Columns:: Worth repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::February 17, 2003

Worth repeating

Michael Thurmond, Georgia commissioner of labor and former UGA faculty member in the Vinson Institute of Government, delivered the keynote address at the campus symposium on diversity Feb. 7. An excerpt:
“I remember as a child when Ms. Hunter-Gault first gained admission, along with Hamilton Holmes, to this university. I remember the sirens and the fear that gripped the black community.…
“I remember growing up in this city and in this county being afraid to set foot on this campus. I grew up, quite frankly--and I don’t think I’ve ever said this publicly--with a great dislike for the University of Georgia. To me it represented everything that was wrong with this world, with this nation. It was, in my mind, a racist place, with hostility for people who looked like me, for people who were of my race. And so consequently I grew up as a student knowing that wherever I went to college there was one place I would not go.…
“And so, you can imagine the pride and the joy in being able to serve on this faculty, having seen and been a part of, in some significant way, the evolution that has occurred in the South, in my hometown, and at the flagship university of my state.
“But as we talk about diversity, make no mistake about it, the conversation that we would have been engaged in 15 or 20 years ago about diversity would primarily have been a conversation about black folk and white folk. But that, my friends, as you know, is not the conversation that we must engage in today or in the future. The great majority of the population growth in this nation and in this state is growth not really in the indigenous population but growth as a result of immigration. . . .”

--Beth Roberts

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