Abstract

The Politics of Exclusion: Black Students Fight Back

The article discusses the politically diverse black community of the 1980s which fight back against specific racist incidents. These incidents are symptoms of a deeper, institutional racism. University administrators have thus been challenged to act not only on the immediate threat of racial assaults and harassment but also on often invisible policies of exclusion and discrimination against people of color, in terms of admissions, hiring and curriculums. In their approach students have been explicitly confrontational, adopting mass rallies and building takeovers designed to pressure rather than to persuade. In 1988 three major questions facing the antiracist student movement were how to resist and react to escalating violent attacks, how to effect concrete changes in university policies and how to build bridges between campus and community struggles, and with other progressive movements when possible.