>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 03/29/99 12:59PM >>>
3. There is probably no hope at the present time to suppress
college athletetics altogether, which would be desirable. But
if the academic requirement for athletes were removed, it
would be easier to insist that university funds not subsidize
athletics -- which would include general funds as well as
compulsory activity fees. But that is probably pretty
utopian too, as I see no way of mobilizing any particular
constituency to fight for it.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((
Charles: I just spoke at a forum on the March 1970 student strike led by the Black Action Movement at the University of Michigan. One way to get students out of class is to organize a student strike.
Comments from forum below *******************
BLACK ACTION MOVEMENT of 1970
Greetings to our newest comrades in this three decade struggle for equality and quality university education !
I was the treasurer of the Black Student Union during the BAM I strike in 1970. I walked the picket lines attended the rallies, occupied the buildings along with many other students. I was still on campus as a graduate student in 1975 at BAM II. While in law school at U of Mich from '76 to '79, I participated in the struggle to divest the University from companies that do business in South Africa and to free the Wilmington 10 in North Carolina. In 1987, I was part of a group of alumni who supported the efforts of U of Mich students , especially the Ella Baker/Nelson Mandela Center , to have the 1970 BAM demands met.
The U of Mich. struggle continues. Victory is certain ! as the anti- Apartheid slogan went. Your conference today makes me feel that we will one day reach across the generations of U of Mich students and finally hold the administration to its promises from 1970. Open it up or shut it down. We shouted.
"I've got a feeling, I've got a feeling sister, I've got a feeling BAM's gonna shut this mother down. Ain't gonna be no messin' around." ,we sang.
Yet, were we just lulling ourselves to sleep with our song? The University "agreed" to our list of demands, including increased minority enrollment, but it has not lived up to its promise to this day in 1999. It merely waited until we graduated and radicalism had been substantially abated from the student life here. It's important for me to persist in my enthusiasm that our victory will be realized, but what makes me more than an old alum cheering "Go Blue" ? Will greater diversity, fairness and equality truly come to the U ?
Well, I thank you for inviting me here to see whether we just might take another step forward.
The great Black scholar W.E.B. Dubois declared in 1903 that the colorline would be the question of the 20th Century. So lets talk about diversity of color for a moment. The BAM strike took place in a political ,economic and social context which I am sure you all have some familiarity with, which included especially rather widespread protests and movements for peace, especially in Viet Nam, counter-capitalist culture, womens' rights, civil rights and Black power. The struggle for Black civil rights and power inspired other oppressed peoples of color and oppressed groups of many types to carry on movements for freedom. A very important aspect of the question of color in BAM was that the general radicalization of many white students prepared and steeled them to support the BAM strike and demands.
Lets think about what an extraordinary and courageous consciousness and action this was for these white students. They were potentially surrendering some of their own skin color privilege, say for graduate or professional school. The strike could not have succeeded without majority support from the white student body, obviously, as we were protesting the small number of Black and other students of color, who could not therefore constitute a large enough stay away to stop school. The strike also succeeded because the university union workers refused to cross the BAM picket line.
I have thought about a lot of things to say today, but I think I will spend my time focused on this aspect of the contradiction, the question , the problem of the colorline , because a riddle of this type is at the center of all affirmative action struggles. How can we win more places for minority students, women students, other discriminated groups, without displacing some of the majority students , and why should majority students or workers in the larger society make a sacrifice ? Why should they care about diversity or even fairness ? Somehow, for a while, the diversely colored students of U of Mich in 1970 reached an advanced consciousness on this key struggle of our time, of this century and probably the next. Your interest in this forum means you may feel some connection with that great insight we had. The 1970 BAM activists and supporters, Black , white and all colors solved the riddle of color for a brief historical moment. Were they just caught up in idealistic but self-sacrificing and unrealistic fervor ? Or is there really some way that they were lifting while they climbed , as Angela Davis uses the phrase in her essay of that title in her book _Women, Culture and Politics_ ?
By the way , 1970 was the year that Angela Davis was a fugitive on the FBI most wanted list . Free Angela ! was a slogan; and the Kent State University killings of student peace protestors occurred. Of the many radical leaders of that time, Angela Davis is one still going strong today. She remains a wise counselor transcending our generations, leading a resistance struggle against the prison industrial complex.
I think the white student radicals , and the white radical professors, the radical white male students of 1970 were bettering themselves as well as others, though the problem of color must be taken in the overall context of our capitalist society to think of it this way. To really solve this riddle of affirmative action, we must find ways to expand the numbers of slots in the university and to lower the cost of going to school here, don't we ? Tuition and costs must be pushed in the opposite direction that it has been in recent years. We must add an affirmative action for poverty and working class. I understand that there is an effort in California now to formulate affirmative action with this working class component. Affirmative action must be united with an all-around assault on elitism. Higher education must be available to all in our society rather than the privilege of a small minority.
A related tangle in this riddle is the question of academic standards. In 1987, when I was an alumni supporter of another surge of student activism against racism, I was quoted in the Detroit Free Press saying, "if the phony elements in academic standards were eliminated, many more blacks (and whites) would be seen to be qualified to be students and faculty". Wow, that was a bold claim on my part. Isn't that an insult to the Michigan faculty, even good professor Weiskopff who has organized this very fine forum ? Well , let me say right away , no, I am not referring to professors like Tom Weiskopff , who represents the fine progressive and radical faculty tradition that initiated and nurtured the BAM strike and other college activisms in the era of BAM, because, when I refer to phony academic standards, I am in part referring exactly to the social responsibility of institutions and professionals of higher learning. Literature, science and the arts absolutely for literary, scientific and arts' sake is one of the "phony" academic standards I am talking about.
Perhaps I can in another way what I mean by an image that occurred to me in e-mail list discussions lately: The genius physicist Albert Einstein as Micky Mouse in "The Sorcerers' Apprentice" in the 1940's cartoon movie classic _Fantasia_
In this vein of politics and literature, science and the arts, culture, I wonder whether Albert Einstein, the iconical genius of modern academe, hasn't turned out to be a sort of sorcerer's apprentice. At this point, the most significant impact on human society of his work has been the development of nuclear weapons. Science for science sake in that case threatens our species survival. Einstein was a social democrat, yet just a little too much detachment of physics from practical-critical activity has brought a force into the world that physicists have lost control of and can't get back into their test labs. Even in this seeming most abstract field, the Marxist watchword of unity of theory and practice unobserved places us in danger. Yes, Einstein is turning out to be Mickey Mouse , only it is not a dream nightmare.
So, let me end on a note of Peace.
End police brutality ! U.S. out of Iraq ! U.S. out of Serbia !