{"id":15744,"date":"2021-01-25T18:34:49","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T18:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=15744"},"modified":"2021-10-01T17:42:51","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T17:42:51","slug":"youve-got-a-chance-to-make-this-country-whole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2021\/01\/youve-got-a-chance-to-make-this-country-whole\/","title":{"rendered":"“You’ve Got a Chance to Make This Country Whole”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tinbete Ermyas \u201908 \/ Photo by David J. Turner<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you speak with former history professor Mahmoud El-Kati, you\u2019ll find yourself needing a pen. He has a book recommendation for almost any topic\u2014and drops references with an ease that can be intimidating. I know this firsthand: When we spoke for this article, he wasted almost no time. \u201cMan\u2019s Most Dangerous Myth<\/em> by Ashley Montagu did a lot for me to understand that race is in fact a myth; it has no scientific basis at all,\u201d he says. \u201cBut a myth can create reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

His deftness is inspiring, but it\u2019s also something more: For generations of Macalester students, especially Black students, it\u2019s been a lifeline. Professor El-Kati introduced them to themselves\u2014through ideas and activism\u2014igniting a kind of self-discovery that\u2019s hard to articulate.<\/p>\n

El-Kati came to Macalester in 1970, in the early days of the college\u2019s Expanded Educational Opportunities (EEO) program. That was a multi-year effort to expand access to Macalester so the campus would be \u201cmore representative of the economic, social, cultural, and racial diversity of the entire nation,\u201d according to the 1968 program proposal.<\/p>\n

It brought scores of students of color from across the country to Macalester each year. The student body quickly diversified\u2014by some estimates, leaping from 2 percent students of color from before the program to 15 percent in 1969, when the first EEO class arrived. \u201cIn the heyday, we had a Hispanic house. We had a Black house. We had a Native American house…We didn\u2019t have one cultural space, we had three,\u201d says Kathleen Pinkett \u201975. \u201cAnd so it was really a community. Because in classes\u2014not all, but some\u2014professors didn\u2019t know quite how to deal with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melvin Collins \u201975 has similar memories, recalling the breadth of diversity among the student body, but also tension. \u201cThere were clearly some people who didn\u2019t feel as comfortable with the presence of students of color on campus,\u201d Collins says. \u201cAnd for us, being on campus was like a culture shock. It was like we existed in two different worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter El-Kati, whose presence on campus also represented a shift of sorts. He began teaching at Macalester through the college\u2019s efforts to recruit faculty from diverse backgrounds, like activism: \u201cThe people who came out of the movement brought, partly, a new set of knowledge from the Black community.\u201d<\/p>\n

That knowledge came from deep ties to the community, which he built over years of activism in the Twin Cities. The bulk of it centered on The Way, a north Minneapolis community center that became a hub of Black activism and thought. It was a physical space, but it was also something more: \u201cWe considered ourselves part of the Black Power Movement, plain and simple,\u201d El-Kati says. \u201cThe Way was a comprehensive movement to make the lives of Black people better.\u201d<\/p>\n

El-Kati ran The Way\u2019s educational programming, which took him all over the region. He was involved in educating school-aged children, university students, and prisoners about African American history, which was itself a radical act: \u201cWe had an unabashed respect for Black people,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were telling the white supremacist doctrine\u2014not the people, but the doctrine\u2014to go to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

El-Kati says this was The Way\u2019s broader mission\u2014addressing all<\/em> the ways in which Black people experience injustice, which meant thinking about the totality of their lives. This ethos\u2014a deep love and appreciation of the African diaspora and dismantling white supremacy\u2014undergirds much of what El-Kati does, which he attributes to his lifelong struggle for Black liberation: \u201cMovements define you; you don\u2019t define movements.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Head and the Heart<\/h2>\n

El-Kati brought to the classroom not just learnedness but passion. What he knew, he learned through struggle, so you could feel something in his courses: \u201cHe was one of those professors where you didn\u2019t want to miss a class, because whether we were discussing a book that we read, or we were just having a conversation, there was always a memorable experience that we would get,\u201d says Matthew Reid \u201901.<\/p>\n

Now an educator himself, Reid is in awe of all the responsibilities El-Kati juggled. \u201cHe taught two courses with us at Macalester, but then he would spend hours also going to teach high school students in north Minneapolis,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI think he had the nickname of the mayor of St. Paul at the time as well. Everybody knew him.\u201d<\/p>\n

That connection\u2014between academics and activism, the head and the heart\u2014comes up a lot for alumni reflecting on his legacy. He was a mentor\u2014an intellectual home that grew into something more.<\/p>\n

In my conversations with alumni, we reminisced about what brought us to Macalester\u2014that critical time in a young person\u2019s life, where you\u2019re thinking about your place in the world. But for Black students, something almost always hung over those questions: What does it mean to become an adult in a country where you\u2019re framed as a problem? Crossing that threshold into adulthood can be especially tricky, and they often had a mountain of questions. El-Kati would help navigate the treacherous terrain.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll individuals are coming into their own in college,\u201d says Collins, \u201cbut there was also a Black, Hispanic, Native American dynamic as well, in terms of how we operate in this environment. El-Kati began to fill in the missing pieces of history. He would always provide us with information, but he also taught us to think critically about what you read because there\u2019s a lot of misinformation out there that fits a white supremacist narrative. And so, he provided texts and perspectives that I found helpful right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reid found that reframing useful, too. \u201cOne day, we talked about lynchings across the South, and El-Kati made a point to say the oldest terrorist organization is the Ku Klux Klan. And some folks in class challenged that. He said, \u2018If you think about it, what did they do? They inflicted terror. They targeted people. They had the power.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Reid says that was radical at the time, but shifted his understanding of how we think about white supremacy. \u201cEven now, when folks talk about the white nationalist movement\u2014that\u2019s terrorism,\u201d he says. \u201cI keep saying\u2014El-Kati, God bless him, has been saying this for 60 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

El-Kati\u2019s classes centered the experiences of people of African descent\u2014and in a way that became a teaching tool itself: \u201cThe American ideology of white supremacy: that\u2019s what we\u2019ve always been fighting,\u201d he says. \u201cWe insisted that the history of African people from the continent to slavery to now be reflected in the curriculum\u2014that\u2019s what the Black Studies movement was about.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Pinkett, that logic meant El-Kati\u2019s lessons were spaces of freedom, equal parts education and self-discovery. \u201cEl-Kati\u2019s classes were my first real history classes on the truth about American history,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you remember American history from 11th grade, you heard about slavery for a hot minute, and that\u2019s it. There was no Black History Month back in the early \u201970s. I felt like I was finally learning about an America that had not been taught before.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this way, unlearning was central to El-Kati\u2019s teaching. He challenged students to not only think<\/em> about how to dismantle white supremacy, but also how to bring that vision to fruition: \u201cHe would introduce us to significant folk in the African American community\u2014people who work for the Urban League or The Way, places where folks could volunteer. He was always about connecting academics to the community. It\u2019s not like we live in isolation,\u201d recalls Collins. \u201cEl-Kati would say you\u2019re going to go to school to have an impact on the community where you live. He was good at exposing us to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in north Minneapolis, Stanley M. Berry \u201975 knew El-Kati at the peak of the professor\u2019s work with The Way. \u201cAs kids, our knowledge of Africa and Africans was rooted in Tarzan movies, and the clownish images of our people in the media and as mascots for products and other entities,\u201d he says. \u201cMahmoud El-Kati was my introduction to Black consciousness along with a kind of self-awareness previously unknown to me and many others in my community.\u201d<\/p>\n

That connection strengthened at Macalester, where El-Kati\u2019s classes helped Berry gain confidence through education that stayed with him: \u201cMahmoud taught us about Africa\u2019s pivotal role in mathematics, science, and governance. By dispelling the negative stereotypes that burdened our healthy development, Mahmoud guided the immeasurable elevation of our self-esteem,\u201d he says. \u201cHe taught me to bring Black awareness and consciousness into all aspects of my personal and professional life.\u201d<\/p>\n

El-Kati not only instilled a sense of duty in his students, he led by example. He says his Macalester colleagues supported his activist work in the community: \u201cThe people in the History Department were really good to me. They said that I could do whatever I want to do, so long as I\u2019m teaching our classes and engaging the students and being of service to the school. I enjoyed my colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n

His time at Macalester wasn\u2019t without tension, however. When we spoke, I asked what it was like when the EEO program was stopped\u2014and with it the large number of students of color who came to campus. It took years for the number of students of color to approach EEO levels again, and the lack of diversity was palpable. At the time, El-Kati says it felt like Black students were expendable, but that he always felt the need to stay\u2014in part to support Black students, but also to change the institution: \u201cThis is work. We came to transform a community. I want a confrontation with wrong and injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continuing a Legacy<\/h2>\n

The fervor El-Kati brought to his teaching and activism lives on in an endowed lectureship. In 2008, Berry, Bertram M. Days \u201974, and Ava B. Days established the Mahmoud El-Kati Distinguished Lectureship in American Studies. According to former department chair Professor Duchess Harris, the lectureship is a way \u201cto celebrate that El-Kati had been the vanguard, and that he had opened the doors for us to enter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lectureship brings to campus public intellectuals who engage race. El-Kati says it\u2019s been exciting to see the speakers who\u2019ve come to Macalester, like Jelani Cobb, a historian and staff writer at The New Yorker<\/em>, who has become a prolific voice on race and justice in recent years. \u201cHe even lectured in the community when he came to speak at Macalester,\u201d El-Kati says. \u201cFor me, those who lecture at Macalester should also lecture in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given his decades-long involvement in the struggle for racial justice, El-Kati says the need for this type of intellectual engagement is crucial, especially given the spate of racial violence in recent years. \u201cPandora\u2019s box has been opened in a way that it never has been,\u201d he says. \u201cAll the best and the worst about America is out of the box. You\u2019ve got a chance to make this country whole or continue along the same line to being governed by the doctrine of white supremacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Freedom<\/h2>\n

I have a confession: I\u2019ve been covering El-Kati with journalistic distance\u2014and it\u2019s been difficult. That\u2019s because I came to know him early on in my Macalester career. I would often run into him in the MAX Center, in the office of Sedric McClure, who was then the head of the Emerging Scholars Program. I learned early on that El-Kati had three adult children and that one of them, Stokley, was the lead singer of Mint Condition\u2014the R&B group I spent hours listening to as a child. I had to learn more.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I came to cherish those impromptu run-ins with El-Kati, which would inevitably turn into a lecture I didn\u2019t know I needed, complete with book recommendations and names to Google later in my dorm room.<\/p>\n

But something happened in those encounters\u2014a thing that came up over and over in my discussions with alumni: I gained a better sense of the world, and as a result, my place in it. My mind began grasping a language to articulate things I\u2019d always felt but didn\u2019t know how to express. And that proved foundational as I began my ascent into adulthood.<\/p>\n

Even though I began college after El-Kati had stopped teaching, his presence on campus lingered\u2014and he would even regularly attend campus events. A favorite moment of mine came during my senior year, when feminist activist Angela Davis came to speak. She was talking about the American prison system and its connection to slavery, and she asked the audience to define slavery.<\/p>\n

A voice in the crowd was slight but powerful: \u201cIt was a social death.\u201d It was El-Kati, in true form. Davis turned her head toward him, picking up the ball he just threw her: \u201cYes, Orlando Patterson says slavery was a social death\u2026\u201d I remember her saying, citing the Harvard sociologist\u2019s seminal work. Did El-Kati just drop a book reference to Angela Davis?<\/em> I thought to myself.<\/p>\n

I recall that moment often\u2014less because of the starpower that propelled it and more because of the way it changed how I thought about slavery. It wasn\u2019t merely a discrete historical event; its legacy impacts so much of the inequities we see today. So many of the things I had experienced. That changed everything.<\/p>\n

When I relayed the anecdote last fall, El-Kati chuckled, as if to suggest he\u2019d recommend the same book if that moment happened all over again. Then, he became professorial in a way that was cathartic: \u201cAnd that\u2019s what Black people suffer from\u2014a kind of invisibility, that\u2019s a kind of social death. The way I think of it, a social death is when you were slaves and segregated and you weren\u2019t reflected in the messages and images and symbols of what America was.\u201d<\/p>\n

I then confessed it was that logic that brought me to storytelling: I wanted to see the world and say something about it as a Black person. And not just to say something, but do something in the process: Shift our understanding of the world by making people of African descent central to it.<\/p>\n

He agreed: \u201cThat\u2019s the definition of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite having stopped teaching at Macalester in 2003, El-Kati rejects the word \u201cretire\u201d\u2014when you\u2019re engaged in dismantling white supremacy, your work is never really<\/em> done. When asked how he defines this chapter in his life, there was some contemplation: \u201cI keep doing the same thing, just a little bit slower.\u201d He paused for a second, then quickly added: \u201cBut that\u2019s about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Reading List<\/h2>\n

Professor El-Kati is known for his deep understanding of African American history and his book references. We asked alumni to share the formative books he introduced to them.<\/p>\n

Stanley M. Berry ’75<\/p>\n