Economic retrenchment produced defensive embourgeoisement rather than further radicalization
Evidence
By the time capitalist expansion slid into stagnation in the early 1970s, with the effects being felt in educational institutions in subsequent years, the benefits of that first decade had already engendered considerable embourgeoisement among Black campus communities. Retrenchment led, then, not to further radicalization but to a defensive relocation within the existing structures, supervised by faculties which were socially predominantly on the Right even though on the question of racial oppression they took, within parameters defined by the institutions, oppositional positions. In outlook and aspiration, Black student bodies had been normalized even before the advent of Reaganism, becoming in their politics, except on the question of race, indistinguishable from the rest. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 140
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the general thesis about how black radicalism became professionalized — parallels the later argument about metropolitan appropriation of Third World literature in para 142. — connects to: The early 1930s radicalized governments and isolated free-market economists. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 41; Unemployment makes people passive and withdrawn rather than radicalized. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 641; Income losses from bank collapse radicalize voters more than equivalent general income declines — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 108 (+2 more)