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BLACK STUDENTS
BROWNE

ing participation of representatives of black student groups from across the nation. The other Ivy League colleges, as well as the several city colleges in New York City, the major New England colleges, those in the Philadelphia area, the larger universities in the Chicago area, and most of the Big Ten universities have black student groups in varying stages of development and activity.

Plans are afoot for organizing a national conference of black student organizations, probably during the fall of 1968. It will differ from the Princeton conferences in that it will be under the sponsorship of the black student groups themselves, and will attempt to be far more inclusive than earlier conferences. Students at the Negro colleges as well as those at white colleges will participate.

If the black students have provoked the most activity by their demands for Black Studies Curricula, they have provoked the most consternation by their demands for separate housing for black students desiring it. The universities have tended to resist this demand, claiming that it represented a form of segregation which they could not condone. The universities, like the white community generally, have a great horror of black exclusiveness except when it is imposed by whites. In fact, however, many blacks, especially those of the older generation who may have painful memories of having been crudely excluded from dormitories or from mixed housing accommodations when they attended college, also express astonishment and dismay that today's black students should be making demands for "black" living quarters. The black awareness students, however do not feel defensive about their point of view. For them, a sense of racial unity and purpose is the sine qua non for the genuine emancipation of black people. Anything which helps to build this sense-black community, black history and culture, black awareness, black exclusiveness-is to be encouraged. Anything which detracts from this sense, anything which diverts or dilutes the attention of black people from their uniqueness, from their purpose, from their mystique, is a luxury which cannot be afforded at this critical juncture in history. These students see their parents as having been destroyed by white oppressiveness and exploitation if they were lower class, or subverted by the traps of materialism, individualism, or integration, if they were middle class. Today's black students are in a race to build a sense of black community before a racial Armageddon overtakes them. This sense of urgency must be grasped if one is to understand the powerful forces which are motivating them. There is little doubt but that they will have a permanent effect on the future of black people in America. 

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