The Associate in Arts Degree in Black Studies is intended to provide students with a comparative, trans-disciplinary, multisectoral, and multidimensional analysis of the experiences of persons of African descent in the United States. Students will analyze issues relating to the African/ Black American community while developing a critical understanding of American society’s African/Black American communities. Students study the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical narrative of African/Black American communities in the United States to critically analyze issues distinct to race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, and/or age while developing a consciousness of the cultural pluralism in American society.

This degree’s primary purpose is to present the African/Black American narrative due to being excluded from the overall American experience, American identity, and American definition. The degree provides insight into how African/Black American endured the “American Experience” based on hierarchy, oppression, racialization, ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism, and White supremacy and their continued resistance, social justice, liberation, progression, evolution, healing, resiliency, emphasizing
agency and self-affirmation.

Learning Outcome(s):

🗸 Students will apply a trans-disciplinary approach to the study of African/Black Americans.

🗸 Students shall analyze and evaluate the social, cultural, and political concepts central to the experiences of African/Black Americans.

🗸 Students will assess the historical, literary, and artistic contributions of African/Black Americans to American society and culture.

🗸 Students shall compare and contrast the various approaches and methodologies employed to study the experiences of African/Black Americans.

🗸 Students will analyze the concepts of economic empowerment and self-determination in relation to the African/Black American
community.

🗸 Students shall analyze the impact of public policy on the African/Black American family, past and present.

🗸 Students will examine trends in the organization of Black Studies, patterns in courses on the Black experience, African American Studies, the African American experience, issues of Afro-centricity, Africology, Black Power, et cetera.

🗸 Students shall develop and foster research techniques founded on anti-oppressive, anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-suppressive, and anti-repressive methodologies for participatory research within the African/Black American communities.

🗸 Students will actively engage with anti-oppressive, anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-suppressive, anti-repressive, self-determination, liberation, decolonization, sovereignty, and resiliency issues to create practices and movements founded on these ideals within the African/ Black American communities.

🗸 Students shall develop an awareness of resistance, social justice, liberation, progression, evolution, healing, and resiliency, emphasizing agency, and self-affirmation.