Something we talked about in class was how the young college students of the University of California Berkeley compared themselves to the oppressed black people of the south who were dealing with the Jim Crow laws as if they were going through the same thing as them. Somehow their struggle to ascend the student movement was equivalent to brutal mistreatment that black people in the south received. When I try to wrap my mind around why they would even think to believe that their struggles are similar the only thing that comes to my mind is that both groups were seeking more rights from people who had more power than them. In the case of the students, they were seeking acceptance from the older generation so that they can gain more progress in the student movement. For the black people of the south, they were fighting against the white people who had more power over them for equal rights so that they can start to live life like a human being should instead of being constricted to only doing what they were told. Other than this, these situations are very different based on the fact that the black people of the south were basically fighting for their lives while the students’ lives would still carry on the same whether or not they won the battle they were trying to fight. The students comparing themselves to the blacks of the south could be deemed disrespectful depending on who you ask. I know for a fact that the black people who were being oppressed would trade lifestyles with the students in a heartbeat. I think you can attribute this claim that the students were making to their blindness to what was really happening in the south as well as how far apart they are from each other geographically which is understandable. This was a time where there was no social media so it is really hard for people to really get a grasp of what is going on across the country because of the lack of technology and media coverage that they had at that time compared to now. Since they are located so far apart from each other the only way the students knew anything about how black people were treated in the south is through what they are told. They don’t get to see it first hand like they would have if they were located in states like Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. This is similar to the Hollinder reading when he talked about how all of the French intellectuals had nothing but good things to say about Joseph Stalin when they visited him. When they visited him Stalin would make sure that they only saw what he wanted them to see by blinding them of the reality of what was really going on in the Soviet Union. People who did not live in the Soviet Union really had no idea what was going on because there was no way to relay information efficiently.
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2 replies on “Week 8 Blog”
I also brought up a Hollander connection as well and a french intellectual connection to what was going on in the black student movement. The part that you said about their being a disconnect between what was happening in the south and the student movements and i feel like the only way for those people to truly understand what is going on there is to go there themselves.
I agree I also found it incredibly difficult to grasp the idea that middle to upper class educated white students were comparing themselves to oppressed black people in the South. To me such a comparison is nonsensical and unfounded. I think that the New Left’s attempt to gain the oppressed black population as allies actually did not help them advance their agenda by much. Furthermore, I think this ridiculous comparison of struggles weakened the New Left’s argument and caused it to lose some legitimacy. To make a claim that white students face struggles that are similar to those of oppressed blacks is a privileged and socially unaware claim to make. I also thought that it was interesting that the New Left tried to also form an alliance with criminals as well. The idea of the New Left trying to use criminals and poor black people as their political vanguard seems almost comical to me. Yet, this was in fact the goal of the New Left and they thought through doing this they would achieve a utopian society. The fact that the New Left was mainly concerned with classroom politics, it baffles me that they would try to garner support from oppressed groups of society that are facing completely different issues. Their main concerns were with racial injustice and prison reform which are structurally and fundamentally very different goals than what white students had. I think the thought of organizing such very different groups of people is such a difficult and almost impossible task to do so I am surprised that was their tactic.