Can We Talk About Race

On September 25, 2008, I went to hear Beverly Tatum speak as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series. We meet in front of Sci-Tech High at about six fifteen and left for the lecture which started at seven in the Brubaker Auditorium on the Messiah College Campus. Dr. Tatum’s lecture was title “Can We Talk About Race?” which also so happens to be the title of her most recent book. The audience was mostly college students, particularly Messiah College students, but there was also a number of adults who were mostly faculty of different colleges; I think the youngest person there was maybe 16, most were at least 18 and older. After the lecture there was a question and answer session which I found to be slightly more interesting than the actual lecture. Not that the lecture was not good, but in the question and answer session what she was saying sounded more real and less rehearsed. Also, in her actual lecture she was throwing statistics and facts around, a lot of which were not all that new of thought provoking for me. After the lecture while we were waiting for our vans I got a chance to talk to Nancy Adams, the HU librarian. On the way back to the school then I was able to talk to our van driver, Brandon, who was a student at Messiah College.