WSU Graduates Urged To Focus On Unity

Renowned sociologist William Julius Wilson encouraged Washington State University graduates to seek common solutions for healing America’s racial divide.

Speaking at WSU’s all-university ceremony Saturday, Wilson urged students to focus discussion on what unites different ethnic groups, not what divides them.

Currently teaching at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Wilson’s written several books on racism and the underclass. He was selected by Time Magazine as one of America’s 25 most influential people in 1996. He received his master’s degree in Sociology from WSU in 1966.

“During the periods when people experience economic anxiety, it’s important that political leaders channel the frustration of citizens in positive or constructive directions,” Wilson said.

Many U.S. citizens still struggle economically, despite low unemployment and a temporary economic recovery, Wilson said. When an economic downturn does hit, the nation will be more susceptible to the divisive messages of demagogues like Louis Farrakhan or former Klansman David Duke. The problem is made worse when the media focuses on racially divisive factors, Wilson said, as was the case during the O.J. Simpson trial.

“As one observer on the eve of the Simpson verdict, put it: When O.J. gets off, the whites will riot the way we whites do: leave the cities, go to Idaho or Oregon or Arizona, vote for Gingrich … and punish the blacks by closing the daycare programs and cutting off their Medicaid,” he said.

Communities must build multiracial coalitions to address common concerns such as job security, declining real wages, escalating medical and housing costs, declining quality of public education and neighborhood crime, Wilson said.

“All groups, including those in the throes of ghetto joblessness, should be able to achieve full membership in society because the problems of economic and social marginality spring from the inequities in society at large, and not from group deficiencies.”

Also Saturday, three faculty members, communications professor Joe Ayers, biochemist Michael Smerdon and entomologist Arthur Antonelli received the Sahlin Faculty Excellence Awards.

Later Saturday, a Peace Garden was dedicated to slain Moses Lake teacher Leona Caires. Caires, the mother of graduating ASWSU President Matt Caires, was killed last year when a 14-year-old honor students shot her and three others in her classroom.

, DataTimes