Narrowing Political Gaps

Abstract

I have often highlighted that my main informants in the Law Department were not students politicized under the sphere of the Black movement, although the activist voice has been transversally present in my account for purposes of comparison. This lack of activism among law freshmen was something that I did not foresee when I approached my fieldwork, and it looked initially random and inexplicable. I had assumed that activists would be spread across all courses and years of study. In addition, I had assumed that most black-quota students would be somehow politicized since many of them had presumably had experiences in community prevestibular courses led by organizations linked to the Black movement, such as Educafro. In fact, I noticed that most freshmen (usually between 17 and 24 years old) did not show any political interest at all, whereas many students later develop some political interest at university. On the other hand, I discovered that the majority of Black activists at the UERJ were from the social sciences or other courses considered not to be particularly prestigious in terms of future salary prospects, such as history, education, and social work.