Dorantes Memorial lecture with W. Kamau Bell

This Wednesday, at the SBCC Garvin Theater was held the Leonardo Dorantes Memorial Lecture which takes place every year in November on the SBCC campus. For who may not know, the Leonardo Dorantes Memorial Lecture was created in honor of a Mexican immigrant who attended Santa Barbara City College, and who “died in a race-related tragedy in November, 1990”. Since then, a lecture was established in order to spread awareness as concern racial and ethnic differences. The lecture brings always notable figures to speak and engage the SBCC faculty and students to heighten respect toward anybody regardless their ethnicity.

Kamau and I

This year, the guest speaker who was going to hold the lecture was the astonishing stand-up comic and television host W. Kamau Bell!!! Even if during the time of his lecture I had class, my amazing public speaking professor Cameron Sublett decided to cancel class and have us all attend the Memorial Lecture. I am soooooo glad he decided that because the speech Kamau delivered was simply breathtaking, eye opening and, after the outcome of the recent presidential election, tension reliving. Two hours flew by so quickly while he was braking down this though topic making everybody in the audience laugh but at the same time reflect. Besides, since W. Kamau Bell is an African-American, most of the people were expecting a lecture about the racism and disrespect toward black people. However, he was able to include in his speech an analysis of the discrimination of every ethnic minority, smoothly shifting from one to the other. It was unbelievable.

I believe that this lecture had a particular impact on me, and I think that what Kamau touched upon was mind-blowing and inspiring. In fact, as an Italian International student, I wasn’t aware of how big the ethnic and racial discriminations are in America. The highly varied American society is a unique environment that most European countries don't get to experience, and therefore the racism discussion rarely comes out. However, since I got here I have learned to appreciate this amazing variety, and I really hope that in the near future everybody will be able to recognize that the way we appear is not what describes us, and that what actually counts is what we think, how we act and who we are as an individual. Differences should be embraced and not penalized.

After the presidential election, a number of racial and discriminatory acts have already started to spread allover the nation and even here at SBCC. In fact, already two episodes of discriminatory acts have already taken place on campus. With this said, now it is time to come all together and show that being humans is learning to live with each other with love and respect. Please, let’s show everybody that ignorance is not the answer, but what we must embrace is a behaviors based on understanding and acceptance.

Here an important and inspirational letter send out to all the Ambassadors by our supervisor Shelby Arthur:

Lastly, I would like to add that we need to take action in order to produce real change. We need to act non-violently and raise awareness through pacific protests and anti-hate events. A great and inspiring event to which I just took part was the March in Santa Barbara against Trump! Thousands of people joined and pacifically marched down State Street chanting and spreading love and peace against the hate that exponentially increased after the election. The fight against homophobia, racism, sexism, the destruction of the environment hasn’t started with Trump election, but he gave us an even greater reason to make minorities have their voice heard. Let’s keep fighting for a better world.