Why Students at Historically Black Colleges Aren’t Protesting
17th May 2024
Earlier this week, the New York Times asked an intriguing and surprisingly overlooked question: why aren’t black students on historically black college campuses protesting against Israel and marching for Palestine? It’s an important query — made all the more urgent by President Biden’s commencement address this coming weekend at Morehouse College in Atlanta, one of the nation’s preeminent historically black colleges and universities.
Considering the seemingly endless ways African Americans have pledged their allegiances to the suffering in Gaza — and Palestinians in general — America’s 107 HBCUs should be exploding with anti-Israel rancor. But they’re not — in fact, notes the Times, there have been no Columbia-like encampments and few students marching while draped in Palestinian flags. Why not?
As the Times sees it — much as they see everything — black students are simply too poor and historically marginalized to risk violently protesting in public. Black students — who comprise the vast majority of HBCU scholars — enter higher education “lower on the economic ladder and are more intently focused on their education and their job prospects after graduation,” wrote the paper.