PERSPECTIVErnCaliban in the Classroomrnby Thomas FlemingrnWhat do black Americans think of whites? Wliat do theyrnwant from them? I’he questions are almost as bafflingrnas “What do women want?”—the question we raised a fewrnmonths ago. After years of living with the men and women wernused to call colored people, working with them and callingrnsome of them friends, I got mv first real clue in the late 1970’s,rnwhen I was teaching a Western Civ class at a black college. Thernsyllabus required me to spend several weeks on The iempest,rnand I was understandably nervous in discussing a play in whichrna ‘oung black male is condemned to slaver for trving to rapernthe daughter of his white benefactor. (I argued, without convincingrnanyone, that Caliban was supposed to be an Indian.)rnAs a Ludditc I was inclined to make light of Prospero’s magicalrngifts, and trving to ingratiate m’sclf with students whom Irngenuinely liked, I pointed out that scientific progress was notrneverything, that Western man might use technology to gain thernwhole world but only at the risk of losing his immortal soul.rnRinging the changes on the leftist cliche that ” They can put arnman on the moon, but they can’t. . . ,” I noticed some of thernstudents getting agitated. When I asked what the trouble was,rna nice young man erupted: “Man, you don’t believe that s-trnabout the moon landing, do you? ” lie went on to explain thatrnthe whole space program was done with trick photography, “lbrnmake us feel small ’cause we ain’t never put nobody on thernmoon.” Unable to grasp his point, I hastened to explain that Irnopposed the moon landing, thought of it as a desecration,rnwhen others in the class joined in and declared that most technologyrnwas a hoax or had really been invented by blacks andrnthen stolen by whites. Incredulously, I asked the students,rnsome of whom were bright and hardworking, how many ofrnthem believed that the moon landing was just a trick. All handsrnwent up. For just a moment I felt like the young professor atrnthe end of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: “I think I’m beginningrnto understand this now,” he says, realizing that everythingrnhe thought he had learned of Ceorge and Martha’s life story isrnalmost entirely false.rnIt is onlv one little experience, admittedly, at an undistinguishedrnblack school, where the students were mostly parttime.rnEven kids who might not swallow the conspiracy theoryrnwere under a social pressure to side with their group against anrnalien. But in the years since, hearing “Dr.” Bill Cosby (a bogusrndoctorate from an infamous program that gives credit for lifernexperience) and other successful blacks expressing similar sentiments,rnI have come to believe that Afroeentrism, so far fromrnbeing an eccentricitv, virtually defines the perspective of blackrnAmericans at eer’ level in socictv. Not long after my first exposurernto (literally) this lunacy, I was teaching a I ,atin class at arnformerly all-white college (desegregated less than 20 years earlier).rnSeveral of my black middle-class students informed mernthat I lannibal was “a brother,” although the only evidence thcvrncould cite was a Budvciscr poster in a series called “BlackrnPrinces of Africa.” Cleopatra and St. yVugustinc were alsornblack, and nothing I said could change their minds. The rcalK’rnstunning part was the insistence that all Western culture camernfrom Babylon, the first great black ci’ilization. I got so sick ofrnhearing about the black Babylon—and where they got thisrnfrom I shall never know—that I told one student cither to sliutrnup or leave the class. He left.rnNone of this should hae come as a surprise. Pan-Africanistsrnand black nationalists had been talking about the black originsrnof civilization throughout the eenturv. In her autobiographvrnDust Tracks on a Road (1942), Zora Ncalc Ilurston recountsrnthe standard “great speech” she had been hearing all her life;rnNegroes were the bravest men on earth, facing every dangerrnlike lions, and fighting with demons. We must rememberrnwith pride that the first blood spilled for AmericanrnIndependence was that of the daring CrisjjusrnAttucks, a Negro who had bared his black breast to thernbullets of the British trants at Boston…. It was a Negrornnamed Simon who had been the onlv one with enoughrnpity and compassion in his heart to help the Savior bearrnTO/CHRONICLESrnrnrn