PSU Magazine Winter 1989

l Prexy Nesbitt, consultant for the People's Republic of Mowmbique, right, was keynote speaker at PSU's conference on malicious harassment. That kind of isolation, and the ignorance that comes from it, creates the potential for trouble , but it also creates the potential for good. "That is why we feel the ed ucational approach to thi s is so important , because you don't have indi viduals who come into adulthood w ith these overtl y hostile attitudes toward blacks. You don't have a clean slate , because it has been formed in this racial context , but you have individuals who can go either way. We want to make sure they go the right way." S tate Rep. Margaret Carter, in an impass ioned address to the symposium audience , called for an active fight aga inst racism on all levels. "We must keep alive our di smay, our nonsupport (of racism) ," she sa id . Echoing the point , Ron Herndon . co-chairman of the Black United Front noted that " thi s country has never declared war on racism." The PSU administration took the opportunity of the sympos ium to issue a po licy statement seek ing to do just that. Presented at the end of the conference by interim President Roger Edgington , it ca lled for nonto lerance of attitudes, acti ons and institutional structures that subord inate persons or groups on the basis of their race , color, creed , disability, marital status, national origin, race, sex, or sex ual orientation. It also pledged to encourage academic and extracurricu lar activ ities to ··expose students to cultures and tradi ti ons other than the ir own." If that is accompli shed. it could go a long way toward fulfillin g a call to action made by Herndon for a broader teac hing of African and American black hi story. a more complete, truthful public discourse on the white treatment of the American Indi an. and an all-out war aga inst cultural ignorance . Only then , Herndon sa id , can rac ism be cut at its roots. D (John R. Kirkland, a Portland free-lance writer and photographe1; is a .frequent contribwor to PSU Maga~ine.) PSU 15 0 >- 0 "' :; ~