{"id":1224,"date":"2017-01-13T19:09:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T19:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.spelman.edu\/honorsprogram\/?page_id=1224"},"modified":"2023-07-11T20:05:38","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T20:05:38","slug":"community","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.spelman.edu\/honorsprogram\/about\/community\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Letter from Opal Moore: The Golden Plow<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Many people ask:\u00a0 What is Honors?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the askers fear that this language is about \u201celitism\u201d, or privilege\u2014that it tilts to favor an economic or social profile, or that it fosters separation rather than shared humanist values and sisterhood.\u00a0\u00a0 I say, don\u2019t be afraid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Honors is a nationally affiliated Program concept. Honors Programs did not originate on Black campuses.\u00a0 However, their underlying rationale is not alien to the mission of the historically Black college.\u00a0 One might say that the adoption of Honors to Black campuses illuminated the core ethics of Honors\u2014to affirm and make visible the core pursuit of higher education, which is to recognize the value of all who are highly motivated in the pursuit of knowledge.<\/em>\u00a0 In short, to offer support and community to those for whom the love of learning is bread.\u00a0 At the Black college, knowledge is not an ivory tower destination. If Frederick Douglass is correct that crops cannot be gained without plowing up the ground, then knowledge is the golden plow.<\/span><\/p>\n

The important question is, what is Honors at Spelman College?\u00a0 What is \u201cintellectual community\u201d?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I have taken to asking high school students whether they have ever been abused rather than affirmed when they proved themselves to be among the top students in a class.\u00a0 Always, several hands go up, with urgency.\u00a0 And they have stories. I then ask: Should there be a place where Black women\u2019s intelligence is normal; where she doesn\u2019t have to hide her intelligence, her curiosity, her love of learning? A few hands will shoot up.\u00a0 Others lift their hands, hesitantly, with sidelong glances.\u00a0 Some do not lift their hands but their eyebrows. \u00a0Considering, perhaps, the consequences of their vote\u2014the trick in the question.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, shouldn\u2019t there be such a place, where a Black woman\u2019s intelligence does not make her suspect or odd or outcast, but valued, respected, consulted?\u00a0 Normal?<\/span><\/p>\n

I say yes.\u00a0 And I say if, for no other reason, the Honors Program at Spelman College must serve to articulate this promise to the women who journey here.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is here that we must be able to say, like poet Mari Evans, \u201cI am a Black woman.\u201d\u00a0 And further, \u201cI am a Black woman who thinks, questions invent, wonders dances my dance sings my song, and is determined to remember the many ways that women have applied their minds to the work of social, political, and cultural change.\u00a0 Deal with it!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Honors Community announces our embrace of student intellectual leadership\u2014a breathless excitement for students as they discover the power and excitement of shaking loose the ideas hidden in their living, breathing, pulsing environments. Women who are less concerned with the answers at the back of the book\u2014whose pulses quicken with the question.\u00a0 What is the equation of Freedom?\u00a0 asked Marita Bonner in 1925. What is the secret of Joy, asks Alice Walker?<\/span><\/p>\n

More often, joy is in claiming the freedom to pursue the question, whether one is a scientist, artist, dancer, poet, storyteller, mathematician, mother\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Honors Community at Spelman is among us.\u00a0 It should be part of the mild intoxications of daily life.\u00a0 It is in the shine of women who believe that learning is like breathing\u2014necessary to their lives. It is, too, for the woman who does not consider herself \u201cintellectual,\u201d that ominous word with its frightening gravity. but highly purposed. It is for the woman who needs to know that the \u201clife of the mind\u201d is not a sterile journey into self-negation\u2014that her history and her life provide her with the tools for self-actualization. It is a place for shared stories\u2014not the old stories that \u201chave been used to dispossess and malign\u201d says Chimamanda Adichie, but stories that help to repair and restore us to ourselves and to tackle what seems impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every person who believes in freedom must be an intellectual, in public and in private.\u00a0 In all of the places where we must dig for what is true, enduring, and useful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s institutions of higher education serve many masters.\u00a0 Honors Programs can assist, by their very presence, in reminding the world to preserve higher education\u2019s raison d\u2019etre<\/em>.\u00a0 Which is surely not<\/em> to define persons by their job titles.\u00a0 But rather to liberate the person to define her task.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the Honors community?\u00a0 It is the space created through the words of Audre Lorde:<\/span><\/p>\n

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letter from Opal Moore: The Golden Plow Many people ask:\u00a0 What is Honors? Some of the askers fear that this language is about \u201celitism\u201d, or privilege\u2014that it tilts to favor an economic or social profile, or that it fosters separation rather than shared humanist values and sisterhood.\u00a0\u00a0 I say, don\u2019t be afraid. Honors is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":1271,"parent":20,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true,"footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\n- Spelman College<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.spelman.edu\/honorsprogram\/about\/community\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"- Spelman College\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Letter from Opal Moore: The Golden Plow Many people ask:\u00a0 What is Honors? 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