By AMANDA CLARKE Staff Writer
The Criminal Justice Club and the Black Student Union will be collaborating to host “Discussing Ferguson: Lessons Learned and Underlying Social Issues” on Jan. 27 at 3 p.m. in the Pacific Room of the Werner University Center (WUC).
“It represents all minorities,” said Dolan Kasnick, a member of the Criminal Justice Club who organized the event. “It is an uncomfortable issue; it is ugly, but it is time to have a reasonable conversation about it. But if we ignore this, who knows if we’ll see it again.”
Guest speakers include a representative from the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership, a police officer to talk about current events, a professor who was an officer during the Rodney King riots, and Dr. Dean Braa, from the Sociology department. They will be discussants at a roundtable format.
“I have some background on issues of race and ethnicity, specifically some thoughts and/or theories on racism,” Braa said. “One key issue is the history/evolution of predominantly Black communities as part of metropolitan areas”
The event will talk about historically similar events such as the Rodney King riots, and will speak about what can be learned from the past as well as what steps can be taken now.
It will cover various issues that caused the events that the United States is currently experiencing, such as Ferguson and other riots.
“Lots of questions, but not so many answers,” Braa said. “How is it that Ferguson evolved into a mostly Black suburb? Is residential segregation part of the problem in race relations? Why has the predominant Black population of Ferguson not taken control of city government? Will this happen in the future? How do
we connect issues of race and class in understanding problems in communities like Ferguson?”
The purpose of the event is to hopefully reach a conclusion and learn from the past events in American History.
There will be a table in WUC Thursday and Friday as well as Monday and Tuesday regarding the event.
The event is free and open to all students, faculty and guests.
For more information,
contact Dolan Kasnick at
dkasnick11@wou.edu
