4. ONE WAY TO START A LECTURE:
Lecture by Coskun Cöruz (President, Council of Europe
Minority Youth Committees),
"Dear friends, please close your eyes for one minute
and imagine that you are far, far away, somewhere in another
country.... [Songs played from tape: "Homeless",
words and music by Paul Simon and Joseph Sbabalala and "Under
African Skies", words and music by Paul Simon]
The year is 2090. We are situated in a country somewhere
on the African continent, which has in recent decades taken
over the role of "first world" more and more.
Since the turn of the millennium, great employment, overpopulation,
ecological breakdown and political extremism have driven
especially Europe and North America to a social and economical
crisis. In the years following the breakdown of the old
"First World's" financial and social stability
all major multinational and even smaller companies have
moved their headquarters as well as their industry to Africa.
Here they still found the space they needed to expand and
sufficiently educated employees. Whereas in Europe and the
United States the political rigidity of the new extreme
right had driven most inhabitants to a state of complete
intellectual apathy and demotivation, resulting finally
in the closing down of many of the major universities and
some main educational centres.
For quite some years now, Europeans and Americans have
also emigrated to Africa to find economic and social security
and the political and intellectual freedom they had lost
rapidly after the establishment of the new European Government
under the European leadership of prime minister Le Ballpoint.
So far this immigration has been accepted by the Africans,
but now that unemployment and its consequences start to
affect the African society, the immigrants are becoming
the victims of a new racism and cultural and social injustice.
This particularly affects the Europeans who, having lost
their local cultures in the process of Le Ballpoint's New
European policy of uniformity, are faced with problems when
they move to Africa: their present cultural minority complex
causes them to get intensely influenced by the African culture
and social traditions, which they are often forced to take
over, for the better or for worse...
If this is a mirror, each one of you has to decide for
him or her self: do I like to look in it? What was (or is)
the situation nowadays?"
[Coskun then went on to describe the processes
of immigration and the consequences of living in multicultural
societies.]
[International Christian Youth Exchange,
"A Multicultural Europe as a Framework for Learning",
Iceland, April 1990]
|