Presenter(s): Imani Dorsey
Faculty Mentor(s): Brian Klopotek
Oral Session 3 RA
This thesis hopes to demonstrate how Black college-age students hold diverse understandings of Black racial liberation, and suggest strategies for progress based on the various contemporary conditions and barriers to freedom. Through eight one-on-one interviews, there are identifiable differences in thought. Although, despite a lack of unanimity in what they deemed as progress and effective change, in this contemporary moment, they all appear to be most concerned with achieving the formation of an established Black identity/identities, no longer defined in relation to, or against, whiteness. This desire is informed by an awareness and appreciation of historic liberatory efforts, but a general dissatisfaction for the outcomes and their influence on present racial conditions. The insights of these Black students are tested against Black Nationalist, Black Feminist, and Neoliberal schools of thought, which are utilized as nodes of freedom-oriented discourse to contextualize findings. While unable to identify a unified course of action agreed upon by these students, there is high consensus about the need for material resources as a means of self-sufficiency in order to eliminate the dependency of Black liberation on the conventions of U.S. society. This consciousness of white supremacy as a fact has resulted in active efforts to distance and subvert its influence through the adoption of a pro-Black political practice. Additionally, these students were all interested in exhausting all avenues for progress, so as to not limit the possibilities for a freedom struggle, also for the purposes of attending to U.S. geopolitical complexity.