Racial Assimilation of Black Community in the Mainstream American Society - Essay Example

 In the essay, the author has raised the most pertinent issue of racial assimilation of black community in the mainstream American society that had started with the recruitment of black students in the predominated white colleges in San Francisco in sixties. Mass recruitment prompted the blacks to form black students union which would help the black students to fight for their rights and avail privileges that were hitherto enjoyed by the white population. The author has displayed rare insight and understood the aggressive behaviour of the black students in the college campus.

The blacks needed to overcome the racial divide maintained by the whites, within the society and their aggressive attitude and flagrant disregard for the niceties brought them into the forefront of socio-political field. I agree with the author’s observation that mere recruitment of the black students in the white dominated colleges was not sufficient for their effective assimilation within the white population. While their campus life may have reduced racial divide, outside the campus, the color of the skin played a major role in their social status.

The violence within the campus and the defiant stance of the BSU did pave way to the fulfillment of their demands to ‘established a black studies program, and recruited black faculty and staff in 1969… between 1968 to 1972, more than five hundred black students programs, department, curricula and libraries were established across the nation’ (p140). Indeed, this proved that the early violence and defiance of the BSU was necessary to inculcate confidence and facilitate in empowering them to exercise independent decision making.

ReferenceMiller, Karen. (2001). Negroes No More: The emergence of black student activism in Long time Gone by Alexander Bloom. Pg 123-141. Oxford publishers.