliard’s educational philosophy and the thinkers mentioned above illustrates where their ideas connect. These connections with Hilliard’s educational philosophy place him in conversation with some of the most profound philosophies of education articulated for and by people of African descent.

In Woodson’s masterpiece, The Miseducation of the Negro (1933/1990), he provides one of the earliest articulations of the role and function of education for people of African descent living in America. Woodson, founder of the Association of Negro Life and History, emphasized the centrality of historical memory to the educational process. For Woodson, historical memory facilitated social understanding and functioned as a guiding principle that shaped and formed the manner in which people position themselves to interact with and make an impact on society. According to Woodson (1933/1990), the “Father of Black History,” the falsification of historical consciousness (Wilson, 1993) is established through a process of miseducation wherein:

The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. (Woodson, 1933/1990, p. xiii)

Without a proper understanding of history, educational theories and methodologies will fail to serve the needs of the intended cultural group. Woodson posits that such efforts will ultimately hinder progress in education. During this process of miseducation, the learner internalizes the belief that they “are to be brought the ideas of ‘foreigners,’ and must be miraculously transformed into something else before anything can be made of them” (Woodson, 1933/1990, p. 130). Woodson (1933/1990) addresses the falsification of historical consciousness among people of African descent and counters the historical amnesia it produces when he asserts “Negroes of Africa have and always have had their own ideas about the nature of the universe, time, and space, about appearance and reality, and about freedom and necessity” (p. 137). Woodson deconstructs the notion that people of African descent must rely on other cultures as models to which they aspire. Instead, he asserts that people of African descent must draw inspiration and theoretical guidance from the well of their own cultural and historical resources.

Hilliard’s intergenerational conversation with Woodson connects at the pivotal intersection of historical consciousness. Similar to Woodson, Hilliard emphasized the essential role historical knowledge of self plays in determining how people define the parameters of their philosophy of education. For Hilliard, the miseducation of African people has its origins in Eurocentric cultural hegemony. This cultural hegemony produces a historiography that attempts

. . . to take us (people of African descent) out of the human historical and cultural process. They wanted to say that we have never done anything that mattered. They wanted us to think that we were wholly dependent on Europe for everything. They wanted us to view the European as the only creator of culture and the African only as spectator. (Hilliard, 1995, pp. 8–9)

Building on the scholarship of Woodson, who led early 20th-century efforts to return African people to the respectful commentary of history (Clarke, 1991), Hilliard (1995) declared “many of our people are unaware that great minds in the African world have posed valid and comprehensive solutions to our problems” (p. 9). This statement implies that an Africana intellectual heritage encompassing the African diaspora can be utilized as a resource to explore strategies and solutions to some of the educational dilemmas African people encounter. Here both Woodson and Hilliard are advocating for the decentering of the European grand narrative that prioritizes Europe and positions its history as the axis on which all other cultural groups revolve. Hence, Eurocentric pedagogical approaches that stem from the specific historical experiences of Europeans are often presented as the universal standard and/or ideal model that all other cultures should emulate. Reminiscent of Woodson (1933/1990) who discussed the influence and impact of “foreign ideas” on miseducation, Hilliard (1995) recognized and refuted the cultural paternalism embedded in the European worldview. Hilliard (1995) took a parallel stance to Woodson when he opined “we are not children who need to ponder over these things under the ‘guidance,’ supervision, and even leadership of sponsors from other groups” (p. 9). Thus, for Woodson and Hilliard, people of African descent must determine the process of defining and developing the contours of how people of African descent will be educated on their own cultural terms.

Hilliard’s interdisciplinary approach emphasizing that the ultimate purpose of education was not only about obtaining a job but to facilitate holistic human functioning also placed him in conversation with the preeminent scholar W. E. B. Du Bois (1903; Hilliard, 1995). Hilliard takes Du Bois’ (1903) often-used statement of the color line being the problem of the 20th century and applies it to the education of Black folk. Hilliard (1995) perceptively appropriates the color line construct and instructs “the main difference between then and now is that in recent times the line has been drawn in invisible ink” (p. 105). According to Hilliard, the contemporary color line is drawn in invisible ink when school systems tasked with educating African American children make wholesale decisions based on biased standardized test scores and question the intellect of African American children who have been deprived of opportunity (Hilliard, 1995). Hilliard’s expansion of Du Bois’ color line demonstrates his ability to reinterpret traditional scholarship and make it applicable to contemporary African American lived experiences. For Hilliard, the new color line is invisible to the culturally naked eye. It camouflages itself in post-racialism and hides in plain sight. Hilliard asserts that the invisible ink becomes visible when observed from an African-centered perspective.

In The Maroon Within Us: Selected Essays on African American Community Socialization (1995), Hilliard engages in dialogue with the revolutionary thinking of Amilcal Cabral (1974). Hilliard’s conversation with Cabral centers on cultural education as an act of resistance. Hilliard argues that one of the major components of African American cultural surrender within education is the tendency to not study African/African American culture (Hilliard, 1995, p. 58). Drawing from Cabral’s understanding of cultural resistance and identity, Hilliard articulates the foundation of a cultural approach to education through socialization. Both Cabral and Hilliard advocated for African people to have the ability to maintain “their unique cultural forms . . . forms that, while based on their past, grew out of a group’s present struggles to advance as a group” (Hilliard, 1995, p. 109). For Hilliard, socialization is defined as “the process of assuming responsibility for one’s ethnic group based on its teachings of its shared culture and destiny” (Hilliard, 1995, p. 11). Influenced by Cabral’s focus on cultural resistance to foreign domination during colonialism, Hilliard identified African-centered education as a practice that countered the cultural hegemony of Eurocentric education through a socialization process that affirms the cultural integrity and intellectual capacity of African people. Hilliard proposed cultural socialization as the source from which African Americans become active agents who participate in the process of making education the practice of freedom (Freire, 1976).

Redefining and Reinterpreting Education

Paradigmatic shifts in the sciences, both physical and social, do not evolve spontaneously nor do they develop void of any historical and political context. These shifts are the result of a dialectical process involving intense intellectual exchanges between a myriad of opposing theoretical and ideological perspectives. Hilliard (1995) argues that since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education—Topeka decision in 1954, African Americans have been denied major resources “while we sat in the same classrooms with White students. IQ testing, and now minimum competency testing, have been used in such a way that the results have been new forms of resegregation” (p. 62). In the effort to counter the adverse impact of resegregation within education, Hilliard (1996) was part of a critical mass of scholars who called for either a paradigm shift or no mental measurement. Adding their voices to the heated debates in education, a contingent of psychologists in ABPsi participated in theory construction and research relative to intelligence testing. Black psychologists from various schools of thought addressed the intelligence testing paradigm (Hilliard, 1996). ABPsi and Hilliard strategically positioned themselves in the center of an intellectual fray about the role and relevance of the intelligence paradigm that sought to denigrate and deny African American intellectual agency.

Based on his over 40 years of research in educational psychology, Hilliard generated the following queries about psychological and mental assessments:

Why should psychology be used in the schools at all? What is the benefit of psychological assessment? But especially, what is the benefit of mental measurement to the teaching and learning process of children? Why should mental measurement be used in criminal justice? What is its benefit? Why should mental measurement be used in public welfare? (Hilliard, 1995, p. 12)

In “Either a Paradigm Shift or No Mental Measurement: The Nonscience and the Nonsense of the Bell Curve” (1996), Hilliard offers a scathing yet scholarly critique of the shortcomings of the Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class in American life (1994). Hilliard posits that Herrnstein and Murray (1994) assumed that psychology can measure intellectual capacity accurately and that there is equal opportunity to learn and common exposure to cultural experiences. Furthermore, Hilliard (1996) asserts “But the real question is: Is it scientifically correct?” (p. 2). Hilliard declares that the Bell Curve “is not science at all . . . It is superstition because it is bad psychology, bad biology, bad genetics, bad anthropology, bad pedagogy, and bad linguistics, and follows a long tradition of science in support of white supremacy” (p. 12). While Hilliard’s main arguments are aimed specifically at the flaws of Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) research, he also offers a critique that seeks to deconstruct much of the science of intelligence testing in general. The critique of science is critical since it is the mask of scientific objectivity (Ani, 1994; Carruthers, 1999; Wright, 1984) that often hides and limits the ability to recognize the negative impact of the intelligence testing paradigm on African American children (Hilliard, 1995).

It is critical that scholars in education move from conceptual confusion to conceptual clarity (Hilliard, 1995). A key feature of Hilliard’s work centers on constructing an appropriate conceptual framework from which to grapple with the education of African Americans. An appropriate framework is needed to break through the ideological barriers and conceptual constraints that prevent educators from properly understanding issues. Within this context, Hilliard (1995) discusses how conceptual confusion is often a consequence of misconstruing the problem through euphemistic labeling. Euphemistic labeling limits discussions about educational disparities by utilizing milder sounding words like race relations, intergroup relations, multiculturalism, and diversity (Hilliard, 1995). These terms operate as euphemisms that obscure the core concepts and issues that need to be addressed and contribute to creating more conceptual confusion. By eliminating euphemisms, the hard and often uncomfortable questions about the relationship between education and culture can be asked. For example, who are the powerful and privileged? What role does education play in their obtaining and maintaining their powerful position over the oppressed? What is White supremacy and how does it benefit from African American children receiving an inferior education? What type of cultural education is needed to counter White supremacy? Stating educational issues in terms of power, privilege, oppression, and White supremacy changes the content and substance of the discourse by using transparent nomenclature that allows for conceptual clarity about disparities in education (Hilliard, 1995).

For Hilliard, conceptual and cultural confusion is apparent in the aftermath of the Brown decision. Influenced by idealistic perceptions of integration and equality, conceptually incarcerated interpretations of Brown tend to present it as a seminal event of progress that signaled a moment of social and political advancement for African Americans. While clearly a defining historical moment, the psychological and cultural implications of Brown remain open to evaluations that extend past the conceptualizations that dominate the popular narrative. Hilliard (1997) proclaims that even after Brown, the cultural hegemony and the institutional racism of White supremacy mandates that “processes within the system, especially the schools, be used not only to provide a separate education, but one which helped to manufacture the myth of an inferior African who could be juxtaposed to the myth of a superior European” (p. 51). Hilliard’s critical interpretation of Brown and intelligence testing posed pertinent questions that were essential to the development of an African-centered pedagogy.

Culture Wars

As a scholar engaged in cultural and intellectual warfare (Carruthers, 1999), Hilliard inserted himself in the center of the fiery culture war debates by addressing the role of culture in education. In African Power: Affirming African Indigenous Socialization in the Face of the Culture Wars (2002), Hilliard launches an intellectual assault on the realm of ideas that maintain and perpetuate the belief in the cultural inferiority of African people. Hilliard was keenly aware of the cultural terrorism and psychological violence inherent to White supremacy that sought to rob African people of their cultural integrity. According to Hilliard (2002) “the goal of European hegemony has been to harness, label, degrade, and appropriate African power . . . Cultural Terrorism was and is exercised to create disorder, confusion, and dependency among Africans” (p. 26). For Hilliard, cultural terrorism involves a de-Africanization process that consists of miseducation within institutional settings and the proliferation of White supremacy propaganda that promotes European cultural superiority at the expense of African culture (Hilliard, 2002). Hence, counter cultural terrorism efforts must construct a holistic doctrine of well-being (Tillotson, 2011) that employs and encourages an African worldview that stresses the development of practical implications that promote the vitality of the African survival thrust (Baldwin, 1981; Kambon, 2012).

John Ogbu (2004) offered an intriguing contribution to the culture wars within education with the concept of “acting white.” Ogbu (2004) contended that some African American youth may develop an “oppositional cultural frame of reference” and perceive educational advancement as “acting white.” This concept is rooted in various forms of cultural imposition (Fanon, 2008) that produce cultural mis-oriented individuals (Kambon, 2012). Cultural misorientation (Kambon, 2003) or the overidentification with European culture encourages the practice that Hilliard (1995) refers to as cultural surrender. According to Hilliard, other aspects of cultural surrender that negatively impact African American views about education are the beliefs that technology is exclusively European and that to affirm African culture is to reject technology (Hilliard, 1995, pp. 57–58). Due to high levels of cultural misorientation (Kambon, 2003) and low levels of African self-consciousness (Kambon, 2012), African American students who experience these phenomena may lack the indigenous cultural socialization needed to neutralize and/or counter the internalization of European worldviews that depict Africa and African ways of being as inferior and deficient.

Armah’s Remembering the Dismembered Continent (2010) provides insight regarding the contemporary relevance of African history and culture. Armah (2010) references the Yoruba cultural construct of Orishas, personifications of the Supreme Being that are revealed in nature, as illustrations of how traditional beliefs function as ideas/ideals that remain useful for interpreting and understanding contemporary lived experiences. According to Armah (2010), intellectual disorientation keeps African people unaware “that the ideational resources . . . are in fact present in the original lodes of African culture and history, awaiting only rediscovery and reuse by thinking Africans” (p. 71). For example, if Ogun is associated with creative, scientific, and technological attributes, then the tendency to automatically equate scientific research and technological advancements solely with Europeans is historically and culturally inaccurate. Thus, because culture is fluid and dynamic, the Ogun ideal is not an outdated historical artifact but a living cultural archetype that transcends historical time and geographical place. Along these same lines, Hilliard argues that when students are exposed to an orientation that offers historical examples of African excellence from their own history, they will not perceive academic success as “acting white.” Rather than being an anomaly that separates them from their culture, their academic success will be considered normal and culturally congruent with their knowledge and understanding of what it means to act and be African.

Conclusion: Toward an African-Centered Pedagogy

In We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radical Imagination, Rickford (2016) provides an intellectual history of how the domain of culturally relevant education has been a contested conceptual terrain in which competing ideologies have articulated various pedagogical approaches. According to Rickford (2016), independent Black institutions during the 1960s and 1970s “served as critical mechanisms for transmitting Black consciousness” (p. ii) and sought to improve academic performance, enhance self-esteem, and decolonize minds. Lee et al. (1990) are in agreement when they contend that African-centered institutions providing a functional and relevant praxis should do the following: (a) legitimize African epistemology; (b) advance productive community and cultural practices; (c) extend and build upon the indigenous language; (d) reinforce community ties and service to family, community, nation, race, and world; and (5) promote positive social relationships. Similar to the African Free School, the Freedom School Movement, the Independent Black National Schools, and the African-centered School Movement (Rickford, 2016; Shujaa, 1994), Hilliard advocates for the creation of autonomous intellectual spaces that maximize the potential of African American children.

There are several contemporary scholars that build on Hilliard’s work. The evolution of scholarship that addresses Hilliard’s thesis is witnessed in Bethea’s (2018) “Kuja Nyumbani (Coming Home): Using African-Centered Pedagogy to Educate Black Students in the Academy.” Following in the tradition of Hilliard, Bethea (2018) demonstrates how African-centered pedagogical approaches can be used in college classrooms to create knowledge, foster learning, nurture creativity, enhance mastery of skill, and encourage social action, transformation, and healing. Lateef and Anthony (2018), and Shockley and LeNiles (2018) both address the importance of not only theorizing but applying African-centered education. Reminiscent of Hilliard’s (1995) The Maroon Within Us: Selected Essays on African American Community Socialization, Shockley and LeNiles’ (2019) recent article, “May We Forever Stand: Reflections on Culture, Community and Maroonage,” discusses lessons learned from studying Maroon cultures (descendants of Africans who escaped from enslavement and lived independently) and their approaches to facilitating cultural knowledge as a possible model for educating children of African descent throughout the diaspora. Collectively, this scholarship adds on to the cipher of African-centered scholars that extend and expand the legacy of Asa Hilliard’s contributions to contemporary African-centered education.

Hilliard’s contributions emphasize that a key component to African-centered pedagogy is countering the de-Africanization process through intergenerational cultural transmission. An optimal African-centered pedagogy grounded in the African social ethics of Maat (balance, truth, justice, harmony) and the need for continuous personal study are necessary to facilitate the re-Africanization process (Lee et al., 1990). Hilliard asserts,

A core part of our mission today is to study and transfer the valuable information about our cultural traditions to our people. This will serve, in part, to reconnect many Africans who are far removed from our ancient and traditional intergenerational cultural transmission practices . . . We have lost our understanding of the dispensable role that control of socialization plays in our survival and destiny and thus, we have failed to ensure proper intergenerational cultural transmission. (Hilliard, 2002, p. 21)

What is the socialization process through which intergenerational cultural transmission occurs? How is it nurtured and developed within a social and cultural milieu that is predicated upon cultural imposition? While basic skills and content are important to Hilliard, his vision extended beyond core requirements to include the development of critical consciousness Hilliard, 2002).

In “Per Aa Asa Hilliard: The Great House of Black Light for Educational Excellence,” an article published shortly after Asa Hilliard made his transition to the ancestors, Nobles (2008) states “To only quote Asa or debate about what he stood for would. . .fail to fully honor his life” (p. 743). While Nobles understands that the written and spoken word are viable means through which ideas are transmitted, he cautions about the tendency among intellectuals to engage in academic discourse that is not practical. The work involved in “doing Asa” (Nobles, 2008) and actualizing Hilliard’s (2002) pedagogy requires tapping into ancient and formal sources of cultural information; reading oral histories from elders; studying personal accounts written by or about Africans who have been through socialization systems; and participation in some form of African derived socialization system. Hilliard advocated for African agency and advised “No one will do the important cultural work for us. We must do it for ourselves” (p. 115). It is this sense of urgent agency formation that illustrates Hilliard’s commitment to developing an African-centered pedagogy that can assist in facilitating a re-Africanization process.