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Jack Frawley
Gabrielle Russell
Juanita Sherwood Editors
Cultural Competence
and the Higher
Education Sector
Australian Perspectives,
Policies and Practice
Cultural Competence and the Higher Education
Sector
Jack Frawley Gabrielle Russell
• •
Juanita Sherwood
Editors
Cultural Competence
and the Higher Education
Sector
Australian Perspectives, Policies and Practice
123
Editors
Jack Frawley Gabrielle Russell
National Centre for Cultural Competence National Centre for Cultural Competence
The University of Sydney The University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia Sydney, NSW, Australia
Juanita Sherwood
Faculty of Medicine and Health
The University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Preface
Acknowledgements The editors acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Custodians of the
lands where Australian universities now stand and the contribution they make to higher education.
The editors wish to thank the many contributors to this book, including the authors and
peer-reviewers and, especially, the staff of the National Centre for Cultural Competence and On
Time Typing.
v
Contents
Part I Introduction
1 Cultural Competence and the Higher Education Sector:
A Journey in the Academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Jack Frawley, Gabrielle Russell, and Juanita Sherwood
Part II Perspectives
2 The “Culture” in Cultural Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Michael Davis
3 Reflecting on a Way of Being: Anchor Principles
of Cultural Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Gabrielle Russell
4 Locating Human Rights in the Cultural Competence Context . . . . 43
Michael Johnston
5 On the Critical, Morally Driven, Self-reflective Agents of Change
and Transformation: A Literature Review on Culturally
Competent Leadership in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Alessandra Pecci, Jack Frawley, and Tran Nguyen
6 Beliefs, Events and Values Inventory Assessment of Global
Identity: Implications and Applications for International,
Cross-Cultural and Transformative Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Felix Wang, Kathleen Pait, Kris Acheson, Lee Sternberger,
Renee Staton, and Craig N. Shealy
vii
viii Contents
Part V Conclusion
19 Future Directions: Cultural Competence and the Higher
Education Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Jack Frawley, Gabrielle Russell, and Juanita Sherwood
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Editors and Contributors
Jack Frawley has a national and international profile as researcher, writer, and
educator in the areas of intercultural studies, education, history, leadership studies,
and the arts. He has worked extensively as a consultant for program evaluation,
research, and education-related projects, in Australian Aboriginal communities as
well as in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, especially in Cambodia.
Gabrielle Russell is the Acting Director of the National Centre for Cultural
Competence, The University of Sydney. Her diverse experience has been gained
working in non-government organisations, politics, business, church organisations,
and higher education. She is particularly interested in how to develop cultural
competence from a non-Indigenous perspective and, in particular, how to facilitate a
deeper understanding of transformative ways to learn and work together.
Gabrielle’s teaching and research interests include race and racism, critical peda-
gogies, service learning, and cultural competence.
Juanita Sherwood is a Wiradjuri woman from New South Wales. She has over 25
years of experience in Indigenous health and education, community-based research
methodologies, and decolonisation strategies that improve health and healing out-
comes for Indigenous people. She is currently the Associate Dean (Indigenous) for
the Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney.
Contributors
xi
xii Editors and Contributors
xv
xvi List of Figures
xvii
Part I
Introduction
Chapter 1
Cultural Competence and the Higher
Education Sector: A Journey
in the Academy
Introduction
widely cited in scholarship is provided by Cross et al. (1989, p. iv) who define cultural
competence as “a set of congruent behaviours, attitudes, and policies that come
together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency,
or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations”. Cross et al.
(1989) emphasise that while identifying a commitment to improving cultural compe-
tence at the organisational level is an “ambitious journey”, the process should not be
seen as a hindrance to a system. In their view, a culturally competent system would
value diversity; have the capacity for individuals and systems to be able to under-
take cultural self-assessment; be conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures
interact; have institutionalised cultural knowledge; and have developed adaptations
to diversity (Cross et al., p. v).
Critical engagement with the existing field of scholarship provides a valuable place
from which to understand what is meant by “cultural competence” in both theoretical
and practical terms. Frisby and O’Donohue (2018) recommend that cultural compe-
tence be viewed rationally and critically rather than dogmatically, unthinkingly and
blindly. Likewise, Palmer and Carter (2014) suggest that cultural competence is
an ongoing work and is a process not an end-state, with a lifelong commitment to
self-critique and reflection. Clutton (2017) believes that the language of “cultural
competence” is unhelpful because it focuses on culture as ethnicity and that it is time
to shift language to “contextual sensitivity” for the heightened awareness of citizens,
as individuals shaped by their histories, socialisation, life experiences and current
institutional structures (Clutton, 2017, p. vii).
Cultural competence in an Indigenous Australian context is, in the most part,
informed by the constructs of knowing, being and doing (Martin, 2003). “Know-
ing” is about “knowing and understanding history, culture, customs and beliefs”;
“being” is about “awareness, authenticity and openness to examining one’s own
values and beliefs”; and “doing” is “culturally appropriate action and behaviour”. To
develop cultural capabilities requires “continuous development and practice in all
three domains, a continuous process of learning” (CoA, 2015, p. 3).
Due to Indigenous people having been treated by most government systems as
second-class citizens, there has been a lack of equitable service provision in the
areas of health and education. This has had long-lasting implications and resulted
in inequitable opportunities. Cultural competence is viewed as both a philosoph-
ical rights-based model and a pedagogical approach to improve the knowledge of
providers in the areas of law, health, education, housing and welfare; and to reduce
unconscious bias in order to enhance Indigenous people equitable access to the basic
services all other Australians enjoy.
Background
In 2014, the University of Sydney established the National Centre for Cultural
Competence (NCCC) to become a thought leader in cultural competence philosophy,
praxis, process and methods. Since then, NCCC has contributed, through a variety
1 Cultural Competence and the Higher Education Sector … 5
of Indigenous Australian peoples … [and] the ability to critically reflect on one’s own culture
and professional paradigms in order to understand its cultural limitations and effect positive
change. (p. 3)
Perspectives
The concept of culture is a useful starting point; however, like cultural competence,
it is a concept that resists definition. Given that the concept of culture cannot be
easily grasped in that it is forever changing, it should also present challenges when
being measured in unidimensional or face valid terms (see Wang et al., this volume).
Nevertheless, exploring the concept of culture can provide the basis for considering
the way culture is used in cultural competence. It is also useful to consider how the
words “culture” and “cultures” are used in terms such as “workplace culture” and
“organisational culture” and in regard to institutional racism; and that cross-cutting
the concept of cultural competence are interrelated concepts such as IKs, racism and
leadership.
Indigenous Knowledges in higher education should traverse the disciplines and
extend beyond Indigenous perspectives to one in which the “discipline areas may
themselves be challenged” (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 33). Parent (2014) states that IKs:
encompass the technological, social, economic, philosophical, spiritual, educational, legal
and governmental elements of particular Indigenous cultures throughout the world. As
Indigenous Knowledges are context-specific and interwoven within a given community’s
lived experience, they are dynamic and ever-changing to reflect environmental and social
adaptations. Indigenous Knowledges are therefore not a singular body of knowledge but are
1 Cultural Competence and the Higher Education Sector … 7
multi-dimensional and pluralistic in that they contain many layers of being, knowing, and
modes of expression. (p. 59)
Policies
In 2011, UA, the peak body of the university sector that represents all Australian
universities and develops policy positions on higher education matters, published the
Guiding Principles for Developing Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian
Universities (UA, 2011) which recommends that “all graduates of Australian
universities should be culturally competent” (p. 7).
Universities Australia (2011) proposes incorporating IKs and perspectives into
all university curricula to provide learners with the understanding, abilities and
behaviours that underpin Indigenous cultural competence. UA acknowledges that
this requires the involvement of Indigenous people at all levels of higher education
governance and management, teaching, research, and community engagement and
8 J. Frawley et al.
Programmes
Conclusion
References
Acton, R., Salter, P., Lenoy, M., & Stevenson, R. (2017). Conversations on cultural sustainability:
Stimuli for embedding Indigenous knowledges and ways of being into curriculum. Higher
Education Research & Development, 1–15.
Bradley, D., Noonan, P., Nugent, H., & Scales, B. (2008). Review of Australian higher education:
Final report. Canberra: AGPS.
Clutton, C. S. (2017). One size fits few: From cultural incompetence to contextual sensitivity in
health policy development in Australia and Canada. (Unpublished doctoral thesis), Australian
National University, Canberra.
Commonwealth of Australia. (2015). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Capability
Framework.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1988). Race, reform, and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation in
antidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1331–1387. https://doi.org/10.2307/134
1398
Cross, T. L., Bazron, B. J., Dennis, K. W. & Isaacs, M. R. (1989). Towards a culturally competent
system of care: a monograph on effective services for minority children who are severely emotion-
ally disturbed. Washington, DC: Child and Adolescent Service System Program Technical
Assistance Center, Georgetown University Child Development Center.
Frawley, J. (2017). Indigenous Knowledges, graduate attributes and recognition of prior learning
for advanced standing: Tensions within the academy. In J. Frawley, S. Larkin, & J. A. Smith,
(Eds.), Indigenous Pathways and Transitions into Higher Education: From Policy to Practice.
Singapore: Springer Open.
Frawley, J., Larkin, S. & Smith, J. A. (2017). Indigenous pathways and transitions into higher
education: An introduction. In J. Frawley, S. Larkin & J. A. Smith, (Eds.), Indigenous Pathways
and Transitions into Higher Education: From Policy to Practice. Singapore: Springer Open.
10 J. Frawley et al.
Jack Frawley has a national and international profile as researcher, writer, and educator in the
areas of intercultural studies, education, history, leadership studies, and the arts. He has worked
extensively as a consultant for program evaluation, research, and education-related projects, in
Australian Aboriginal communities as well as in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, especially
in Cambodia.
Gabrielle Russell is the Acting Director of the National Centre for Cultural Competence, The
University of Sydney. Her diverse experience has been gained working in non-government organ-
isations, politics, business, church organisations, and higher education. She is particularly inter-
ested in how to develop cultural competence from a non-Indigenous perspective and, in partic-
ular, how to facilitate a deeper understanding of transformative ways to learn and work together.
Gabrielle’s teaching and research interests include race and racism, critical pedagogies, service
learning, and cultural competence.
Juanita Sherwood is a Wiradjuri woman from New South Wales. She has over 25 years of
experience in Indigenous health and education, community-based research methodologies, and
decolonisation strategies that improve health and healing outcomes for Indigenous people. She is
currently the Associate Dean (Indigenous) for the Faculty of Medicine & Health at The University
of Sydney.
1 Cultural Competence and the Higher Education Sector … 11
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
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adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
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The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
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statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.
Part II
Perspectives
This part provides a range of perspectives on the concept of cultural competence. The
idea that “culture” is a dynamic, creative and transformative concept is explored by
Michael Davis who suggests that this perspective can provide the basis for consider-
ing how “culture” is used in “cultural competence”. Davis argues that it is essential to
re-theorise the concept of culture as dynamic and creative when considering its role in
the field of cultural competence. Gabrielle Russell suggests that essential to cultural
competence development is critical self-reflective practice. To highlight this, Rus-
sell reflects on her own cultural competence journey by exploring four key aspects
of her worldview which she identifies as social justice, knowing self, re-storying
and action. Michael Johnston believes that the development and implementation
of cultural competence in Australian higher education raise significant questions
relating to the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. Johnston affirms Indigenous
sovereignty as being a central aspect to cultural competence in Australian higher edu-
cation and argues that it remains neglected. Alessandra Pecci Jack Frawley and Tran
Nguyenprovide a review of the literature that charts cultural competence theoretical
concepts and discourse, as well as pedagogical trends and leadership initiatives in
the higher education sector. The review reveals a corpus of national and international
pedagogical praxis which they believe could guide and inform culturally compe-
tent leadership initiativesin higher education. Felix Wangand colleagues report on
research that accessed a sample of data collected using the Beliefs, Events, and Values
Inventory (BEVI). The research examined global identity development in the context
of internationalised educational experiences. Their research findings, they conclude,
could inform best practices in culturally competent pedagogies and programs that
seek to promote international, multicultural and transformational learning, growth
and development.
Chapter 2
The “Culture” in Cultural Competence
Michael Davis
Introduction
M. Davis (B)
National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
e-mail: m.davis@anu.edu.au
In early formulations, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the culture
concept was closely associated with and employed in, the classification and formation
of hierarchies, of peoples in a matrix of colonialist/ethnological discourses. In this
historical sense, the notion of culture had racialised connotations and was employed
as a marker to establish or reaffirm superiority or dominance of one culture over
another, based on presumed racial or biological characteristics (Billington et al.,
1991, pp. 82–84). It is in this context that the culture concept has been one of the
cogs in the machinery of oppressive colonial regimes. In recent decades, however,
and with the “cultural turn,” there have been transformations in the use of the culture
concept, as it is harnessed by groups and peoples to establish, reaffirm and celebrate
their cultural identity and difference. This aspect as it relates to Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples is discussed below.
Despite a turn towards more pluralised usages, there has persisted an essentialised
discourse on culture that reifies a people as having a fixed “culture”. These essen-
tialist discourses often find expression in references to a group of people, a nation
or an ethnic or language group in formulations such as “The Nuer,” “The Inuit”
or “The Aborigines,” implying that those peoples are a homogeneous entity, and
obscuring, or denying, diversity within a cultural group. These also appear occasion-
ally, in Australian public discourses, use of the possessive noun in paternalistic ways,
in phrases such as “Our Aborigines,” “Our Indigenous Australians,” and the like.
However, despite the persistence of these essentialising tropes, the historical trajec-
tory of the concept of culture has seen major shifts from evolutionary, classificatory,
hierarchical and totalising views, to views that allow for difference and diversity. As
McGrane remarks, “our contemporary experience of ‘culture’ as the universal ground
and horizon of difference marks a rupture with the nineteenth-century concept of
culture” (McGrane, 1989, p. 113). He explains that “the emergence of the concept of
“culture” has made possible the democratization of difference (perhaps, in one sense,
“culture” is the radical democratization of difference)” (McGrane, 1989, p. 114). In
his reference here to the nineteenth-century concept of culture, McGrane is pointing
particularly to the work of E. B. Tylor, considered one of anthropology’s founding
“fathers”. Tylor conceived of culture in his 1871 work Primitive Culture as a “com-
plex whole” that includes “knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Eagleton, 2000,
p. 34, citing Tylor, 1871). Tylor’s now outmoded concept of culture has been the
subject of extensive debate and discussion for a long time. One critique by Stocking
draws attention to the flaws in Tylor’s notion of culture in the context of present-day
usages:
Tylor’s actual usage of the term “culture” lacked a number of the features commonly asso-
ciated with the modern anthropological concept: historicity, integration, behavioural deter-
minism, relativity, and—most symptomatically—plurality. (Stocking, 1987, pp. 302–303)
2 The “Culture” in Cultural Competence 17
The transformations in the idea of culture, from the totalising Tylorean formu-
lations to the more dynamic and open-ended ones, are not without their tensions.
A shift towards a more fluid and processual notion of culture has rattled age-old
canons of thought that are founded on certainty, homogeneity and fixity. This is
sometimes observed in current contexts of destabilising discourses on contested
issues—such as identity, difference, migration, nationhood and citizenship—where
culture has assumed a greater focus for anxiety (Grillo, 2003; Stolcke, 1995). In these
scenarios, culture has become, or perhaps has re-emerged, as a fulcrum for often
tense and sometimes divisive public debates and discussions around such notions as
“multiculturalism”, “ethnicity” and “belonging”.
But this is not new; humans have always invoked the idea of culture, whether
it is to assert national sentiments, proclaim and strengthen ethnic and Indigenous
identities, appeal to ancient and enduring traditions, or establish markers of status or
difference. Culture has continually been invented, reinvented, created or refashioned,
in countercurrent to its persistence as a reified or essentialised entity. A question now
is the idea of culture as “a system of belief grounded in a conception of human beings
as cultural (and under certain conditions territorial and national) subjects, i.e. bearers
of a culture, located within a boundaried world, which defines and differentiates them
from others” (Grillo, 2003, p. 158, original emphasis). In today’s increasingly fluid
and mobile world, these fixities are becoming less relevant or appropriate. In this
regard, Grillo identifies a problem with the notion that “a specific culture defines a
people” (2003, p. 159, original emphasis). Against this essentialist view, he suggests,
is one that sees “cultures and communities” as “constructed, dialectically from above
and below, and in constant flux” (Grillo, 2003, p. 160). In a growing multicultural
world, Grillo asserts, “the emphasis is on multiple identities or identifications whose
form and content are continuously being negotiated” (2003, p. 160).
Another aspect of the changing discourses on the culture concept is related to
the way it is constructed in historical, particularistic and situational settings. One
writer cautions against what he refers to as a “culturalist” approach, a “reduction of
social and historical questions to abstract questions of culture.” As “culture” in this
view becomes devoid of all historical and situational contexts, it can contribute to
“legitimizing hegemonic relations of exploitation and oppression within societies”
(Dirlik, 1987, p. 17). This notion of the role of the culture concept in oppressive
colonial regimes is supported by looking to some of the word’s etymological roots,
which point to its associations with colonialism. As Eagleton points out, “its meaning
as inhabit has evolved from the Latin colonus to the contemporary colonialism”
(Eagleton, 2000, p. 2). Yet, again showing the slipperiness of the term, “culture” is
also derived from Latin words associated with the idea of “cultivation”, “caring”,
and “tending to”—notions that are more relevant to the kinds of “cultures of care”
that are one of the central planks of cultural competence. In these latter contexts,
in its more positive and benign usages, rather than culture being “used to justify
Western hegemony over the non-West”, if, in Dirlik’s argument, culture is regarded
as a “way of seeing”, and as a “way of making the world”, then this “offers the
possibility of a truly liberating practice” (Dirlik, 1987, p. 49). The potential for
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to see the handsome editor-in-chief. But Max Eastman was seldom
in the office. He usually came in when it was nearly time to make up
the magazine for publication. Then he worked quickly with devilish
energy, sifting and scrapping material, titling articles and pictures.
And the magazine was always out on time. Eastman had a lazy
manner and there was a general idea (which apparently pleased
him) that he was more of a playboy than a worker. But he was really
a very hard and meticulous worker. I know of no other writer who
works so sternly and carefully, rewriting, chiseling and polishing his
phrases.
There were amusing incidents. One day a wild blonde of unkempt
frizzly hair dashed into the office and declared she had an urgent
desire to see Max Eastman. We said he wasn't there, but she
wouldn't believe us. So she went hunting all over the building,
upstairs and downstairs, opening every door and peeping behind
them and even into drawers. Finally she invaded the washroom, and
when she left she locked it up and carried away the key.
But we had more composed visitors, also. Crystal Eastman brought
Clare Sheridan. They were a striking pair to look at. Two strapping
representatives of the best of the American and English types. They
were interesting to contrast, the one embodying in her personality
that daring freedom of thought and action—all that was
fundamentally fine, noble and genuine in American democracy; the
other a symbol of British aristocracy, a little confused by the surging
movement of new social forces, but sincerely trying to understand.
In 1920 Clare Sheridan had accompanied Kamenev, the Bolshevik
emissary in London, to Russia. She was the first woman of the
British aristocracy to visit that country after the revolution. She had
published a series of articles from her diary in the London Times. I
had read them eagerly, for they were like a romance, while I was in
London. Her incisive etchings of the Bolshevik leaders stuck in my
memory. She had summed up Zinoviev, "fussy and impatient, with
the mouth of a petulant woman," and when I went to Russia and met
Zinoviev, each time I heard him prate in his unpleasant falsetto
voice, I thought of Clare Sheridan's deft drawing of him.
Clare Sheridan had a handsome, intelligent and arrogant face. She
was curious about The Liberator, its staff and contributors and free
radical bohemian atmosphere. I asked her why a similar magazine
could not exist in London with the same free and easy intercourse
between people of different classes and races. She said that social
conditions and traditions in London were so different. And I knew
from experience that she was telling me the truth. (She did not know
that I had recently returned from London.)
She said that she would like to sculpt my head. But she never got
around to it. Instead she wrote in her American Diary (after seeing
The Emperor Jones with Crystal Eastman, Ernestine Evans, et al.): "I
see the Negro in a new light. He used to be rather repulsive to me,
but obviously he is human, has been very badly treated.... It must be
humiliating to an educated colored man that he may not walk down
the street with a white woman, nor dine in a restaurant with her.... I
wonder about the psychology of the colored man, like the poet,
McKay, who came to see me a few days ago and who is as delightful
to talk to as any man one could meet...."
Unexpectedly, Elinor Wylie was ushered into my little office one
afternoon. She was accompanied by her sister and I rushed out to
find an extra chair. Mrs. Wylie's eyes were flaming and I was so
startled by her enigmatic beauty and Park Avenue elegance that I
was dumb with confusion. She tried to make me feel easy, but I was
as nervous as a wild cat caught indoors. I knew very little about her,
except that she had published a little book of verse. I had read some
of her pieces in The New Republic, and I remembered one
memorable thing called, "The Lion and the Lamb," which was
infused with a Blakelike imagery and beauty. She promised to send
The Liberator a poem, but I don't think she ever did. Perhaps I did
not show enough enthusiasm. I had no idea, at the time, that I was
speaking to one of the few great women poets of the English
language.
I always felt that the real object of these visits was Max Eastman,
who was an ikon for the radical women. And so I acted like a black
page, listening a lot and saying very little, but gratefully
acknowledging all the gifts of gracious words that were offered to
The Liberator.
Lewis Gannett called one day and invited me to lunch with Carl Van
Doren, somewhere down around Park Row. Mr. Van Doren was then
one of the editors of The Nation. He did most of the talking. He was
very practical-minded in the pleasant canny Yankee way. For one
who was a college professor he was remarkably well informed about
the different phases of American social and industrial life. He said
that the Italians and the Negroes were interesting to him as the two
most special groups of workers in America. He considered the
Italians a hardier and a harder-working group. His idea was thought-
provoking and I was struck by the comparison he made between
Italians and Negroes. It was fresh and novel, especially as Negroes
themselves generally compare their status with that of the Jews. I
thought myself that the comparison frequently made between the
Jewish group and the Negro group was mainly psychological, while
the point that Mr. Van Doren scored was sociological.
One day I had sorted and read until my brain was fagged and I
hadn't found a single startling line. Then I picked up a thin sheaf and
discovered some verses which stimulated me like an elixir. They
were mostly sonnets, a little modernistic, without capitals, a little
voluptuous, yet restrained and strangely precise, with a flavor of
Latin eroticism and decadence. They were signed, E.E. Cummings.
I didn't know anything about the author, but I wrote a note asking him
to come in and see Max Eastman. He dropped by one day, a
stripling in a fawn-colored suit and resembling a fawn, with his head
cocked up to one side and a smile which looked like a curiously-
wrought icicle.
Max Eastman was not in. He had not been in the office since I had
written to the author, nor had he seen the poems. So I talked to
Cummings and dared to argue with him about a couple of the
sonnets. I was particularly excited by one called "Maison." It created
something like an exquisite miniature palace of Chinese porcelain.
The palace was so real that it rose up out of the page, but the author
had also placed in it a little egg so rotten that you could smell it. I
argued about that egg, but Cummings said that that was exactly
what he wanted to do. I understood and apologized.
I wanted to make a spread of the verses in The Liberator, but Robert
Minor was substituting as editor-in-chief that month and he had a
violent reaction against the verses. I remember Minor's saying to me
that if I liked such poems I was more of a decadent than a social
revolutionist. I protested that the verses were poetry, and that in any
work of art my natural reaction was more for its intrinsic beauty than
for its social significance. I said that my social sentiments were
strong, definite and radical, but that I kept them separate from my
esthetic emotions, for the two were different and should not be mixed
up.
Robert Minor said he could not visualize me as a real Negro. He
thought of a Negro as of a rugged tree in the forest. Perhaps Minor
had had Negro playmates like that in Texas and he could not
imagine any other type. Minor himself always gave me the
impression of a powerful creature of the jungle. His personality
seemed to exude a kind of blind elemental brute force. He appeared
to me like a reincarnation of Richard Cœur de Lion—a warrior who
had found the revolutionary road to heaven and who would
annihilate even the glorious ineffectual angels if he found them
drifted and stranded on his warpath.
I kept the Cummings verses for the following month when the
editorship was resumed by Max Eastman. Eastman recognized their
distinctive quality, but not in my enthusiastic way. So we didn't make
a special spread of them as we often did with unusual verse. We
printed a couple or more—but not very prominently.
The delirious verses of the Baroness Von Freytag Loringhoven
titillated me even as did her crazy personality. She was a constant
visitor to see me, always gaudily accoutred in rainbow raiment,
festooned with barbaric beads and spangles and bangles, and toting
along her inevitable poodle in gilded harness. She had such a
precious way of petting the poodle with a slap and ejaculating,
"Hund-bitch!"
She was a model, and in marvelous German-English she said: "Mein
features not same, schön, but mein back, gut. The artists love to
paint it." The Baroness's back was indeed a natural work of art.
One day she entertained me by reading, in her masculine throaty
voice, a poem she called "Dornröschen":
Stab for me
lip set intensity.
press to my bower—
my nook, my core
I wait for thee
numb breathlessly
messir
since yore....
I liked the thing so much, I appropriated it for The Liberator. Down in
Greenwich Village they made a joke of the Baroness, even the
radicals. Some did not believe that she was an authentic baroness,
listed in Gotha. As if that really mattered, when she acted the part so
magnificently. Yet she was really titled, although she was a working
woman. The ultra-moderns of the Village used to mock at the
baroness's painted finger nails. Today all American women are
wearing painted finger nails.
How shockingly sad it was to meet Frau Freytag a few years later in
the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin, a shabby wretched female selling
newspapers, stripped of all the rococo richness of her clothes, her
speech, her personality. She went from Berlin to Paris and death.
Poor brave Baroness von Freytag Loringhoven.
X
A Brown Dove Cooing
THE LIBERATOR staff had an extra extraordinary moment one
afternoon when Max Eastman walked in with Charlie Chaplin. The
great little man gave his hand to all of us and touched our hearts.
And after looking over the place he perched like a Puck atop of a
desk.
Chaplin informed me that he liked some of my poems which had
appeared in The Liberator. I was glad, and gave him a copy of
Spring in New Hampshire. In his book, My Trip Abroad, he put this
one, "The Tropics in New York":
Bananas ripe and green and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at country fairs.
XI
A Look at H.G. Wells
WHEN H.G. Wells came over here to the Naval Conference as a
star reporter for the liberal New York World and the neo-Tory London
Daily Mail, his restless curiosity urged him to find time from his
preoccupation with high international politics to bestow a little
attention on The Liberator. Max Eastman had him to dinner at his
home in Greenwich Village, and later there was an informal
reception for the Liberator staff and collaborators.
I had stumbled upon Wells at about the same time that I began
reading Bernard Shaw. While I admired Shaw for the hammering
logic of his prefaces and his sparkling wit, I liked in H.G. Wells those
qualities I like in Dickens—the sentimental serving of his characters
with a vast sauce of provincial humor.
During my residence in London I had followed Wells's popular
Outline of History as it appeared in instalments, and upon returning
to America I read in the published volume the instalments that I had
missed.
If it is worth recording, I may say here that I took a violent prejudice
against Mr. Wells's History. I felt something flippant in the style and I
did not like Mr. Wells's attitude toward colored people in general and
Africa and Negroes in particular. In the League of Free Nations book
he put out in 1918 he said: "Africa is the great source upon which
our modern comforts and conveniences depend.... The most obvious
danger of Africa is the militarization of the black.... The Negro makes
a good soldier, he is hardy, he stands the sea and he stands the
cold...."
I suppose the average white reader will exclaim: "And what's wrong
with that? It is wise and sane and humanitarian." But he should
remember that I am Negro and think that the greatest danger of
Africa is not the militarization of the black, but the ruthless
exploitation of the African by the European. There is also something
to be said in favor of native comforts and conveniences. Before the
arrival of the European with gunpowder the African was accustomed
to protecting his rights with arrow and spear. Now, against modern
civilization, he must needs learn the use of modern methods and
weapons. The liberal apologists of the European grip on Africa may
be very unctious and sentimental about native rights. But the
conditions indicate that if the natives must survive, they must
themselves learn and practice the art of self-protection.
Mr. Wells always seems to be shouting about his unusually scientific
mind. Yet I must confess that I was shocked by the plan of his large
tome outlining world history. Because it appears there as if Africa
and Africans have not been of enormous importance in world history.
Mr. Wells mentions Africa in his language-formation section and
leaves Africa there as if nothing more developed. One learns more of
Africa from earlier historians than Mr. Wells, who did not know so
much about science. Herodotus gives us some remarkable
information that he acquired by traveling four hundred years before
Jesus Christ. And Ptolemy, the Egyptian geographer, has rendered a
remarkable description of Central Africa in the second century after
Christ, although I learned as a school boy that it was discovered by
David Livingstone. And as late as the fifteenth century, in the high
tide of the European renaissance, Leo the African adventured below
the Sahara to give the world historical facts about the Negro nations.
Mr. Wells gives a large outline of the nations of Europe and a not-so-
large one of the nations of Asia. He makes no mention of the great
Negro nations of Western Africa and the Western Sudan before and
after the Moslem invasion; of the Negroid nations of Songhoy and
Ghana, Fezzan and Timbuctu, Yoruba and Benin, Ashanti and
Dahomey, which were arrested in their growth and finally annihilated
by the slave traffic and European imperialism, nor of the Senegalese
who played a dominant part in the history of Morocco and the
conquest of Spain.
Yes indeed, Africa and its blacks are of foundational importance in
the history of the world, ancient and modern, and in the creating of
European civilization. However, Mr. Wells's ignoring of the African
civilizations in his Outline of History may be deliberate. In his
marvelous World of William Clissold, he speculates whether the
Negro could participate in "common citizenship in a world republic."
Says he: "The Negro is the hardest case ... yet ... in the eighteenth
century he was the backbone of the British navy...." It is entirely too
funny to think—seven years after the appallingly beastly modern
white savagery of 1914-18—of Mr. Wells naïvely wondering whether
the Negro is capable of becoming a civilized citizen of a world
republic. He cites the precedent of Negroes in his British navy. He