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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1968

local black youth, and on a couple of campuses they led demands for better treatment of unskilled Negro employees of the university. But perhaps their most important function became that of instilling a sense of dignity in the students as black students. This latter effort predictably clashed with the desire of many black students to use their college experience as an escape from the racial nightmare and as an opportunity to test the attraction of integrated experience. The debates precipitated by this clash in points of view have probably been one of the more valuable by-products of the black-awareness movement for they have forced protagonists of varying points of view to deal directly with the basic question of self-identity. Each student is actually obliged to take some position with respect to his role in and relationship to the larger society, and while a middle position is commonly encountered, even students choosing such ambiguous positions do not escape submitting themselves to a certain amount of introspective analysis which is likely to help them eventually to come to grips with the question of "who am I." 
Nor are those students who opt for a total black identification thereby guaranteed a haven of complete self-assurance and inner security. Because they are likely to be those students most acutely conscious of the sensitivities and passions within the black community, and most deeply anguished by the plight of their less fortunate brethren, they feel most keenly the limitations on their ability to effect the necessary changes. They are also the ones most likely to be troubled by the disparity between the plight of the black masses and their own good fortune in being a part of the select few blacks who are privileged to attend college. The following selection from Blackout, the publication of the black student group at Dartmouth, dramatically expresses this theme.

SONG TO MY BROTHER AT DARTMOUTH
"chump!
ya' brothers at home, poisoned,
dyin' in the streets, cop shots, whole
bodies flyin' through air, bustlin'.
barely makin' it.
sniffin'cocaine
for quick high—
That's home bro—ther!