When you visit the office of the Daily Forty-Niner, you will find that we more or less mirror the population of the Cal State Long Beach campus. From young to old, from black to white, our staff consists of an eclectic group of individuals, eager to learn about each other’s cultures and ideals.
Such a diverse group should make us all think that we’ve come a long way from the days of segregated classrooms and uneducated speculations about racial and ethnic equality. We tend to get lazy and think our society is cured of insensitivity.
But when we have personalities like comedian Michael Richards, radio personality Don Imus, and more recently, bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman dropping racist comments in a moment of anger, one must re-think how much progress we’ve actually achieved.
Sure, these men have the “courtesy” of apologizing via press releases or on David Letterman, but the damage has already been done. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube after idiots launch verbal assaults.
The recent Daily Forty-Niner article about professor Alosi J. Moloi described his fight to keep students informed on a variety of issues that have affected the South African struggles. One of those struggles being the apartheid era, when a white-supremacist system ruled the region.
Moloi has struggled to keep this piece of history alive by keeping CSULB students in the know regarding the issues that created the apartheid regime of repression and segregation, which contributed to black struggles on a global level.
With so much information out there, it’s difficult to grasp how some people remain ignorant of struggles that not only affect one race, but are detrimental to each race.
With individuals like Moloi trying to open our eyes by offering a world-view (that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should), one would hope that the individuals mentioned earlier would think twice about the foul language they spit in our faces.
We live in a culture obsessed with bad reality shows and are not interested in seeing beyond MySpace and their BlackBerries.
The fact that we have people like Moloi on our very own campus should serve as an incentive to wake up from our daydreams and realize there’s still suffering going on in this world.
There are still people like Chapman, who show their true stripes when they vilify society with their hate speech.
Sadly, we also have groups on campus that think hosting an event like the one planned for December titled “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” is an innocent way to bring up certain issues. They are misaligned by thinking such hate mongering is educational or embraceable.
The truth is, such events only play out as an inhumane and bigoted game.
It’s a shame that the First Amendment can be bandied about as a potentially deadly weapon to spread hatred and discontent.
We certainly have a long way to go. But thanks to inspirational educators like Moloi – and the Africana program he is launching – the path to arrive at wisdom and harmony in our societies can be a bit less bumpy.
