Students repeatedly lead mass refusals because of reduced 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. In contrast, McMillan says that working-class black residents who went so far as to express support for the students were threatened with violence and unemployment. For them, the margin was much smaller. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 303

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds directly into the reader’s method critique — Odell’s own examples repeatedly depend on sheltered institutional margins (colleges, mild climates, paid taxes). — connects to: Protest assemblies collapse once students and unemployed stalwarts exhaust their energy. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 264