Methods Exercise 1: Identifying and Assessing Sources
In Palmer’s The Methodology of Black Studies, many of the sources are utilized to support his thesis that the field of Black Studies did not simply come into being when it was introduced into the nations universities in the 1960s, but had, in fact, been evolving in different forms since the early ninetieth century. To do this, within the article itself, Palmer uses excerpts from journal articles, newspapers, opinion pieces, edited books and research studies to illustrate the ways in which black people were already thinking about themselves, their history and their then current situations.
Palmer found it equally important, however, to present the historical backdrop upon which these advancements were being made. Using many of the same kinds of sources, that is, edited, books, studies, newspaper articles, and historical documents, he presents the way black people were seen and regarded in these different moments in history and how, in many cases, these negative opinions motivated the scholars of the times to assert their humanity and declare the importance of their history. I found that palmer used his references very efficiently in that respect because he made it clear that while these early writings didn’t constitute black studies per se, they were the building blocks for what we currently know the field to be. The connections are there in the article but in case we need or want more information about a particular piece of the puzzle, Palmer also directs us to other sources, in chronological order, that might expand our understanding of the progression.
As a journal article, Gordon’s Africana Thought and African Diasporic Studies utilizes endnotes as referencing, which essentially eliminates the sort of in-text guiding and referencing we found in Palmer’s piece. Gordon’s sources are also quite different from Palmers, and much fewer since it is a shorter piece. Gordon’s sources consist of chapters from two larger books, one by himself and another by W.E.B. Du Bois, a Frantz Fanon study, a novel by Richard Wright and two final books, one more philosophical and the other more historical. Gordon’s entire explores what is needed in Africana Thought and the obstacles that currently stand in the way of African Diasporic Studies being respected and seen as a legitimate field. While Gordon tackles very interesting points, like the widespread and very damaging idea that black people offer experience while white people offer theory or other different binaries that keep black studies from crossing over into the realm of respected theoretical academia, I think he spends more time musing over it for himself and subsequently presenting it to us than he does utilizing his sources to get his thesis across. They were more like embellishments to his already thought-out argument; therefore I much prefer Palmer’s use of his sources, despite the number of them.
Finally, Riviere’s Toward an Afrocentric Research Methodology reads very much like an essay with its use of in-text referencing. She has a core group of sources that she references several times within the paper as well as a few others that serve to really hammer in a few distinct points or to express the problematic nature of current Eurocentric research as apposed to her proposed Afrocentric methodology. Most of her sources are either entire books or journal articles and hail primarily from the late 20th century. While the essay itself is a bit repetitive in the points it makes, Riviere uses were sources very effectively in addressing every aspect of Afrocentric methodology. Her use of sources is similar to Palmer’s in that she immediately discloses where the reader might find further information about a particular point, which I find helpful and reassuring. It shows that she clearly understands which sources support every claim she is making and certainly gives credibility to her essay as a whole. To me, she may have been the most effective in using her sources, albeit the literature on Afrocentric methodology is quite limited and possibly easier to shift through and present than the broader themes of black studies and Africana thought.
To my knowledge, general reference is one from a more general source, such as a dictionary, encyclopedia, newspaper, statistical data or the like. Substantive references would be much more specialized, like Academic journals or books. They were written to include information about a specific subject and have a particular idea or thesis that they want to present. Most of the references used in these texts, then, were substantive.