Past Stirs a New Black Vanguard : Education: Students celebrating African-American History Month at Cal State Dominguez Hills are fueled by anger, hope and high expectations.

After the lectures, concerts and exhibits that mark African-American History Month are over, Cal State Dominguez Hills student David Baker is certain what will remain with him.

“Black history,” he said, “is my history 365 days a year.”

Baker, a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, one of the school’s two African-American fraternities, takes umbrage at the notion that appreciation of black history ends at the end of February. So does Benard Balthazar, who belongs to Alpha Phi Alpha, the other black fraternity, who resents the fact that black history is celebrated during “the shortest month of the year.”

Baker and Balthazar sat in the campus Commons area recently, backpacks at their sides, reflecting on issues ranging from generational differences to a resurgence of Malcolm X’s self-help movement--some of the themes emphasized during African-American History Month.

Like other schools throughout the country, Cal State Dominguez Hills has been sponsoring programs highlighting the successes and issues facing African-Americans. The programs are intended to supplement the Euro-centric history taught in most school systems, said Rudy Vanterpool, a Dominguez Hills philosophy professor and chairman of African-American History Month at the school.

The February programs “place an emphasis on the Afro-centric perspective,” Vanterpool said. “We want to show (black youths) that members of their own race have excelled in some profession or field, to show that black people are not just athletes or entertainers.”

The fraternity members, a small but growing segment of the student population, were children--or not even born yet--when the civil rights movement was in full swing in the 1960s.

But in their eyes, African-American History Month serves as a reminder that as black college students, they have a responsibility to serve as role models for other black youths. They feel they are special--young black men obtaining a higher education at a time when so much emphasis has been put on what the NAACP calls “the endangered black male.”

While they respect the successes of previous generations of black activists, they also believe that older blacks have become complacent, dependent on “the system” that younger blacks are questioning.

“I think that they have lost a lot of the things that they have stood for at one time,” said Balthazar, a 21-year-old business and public administration major. “I think our generation is an example of what they once were.”

Danny Gammage was a Kappa Alpha Psi member at Northern Arizona University, where he was graduated in 1980. At Dominguez Hills, Gammage is the university’s hazardous materials coordinator and an adviser to the Kappa Alpha Psi chapter.

“I see a lot of differences in the young kids now and my generation,” Gammage said. “What we looked for was a nice job with the government that pays the bills and gives you (security). We were just looking for an ‘in’ to the system.

“The younger kids are, in my phrase, angrier. They want what America has to offer anybody that comes to this country. They’re not just going to be satisfied with being an administrator for the post office or a schoolteacher. They want to be businessmen in the higher echelons. And I applaud them for that.”

Even at a campus like Dominguez Hills, where about 30% of the student population is black--the highest percentage in the Cal State system--some students feel alienated, Vanterpool said.

Ironically, this alienation is seen at a campus that was designed to serve minority communities. According to history professor Judson Grenier, author of a book about the university’s history, the school was originally planned to be built on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The Watts rioting in 1965 prompted then-Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown and his advisers to select Dominguez Hills in Carson, with its proximity to large minority populations, as the site of a Cal State campus in the South Bay, Grenier says.

Baker and Balthazar, both in their 20s, say they cannot help but notice the many black youths who have fallen by the wayside. One study reported that one in four black males in their 20s is in jail, in prison, on probation or on parole.

“If you can deal with the problems of drugs, the economy, the broken-down family structure--if you can deal with all the factors that tell you you can’t do it, plus the fact you probably work 40 hours a week--that’s what makes today’s black college student so special,” said Balthazar, who wore a black tank top emblazoned with his fraternity’s gold Greek letters.

Because of such pressures, the students say, black fraternities, business and social organizations are all on the upswing, not only at Dominguez Hills but also at campuses across the nation. The organizations, in many cases exclusively for African-Americans, are seen as tools toward the community’s self-empowerment.

Community leaders say the trend reflects a change in attitude among some black youths toward more isolationist--some say segregationist--views, an irony in light of the previous generation’s struggle for desegregation.

Baker, a business marketing senior, said his generation is fighting for greater self-reliance and finds relevance in the philosophies of Malcolm X.

“We need to be angry, but violence is not going to do it,” Baker said. “You’re fighting a system, a system that has no face.”

“We relate to him (Malcolm X) more because of the simple fact we’re angry,” Balthazar added. “We’re tired of holding those feelings in, like it’s wrong for us to be angry. It’s not wrong for us to be angry.”