Wilkins kicks off conference

Civil-rights activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Roger Wilkins gave a keynote address Thursday marking the first in a series of affirmative action-themed events hosted by Cal State Long Beach.

The Affirmative Action Conference: "Learning From the Past, Planning for the Future," continues on campus through Nov. 8.

Wilkins, a professor of history at George Mason University, a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general and a network radio commentator for Mutual Broadcasting System and CBS News, spoke to a crowd of nearly 200 students and faculty in the University Student Union on the need to keep affirmative action alive.

"Affirmative action is integral," Wilkins said. "People accept that there must be integration in America ... nobody thinks we should have a segregated movie theater or segregated seating in the back of the bus."

Affirmative action says there ought to be integration in those places like the classroom and the boardroom as well, Wilkins said.

"The benefits of affirmative action are overwhelming; it's just plain fairness," he said. "There is a pragmatic benefit, we just have to get to know each other better in this society."

Wilkins said the situation of racism is bleak and is mirrored in the reaction to the Simpson trial.

"We do not need black and white opinion polls on the trial and black and white split-screen reactions to the verdict to know that the black and white experiences in the United States are very different," Wilkins said.

"I, as a black man who has suffered at the hands of police departments all over this country Ñ including the LAPD, can understand the profound distrust that black-Americans bring to the table when they see accusations coming from the LAPD and the L.A. prosecutor's office," Wilkins said.

Wilkins said affirmative action is still necessary in America. He said that differing life experiences, along with historical context, poverty and exclusion issues, make the idea of affirmative action applicable today.

"Affirmative action is difficult because it tests our national will to continue the struggle against racial and gender stratification that precedes the founding of the republic," he said.

Wilkins said that because some civil-rights laws were passed 30 years ago, many Americans think everything is all right.

"But it has taken us 376 years to create South Central Los Angeles and 376 years to create situations in which 53 percent of black men between the ages of 25 and 34 can't lift a family of four out of poverty," he said. "It will take us at least another century to lift us out of this."

Wilkins said there are voices of hate, stupidity and brutality that will attack those who fight racism. "It is time for a new generation to stand up against those voices," he said.

The fight for affirmative action, decency and justice is not just a minority struggle, Wilkins said, but an American struggle.

"Freedom work is really great work, it is the best American work," he said. "It improves the nation and it fills the soul and I encourage all to undertake the fight for the soul of the country."

The CSULB conference on affirmative action continues this week with a national teleconference Wednesday at 10 a.m. in the University Teleconference Center and a performance by the Los Angeles social-humor group Culture Clash on Wednesday night at 6 in the Carpenter Performing Arts Center.