The words \diversity"" and ""tolerance"" are often seen as footholds of anti-racist rhetoric.
Anti-racist activist Tim Wise disagrees.
""By 2005, over 50 percent of the country will be people of color,"" Wise said. ""Really, that's not the point.""
Wise spoke Tuesday as a guest of the Contemporary Issues Committee. He criticized the No Child Left Behind Act, taxes and the privatization of health care, citing their negative effects on the quality of life of minorities.
There is an entire history that precedes a lack of diversity, according to Wise, and society must question the reasons for this lack of diversity and its implications on minorities' lives.
The federal government's correlation of school resources on standardized test results is a huge disadvantage for minority schoolchildren, Wise said. This social and economic standardization ""does not exist.""
""He covered a lot of things, particularly within education, that need to be covered more on this campus,"" UW-Madison senior Ben Winick said.
Privatization of health care, by restricting access to people of lower socioeconomic status, is ""not only classist, but also racist,"" he said.
Citizens who wish to get rid of capital gains taxes but retain payroll taxes are the people making over ""that $90,000 cap,"" Wise said. By exempting capital gains income, taxes will favor those who earn large incomes and hold the most stock.
""I enjoyed how he really turned over the discussion to one of social justice, rather than just racism,"" UW-Madison senior Youssef Sawan said.
""The reality is, that it is black and brown wisdom merely being reflected to you by a white man,"" Wise said.
Wise's speech, ""Beyond 'Diversity': Challenging Racism in an Age of Backlash,"" did not neglect the ""backlash"" portion of its title.
Denial of the existence of racism serves as a backlash to anti-racist progress and is ""an intergenerational process,"" Wise said.
In 1962, two years before the Civil Rights Act, 70 to 80 percent of Americans believed minorities had equal opportunities in jobs, education and housing, Wise said. The 2002 statistic was the same.
Two books Wise wrote that will be released this year, ""White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son"" and ""Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White,"" also touch on these contemporary issues.
The lecture was the first of Wise's four-day lecture series on the UW-Madison campus.
