Lou Douglas Lectures are in memory of Lou Douglas, a distinguished Professor of Political Science as Kansas State University.
This year’s first lecture host Outreach Director, Lecia Brooks, of the Southern Poverty Law Center on Monday 26, 2016; From Montgomery, Ala.
Brooks leads the SPLC’s outreach efforts on key initiatives and social justice issues. Frequently, she gives presentations around the country to promote tolerance and diversity.
She shares the history of SPLC, focusing on the fact that it was founded by two Caucasian men. They grew up in the era of Jim Crow laws and both knew that that southern tradition was wrong, which inspired the center’s creation.
During Brooks’s lecture she identifies the three-point strategy of the SPLC to combat hate crimes and extremist; seeking justice, teaching tolerance, and fighting hate.
According to a SPLC pamphlet, they seek out hate groups, and fight to protect the rights of the most vulnerable people in our society – the exploited, the powerless, and the forgotten. There is a multitude of their cases provided on their website.
Brooks grew up in the south in a time when the fight for social justice was across the country. She recalled a time when African-American students and Caucasian students converged during lunch counter sit-ins.
SPLC has a map of all the hate groups in America. The map depicts 892 active hate groups and reports 998 anti-government groups in the U.S including but not limited to: the KKK, Christian Knights of the KKK, Dove Ministry in Fl., the New Black Panther Party, Farricon, and more.
Fighting hate is a duty the SPLC has incorporated into the its strategy of the civil right movement.
Teaching tolerance is the final strategy and Brooks tells the audience about educating oneself, one’s family, students, teachers, and peers.
Brooks described civility being defined as people speaking to one another in the town square to advance for the good of society. Now people only speak to advance themselves.
She encourages people to be educated on their own race of people and positive spins with them instead of the normal negatives. Brooks then encouraged parents to teach their children what it means to be who you are, whether it be African-American, Caucasian , Mexican, Native-American, Indian, Portuguese or whatever. So they can grow-up in this demographically shifting environment. Teach them not to hate but to understand and tolerate each other because the new coming society is a multicultural one.
Statistics show in 1970 the U.S. population was 88 percent white, and 17 percent others. Today’s statistics show that in 2016 the U.S. population is 66 percent white and 34 percent others.
Brooks explains that if children, specifically Caucasian , are not taught understanding and tolerance at home they will learn from White hate groups. They will learn what those groups thinks it means to be white and how to act toward others not like them.
Brooks continues to explain that if you do not shut down hate immediately after seeing or hearing it it will only give room for those hateful conversations and actions to grow.
Quotations
- “It is time to shift the dialogue.” -Lecia Brooks
- ” We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Related Links
- https://www.splcenter.org/
- https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket
- http://www.tolerance.org/
- http://www.conversationcafe.org/
For More Information
Shakyra Everett
KMAN Staff
shakyra606@yahoo.com
