The Southern Black College Student as Adolescent

Fifteen years after the Supreme Court decision of 1954 signalled a new era for the black race in the United States, Sharpley1 surveyed the development of the Afro-American from a psychohistorical perspective and concluded that he is now in a psychosexual stage of development best described as adolescence. Against a background of Eriksonian theory of the eight stages of man,2 Sharpley developed the thesis that until recently slavery and its aftermath have kept the black in America in pre-adolescent stages of development. The initial oral stage of absolute dependency on his provider was slavery itself. During this phase he developed attitudes of trust and mistrust. The reconstruction period provided the setting for the muscular anal stage. His brief period of power and freedom was followed by repression that left him unable to assert his autonomy. Whatever trust he may have developed became mistrust. He learned well to control his aggression and to survive by way of subservience. The next few decades were the equivalent of the genital stage. Some initiative was exercised in the emergence of Negro institutions, efforts to gain education, and limit

Geography · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Psychology