Many years later, my most politically radical college friends, who had the luxury of dedicating the time to activism that I did not have, retreated to the lives of their parents, shelving political activism for a quiet life in the suburbs and the professional upward mobility that a quiet, apolitical life enabled. Struggle, again, was a social fad that many of my classmates could opt out of as easily as they opted in, while the challenges I faced were no extracurricular activity, but the only life I knew.

XREF: Connects to the broader theme of how activism functions as social performance for the privileged versus existential necessity for the struggling.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 335