Pruis Hall filled nearly to capacity with students, faculty and community members who came to hear a 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner as part of this year’s Ball State Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration.
The Washington Post and MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson, focused his speech around the question, “Is America Living the Dream?”
He gave his answer by highlighting a few events in his life from when he was born in segregated Orangeburg, S.C. in 1954 to experiencing President Barack Obama’s re-election with his “intense and dysfunctional MSNBC family.”
“Whoever says this country hasn’t changed in the time they’ve been alive, I’m here to tell you that it has,” Robinson said.
Robinson said the Orangeburg Massacre of 1968, in which three young men were killed by state patrol officers’ fire during a nonviolent protest, happened maybe 400 yards outside of his childhood home.
He credits that event with being “a lot of the reason” why he became a journalist, when two years later he wrote an award-winning essay for his freshman English class at the University of Michigan, and then changed his major from architecture.
Robinson then fast-forwarded to the 2008 general election night with his MSNBC crew at the Rockefellar Center.
“Something in the back of my mind is saying, ‘No this isn’t happening’… and at 10:45 p.m. we hear through our earpieces that the network is going to call the election for Obama at 11.” Robinson said. “I thought, ‘When they call the election for Obama, they are going to turn to the black guy, so I have to figure out something to say.’”
Robinson said he got to call his 92-year-old father during a short break to tell him that he had lived long enough to see the election of the first African-American president of the United States, just a few months before he died.
Robinson jumped once again to election night 2012, back again with his MSNBC family, this time without that voice of doubt in the back of his mind.
“In our 400-year conflict with race that started in 1619, when the first slave came to Jamestown ... 400 years we’ve been at this,” Robinson said. “And it struck me that it might be even more significant that a black president could be re-elected, because if it happened once it could be some kind of cosmic accident.”
Community member and Ball State alumna Clarise Mason said the event was a great opportunity for students and community members to hear from someone who lived through history.
“I think it is always great to hear a personal story, and he was born in 1954, right in the middle of all of this.” Mason said.
Jaxx Simmons, a freshman physical therapy major, enjoyed the speech but thought some of the audience’s questions were offensive. The last question asked was whether Robinson thought the increase in minorities voting would continue.
“I just think that some people should stop referring to others as minorities,” Simmons said. “Certain people who are unintelligent about something should not refer to others as minorities. It is very disrespectful, it is very rude and it is actually a racial term. She’s lucky she left. I wasn’t going to fight her, I was just going to tell her.”
No conflicts actually occurred, and Robinson’s message was clear — America continues to progress toward equality.
“I just think diversity in media is so important,” Robinson said. “I don’t own a newspaper, but it’s my business.”
