Gasman, Marybeth. (2007). Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund. Reviewed by Haroldo Fontaine, Florida State University

Gasman, Marybeth. (2007). Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Pp. xv + 288     $45     ISBN 978-0-8018-8604-1 Reviewed by Haroldo Fontaine Florida State University August 19, 2008 Marybeth Gasman’s Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund, is an account of an institution (UNCF) whose main purpose was to raise money for its member colleges. Initially, it did so by crafting two different messages for its two different constituencies: white philanthropists and the black community, though “this practice had a particularly painful significance for African-Americans, who had to deny a part of themselves in order to sell to the white population the idea that black minds were worth the investment” (Gasman, p. 195). Notwithstanding pain and the leadership of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his white appointees during its formative years, Gasman tells a tale of how the UNCF became a space in and from which black leaders made cautious and incremental changes that supported the growth of black consciousness and the civil rights movement, including during the post-Brown era, when the paradoxical existence of segregated black institutions advocating for social integration came under serious scrutiny. The resolution came when the UNCF became a public advocate for Negro colleges and Negro education, which was punctuated by Rockefeller III’s resignation from the UNCF leadership. The resolution came to be symbolized by arguably one of the most successful slogans in the history of American advertisement: “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” Gasman ends her account with the ways in which recent UNCF leadership has strengthened the organization and its member colleges. Borrowing a central theme from W.E.B. Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folks, Gasman’s text resolves the UNCF’s “double-consciousness” during its early history into a black and presumably "single" consciousness during the 1960s and beyond. According to Dubois, the Negro is… (G)ifted with second-sight in this American world, -- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self (Dubois, p. 3). Like Dubois, Gasman presupposes that “true self-consciousness” is a fully reconciled, self-consistent psychological state in which all of its internal contradictions have been quelled; short of this, an individual Negro cannot be said to have said consciousness. Though I am viscerally sympathetic with Dubois’ “sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity,” due in no small part to my own experience as a Cuban immigrant keenly aware of, for example, the social stigma that often comes with speaking English with an "accent," I take issue with Gasman’s presupposition regarding self-consciousness. The reason for this is what remains of this review. Human existence is circumscribed by socio-historical context. Such circumscription denies actual resolution of all attending contradictions, inconsistencies, and uncertainties. While logic helps to separate good arguments from bad and thus better from worse courses of action, certainty remains elusive for it. Positing hypotheses, controlling variability, and measuring results systematically—i.e. relying on the scientific method, is the best tool we have at our disposal with which to reduce contradictions, inconsistencies, and uncertainties, though its results remain tentative. It is in the realm of theory divorced from practice, or rather, of speculation, that resolution is possible. It is in this rarefied place that Gasman posits a “double consciousness” that may be resolved into a single consciousness, i.e. a consciousness devoid of contradictions, inconsistencies, and uncertainties. Given the nature of human existence outlined above, this is impossible. Only transcendence of context could provide the conditions for such a consciousness to exist. If human existence could transcend context, then it could achieve omniscience. However, omniscience is not a trait of mortals, but of immortals, i.e. omniscience belongs to Deity, but not all Deity, for the Greek gods were immortally human and depicted as such in the arts. In the case of the Judeo-Christian god, however, anthropomorphism is summarily denied in such places as the "ten commandments," leaving this god to be described only by its transcendental qualities, e.g. omniscience. In short, Dubois and Gasman seemingly presuppose a Judeo-Christian view of consciousness when the former describes the souls of black folk, and the latter the UNCF’s evolution, as if souls and institutions could attain the rank of Deity. In closing, I am not surprised by Dubois’ presupposition, for "soul" uttered in 1903 (and today) carries much Judeo-Christian baggage. However, I am surprised by Gasman’s implicit reliance on this mythic metanarrative. Historiographical methodology in a post-Baconian context amounts to inductive reasoning, and as such provides probability, not certainty. The results of this method necessarily preclude omniscience. Perhaps her leap from probability to certainty is an act of faith in the triumph of social justice, and a faith that I share, but it is not an act of science, at least not science conceived as induction. References Dubois, W.E.B. (1999). The souls of black folks [Electronic version]. http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html About the Reviewer Haroldo A. Fontaine is a doctoral student in the Program of Social, Historical, and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Florida State University. His chief area of interest is the pedagogical implications for teacher education of Martin Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein in Being and Time. A secondary area of interest is the use of the arts, especially film and literature, to illustrate the pedagogical implications adduced above for pre-service teachers.