Speaker praises diverse doctrine

Hilliard warns audience that those fearing change can become history's victims.

By Christopher Quinn -- JOURNAL REPORTER

Asa Hilliard III spoke to about 500 mostly young people about the consequences of fear and greed yesterday at Winston-Salem State University's International Day.

Hilliard, a professor of urban education at Georgia State University, said that fear and greed summed itself up within Germany's Nazi party. Nazis were afraid of anything different. They wanted their nation and culture to reign pre-eminently.

He contrasted that to his experiences living elsewhere in the world. Hilliard's expertise in educational psychology and pluralistic education have taken him to Africa, Pacific Islands and South Americas.

He said that several years ago he lived in Surinam, where blacks who were brought over from Africa as slaves, Indians native to the area and settlers descended from Europeans get along beautifully. Some cross cultural lines by marrying into different ethnic groups. Others maintain their traditions and homes solely within their ethnic group.

Neither those who cross over nor those who stay within one group are criticized, ostracized or treated differently.

"Diversity is the norm," he said, adding that diversity becomes an issue when people manipulate it for political or economic reasons.

You begin to have those various questions whether diversity is a value or diversity is a threat," he said.

He pointed out one result of the fear of diversity in the United States, the English-only movement. In states such as California, the dominant European-American culture is fearful of the influx of Hispanics, he says.

"There is a perception that something will change in the cultural context of the nation," he said.

The response to the perceived threat has been attempts to have English declared the official language and the language of instruction in schools, he says.

He also cited two examples of manipulation of blacks in the Americas. In the United States after slavery, there was segregation, which tried to suppress black culture, he said.

In Brazil, there was a policy of "whitening," in which blacks were encouraged to marry native Indians or Europeans, thus diluting black influence.

The fears that drove those movements may no longer be official policies, but they remain integrated in the culture and force the questions about diversity to the fore," he said.

The answers will determine whether people will be victims of history or will change history.

"We raise the question in 1996 in the context of fear on the part of some, and hope on the part of others," he said.