This is my post about the Diversity Event that I attended for the Hixson Peer Mentor program! The session I attended was on Wednesday, April 18th at 8:00PM in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union. Besides having to battle the rain before and after, it was overall a good time! The session was entitled "How to Be Black" and was given by comedian Baratunde Thurston.
This actually wasn't what I was expecting as a diversity event. I looked up the details of the presentation about 45 minutes beforehand ( lectures@iastate.edu ) and realized that this diversity event would not be so much a lecture as it was a comedy show. This presentation took a much more comedic and laidback approach to the topic than I would have previously expected. But there was plenty of heavy stuff (as can be expected when discussing racism and African-American history). The speaker focused more on his up-bringing than African-Americans as a whole, including discussing his family and his prior experiences.
He is also very active with social media, and has an apparently deep hatred of the "Twilight" film series. But seriously, who can fault him for that?
Overall, it was very hilarious AND well-meaning. I learned a couple of important things about diversity while feeling like I was at a show hosted by Comedy Central! That's a success in my book: learning something about diversity in as light-hearted a tone as you can!
I agree that I definitely got the Comedy Central vibe! I think he went about approaching the subject just right though. He was serious enough at times to get his his points across, but still kept it funny and light-hearted! It was definitely a good time, and I found his deep hatred of "Twilight" particularly amusing!
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