Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 22, 2002|Volume 31, Number 12|Two-Week Issue

Actor Edward James Olmos' Chubb Fellowship presentation was part lecture, part performance, as he turned the space near the podium at Luce Hall into a virtual stage.

Olmos argues for more cultural
pride but less racial division

In the public elementary school where Edward James Olmos began his education in 1952, there was a sign that read "If it isn't worth saying in English, it's not worth saying at all."

During his Chubb Fellowship Lecture in a packed Luce Hall on Nov. 15, the award-winning Chicano actor made a point of welcoming his audience in rapid-fire Spanish.

Neglecting to translate what he was saying into English, Olmos apologized to non-Spanish-speaking audience members, who, he commented, would just have to be left in the dark.

His point was to demonstrate his belief that a one-language America is unfair and senseless.

"How can it be that we are going monolingual?" he asked his audience, noting that more than 35 million Latinos live in the United States today, and that they are the country's fastest-growing minority population.

An area by the podium became a mini-stage for Olmos, whose acting credits include the television series "Miami Vice" and the films "Wolfen," "Blade Runner," "Stand and Deliver" and "American Me." There, he acted out portions of his early life growing up as a Chicano youth in east Los Angeles, portraying the expressive fervor of Spanish Southern Baptists in the church he first attended and the piety of communicants in the Catholic church where his father later brought him.

His childhood neighborhood, Olmos recalled, was inhabited by a a mixture of residents and shopkeepers who were from diverse cultures (including Koreans, Russians, African-Americans and Chicanos) and from a variety of religious faiths (including Baptists, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses and others).

"I don't know what a melting pot is," said Olmos. "I've never found any culture that has lost its heritage." He described his own neighborhood as a "salad bowl," where people harmoniously celebrated their own cultures without assimilating.

"Everything was tossed, but everything stayed what it is," he commented. "The lettuce stayed lettuce ... the onions stayed onions."

The veteran actor urged audience members to know and take pride in their own roots, saying, "The deeper you go with your roots, the more you feel you are there. No one can knock you over." However, he contended, regardless of anyone's cultural heritage, all people are descendants of early Africans. "There is no such thing as a Latino race, a Caucasian race, Asian race, African race, indigenous race," he stated. "There's only one race, and that's the human race. Inside of the human race, there are beautiful cultures. We all know that. I dare you to try to live your life without using the word 'race' as a cultural determinant."

A community activist who has worked to prevent gangs and domestic violence and protested naval training exercises in Vieques, Puerto Rico, Olmos urged for reform of American schools to make them more culturally sensitive.

He asked audience members to name a national hero of color, besides Martin Luther King Jr., who they learned about from kindergarten through 12th grade. When no one was able to do so, Olmos noted that American students do not regularly study the contributions of such notable figures as architect and Yale trustee Maya Lin '81 B.A., '86 M.Arch. or American farm labor leader Cesar Chavez. Both, he said, should be studied throughout elementary and secondary school as national heroes. African and Latino studies, he added, should be mandatory subjects in schools.

The actor also stressed the importance of education, saying that in today's world, a bachelor's degree is equal to what a high school diploma was worth on the job market decades ago. He urged students in the audience to continue on to obtain master's and doctoral degrees, as well as to learn more than one language.

Among Chicano students, Olmos said, there is 52% high school drop-out rate. He attributed some of these students' disinterest in education to the fact that the contributions of Hispanics to American society are often overlooked. He complained that Chicano studies in American schools are often "ghetto-ized."

"Fifty-two percent of our kids are literally dying now," Olmos lamented. "I'm not a revolutionary, but there are certain things we should pay attention to."

-- By Susan Gonzalez

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