C.T. Vivian spoke Thursday night to a packed Cole Hall about the societal and human costs of racism.

“To secure democracy, we’re going to have to form a coalition,” Vivian told the audience. “We are part of a critical decade, this decade may be the most critical of the next fifty.”

It is because of what is happening in the world now, that makes it critical, Vivian said. “There are no more ‘banana republics’ in the world.” If we do not take advantage of our human resources, the rest of the world will leave us behind, he said.

Vivian continually stressed the idea that racism squanders our most valuable resource—people. “Nothing has destroyed more people, psychologically and physically over a longer length of time—and still does so—because of the passivity of American life,” he said.

“There is not an institution in this nation that is not racist,” Vivian said. “And until those institutions deal with racism within, America can never become the nation of its dreams,” he said.

Vivian said students “are central to whether this decade will be a decade of destruction, or a decade of development.”

Vivian said he believes there is a resurgence in racism. As proof, he cited numerous racially-motivated incidents which occurred on college campuses over the past couple of years, including NIU.

People are beginning to see racism “on the front burner” because they can “see the death of democracy,” Vivian said. “We have been faced with an administration that has tried to turn the clock backward on people’s issues,” he said.

Vivian said “student rebellion in the sixties was a positive thing.” And because there has been no “moral and spiritual voice speaking” since then, the youth “rebellion has taken the form of, in fact, being racist.”

Vivian also attributed the rise in racial incidents to the idea that this generation of college students “is ignorant as to what went on before it in race relations.”

To emphasize his feelings of political action sometimes being racially motivated, Vivian recalled last year’s election of David Duke to the Louisiana House of Representatives. Duke is a known Ku Klux Klan member who, Vivian said, had the financial backing of many top Republican Party members.

The speech was sponsered by the African Student Union. It was co-sponsered by Black Student Union, B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S., Center for Black Studies and Sigma Chi fraternity.

Vivian stressed he is in favor of making a cultural diversity class mandatory on all college campuses.

Sigma Chi fraternity members said after the speech “we have learned from our mistakes,” referring to an incident last spring in which Sigma Chi members performed a skit in black face that was seen as racially derogatory.

Sigma Chi members want the rest of the Greek community to realize the faults of racism and follow their lead in combating it.

Vivian has been a member of the civil rights movement since its beginning. He served on Martin Luther King’s executive staff and was personally involved in six non-violent movements with King.