Using the metaphor of the abolitionist press, Garrison was almost an honorary Black person from the POV of Black abolitionists and said what a politically normative Black person would say, but newspapers such as Freedom's Journal and Douglass's various efforts were important in order to construct a Black public sphere. The work Black people do to construct Black identity and the Black public sphere will go on whether or not the university is interested in it but if the university has some claim to be universalistic the university may want to make space for that discourse instead of being simply somewhere where non-Black people talk about Blackness as a metaphor.
I also made sure to read the story about North Carolina where the Black freshman enrollment decreased about 2.8 percentage points. They could not explain it except by referring to the financial aid FUBAR but that is a deficit small enough that a local civil organization interested in steering talented in-state students to the university might be able to make it up. Being admitted to MIT depends on good STEM programs at the high school level which is a more systemic issue.
Using the metaphor of the abolitionist press, Garrison was almost an honorary Black person from the POV of Black abolitionists and said what a politically normative Black person would say, but newspapers such as Freedom's Journal and Douglass's various efforts were important in order to construct a Black public sphere. The work Black people do to construct Black identity and the Black public sphere will go on whether or not the university is interested in it but if the university has some claim to be universalistic the university may want to make space for that discourse instead of being simply somewhere where non-Black people talk about Blackness as a metaphor.
I also made sure to read the story about North Carolina where the Black freshman enrollment decreased about 2.8 percentage points. They could not explain it except by referring to the financial aid FUBAR but that is a deficit small enough that a local civil organization interested in steering talented in-state students to the university might be able to make it up. Being admitted to MIT depends on good STEM programs at the high school level which is a more systemic issue.
* civil rights organization and civil society organization both work