Racial discrimination in the United States affects everyone from alien life forms to Oscar nominees, author and poet Nikki Giovanni told an over-capacity crowd Wednesday night in McCormick Auditorium.
“The alien should come to the black community. We’re tolerant,” said Giovanni, this quarter’s COLORS speaker. “White people would say, ‘What’s that? Get the rifle.'”
Giovanni, author of the best-selling “Blues for All the Changes,” spoke to a diverse audience as part of COLORS, a program to promote racial sensitivity on college campuses sponsored by the National Panhellenic Council, the Panhellenic Association and the Interfraternity Council.
Denying Morgan Freeman an Oscar in 1990 was “clearly prejudice” on the part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Giovanni said. She also expressed hope that Will Smith and Halle Berry will walk away with Oscars in March.
“How come the (one person) who didn’t win the Oscar for ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ was the person who drove her?” Giovanni said.
Taking a more serious tone, Giovanni said the United States has failed to acknowledge social issues such as racism and homophobia. The country must recognize these problems before it can fix them, she said, alluding to reparations for slavery.
“It’d be a good idea if someone said, ‘We’re really sorry,'” she said. “A paycheck would be an even better idea. (Slaves) deserve to be paid for what they did.”
Giovanni went on to express her interest in outer space travel, saying that before humans travel to Mars, they must first study black history. The struggle to remember their homes that astronauts may face is similar to that of Africans during the Middle Passage, she said. Forced to leave their homes for a new world of slavery, Africans would have forgotten who they were and where they came from if they hadn’t kept certain traditions, such as music, she said.
“If you’re going to space, you’re going to need Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker,” she said.
Giovanni spent the second half of her speech saluting black heroes Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Langston Hughes. She read poems about these figures, praising their contributions to the black community.
“I think it’s great that Valentine’s Day and Black History Month are both in February,” Giovanni said as a segue into her final topic – love. “You get chocolate all around.”
Giovanni concluded with a farcical commentary on love. Because many marriages end in divorce, Giovanni said, couples should save money on the wedding and throw fancy divorce parties. As she walked off the stage, Giovanni read a poem praising love, so the audience wouldn’t think she was cynical, she said.
“If you don’t find a way to give something back to somebody and have somebody give something back to you, what you are doing is useless,” Giovanni said at the beginning of the speech. “Life is about living.”
Student responses to the speech varied.
“I thought it was funny, and interesting to hear a different perspective,” said Kate Lazarus, a Weinberg freshman. “But I felt she was particularly speaking to African Americans, and it was a little alienating for me.”
Others called the speech uplifting, and said it left them feeling upbeat.
“Nikki Giovanni was humorous, enlightening and thought-provoking,” said Speech freshman Alexis Little. “She was herself.”
