Lindsay Johns, a writer and ?hip hop intellectual,? turns in a keen article in Britain's Prospect magazine. He writes to defend the Western canon and, more specifically, to make the point that the canon is just as relevant to black students as to white. In fact, Johns notes, the canon may be more important to black students. Because ?the overwhelming majority of black thought and literature of the last 400 years, by simple dint of the painful exigencies of human history, is devoted to chronicling man's inhumanity to man,? black pupils who learn only this body of work will have their views needlessly shortened. ?Our perspective is impoverished,? Johns writes, ?if we only seek knowledge from those sharing the same skin colour as ourselves.?
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow