Refusal requires a margin from economic vulnerability

Evidence

Differences in social and financial vulnerability explain why participants in mass acts of refusal have often been, and continue to be, students. James C. McMillan, an art professor at Bennett College who advised students when they participated in the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins, said that black adults were “reluctant” to “jeopardize any gains, economic and otherwise,” but that the students “did not have that kind of an investment, that kind of economic status, and, therefore, were not vulnerable to the kind of reprisals that could have occurred.” Participating students were under the care of black colleges, not at the mercy of white employers. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 303

Categorization

• XREF: This is precisely the privilege critique the reader wants to test — that refusal often presumes protection. Useful counter-example: refusal is not inherently privileged, but requires some structural shelter. — connects to: Incapacity can function as political refusal when it retains genuine desire — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2461