Speaking on issues of race, poverty and American popular culture, Juan Williams delivered the 16th Annual Dwight L. Greene Symposium in the Memorial Chapel on Oct. 18.

In a speech delivered entirely from memory, entitled “Enough: The Future of Black America,” Williams invited audience members to imagine a 79-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., visiting them that day in the Chapel, only to find out about and be disappointed by the high rate of high school dropout, single-mother households and incarceration that currently plague Black America.

“What’s going on right now with black people in America today?” Williams suggested Dr. King might ask audience members.

A graduate from Haverford College, Williams is a senior correspondent for National Public Radio’s (NPR) “Morning Edition,” a political analyst for Fox Television, a regular panelist on “FoxNews Sunday” and the host of “America’s Black Forum.”

Williams has also written prize-winning columns and editorials for “The Washington Post,” as well as six books, the most recent of which is entitled, “Enough—The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It.” After his remarks, a reception was held in the Zelnick Pavilion, where Williams sold and signed copies of this book.

Sponsored by the Black Alumni Council and the Wesleyan Alumni of Color Network, the Symposium honors Dwight L. Greene ’70 and seeks to speak on the African American experience.

In his introductory remarks, President Michael Roth lauded Williams for his many contributions to the study of American history, including his nonfiction best-seller on the Civil Rights Movement, “Eyes on the Prize,” and the critically-acclaimed biography, “Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary.”

“He looked back on history, the Civil Rights Movement in particular, with great receptiveness, thoughtfulness and care to get the story right and to tell the story in a compelling, fascinating way,” Roth said. “[Williams is] a man who has taught us to understand cultural change in the past, and a man who is asking us to engage in cultural change in the present.”

Before diving into an ambitious speech that combined imagery of Dr. King’s spirit with compelling statistics, Williams joked about the University’s liberal reputation, New England’s weather and the New Hampshire primaries.

In contextualizing his arguments, Williams cited renowned black authors, from Frederick Douglass to Richard Wright to Malcolm X.

“We have to have a sense of where we are in order to understand who we are and where we are going,” he said.

Williams also touched on his coming-of-age during the Civil Rights Movement, explaining that he watched many of his fellow citizens refrain from participating because of fear. Drawing a parallel between the discontent in that time period and the 90 percent of Americans who, according to recent polls, currently feel the country is on the wrong track, Williams urged audience members to get involved in contemporary issues such as the upcoming Nov. 4 election and the current economic crisis.

“I would hope that none of you caring, politically conscious people would ever have that regret about 2008,” he said. “In so many ways, on so many levels, this is a transformative year.”

After giving a brief sum-up of American politics in the last decade, Williams set his scene for the remainder of the lecture: a bald, black man with a cane—King—walking into the Chapel, causing a scene and ultimately being led to Roth’s office, where he would then inquire of audience members about black America today.

The audience member, Williams noted, would first laud African American achievements: a black Democratic nominee for president who is leading in the polls, unprecedented growth in the black middle class and a black woman as secretary of state. Williams joked that African Americans have also been in leadership at Fannie Mae and Merrill Lynch.

“They’ve been stealing too, just like the white people,” Williams said.

All jokes aside, Williams launched into an enumeration of startling statistics to answer the imagined King’s inquiries about poverty and children in America. Twelve percent of the country is in poverty, but 25 percent of black people and 23 percent of Hispanic people live in poverty, Williams said, also noting that 35 to 40 percent of black children live in poverty as well.

Every time King brought up issues surrounding poverty—single-mother households, high school dropout rates, increased incarceration—Williams suggested that the audience member asked might stutter at first before revealing the above statistics.

“It’s complicated, Dr. King,” Williams repeatedly imagined that the audience member might respond to King.

After revealing that 60 percent of those jailed are people of color, Williams’ audience member accompanied King to Roth’s office where he flipped through television channels only to be further disheartened with contemporary society.

First turning to the number one cable program in America, “Flavor of Love,” King is shocked to see a black man in a clown hat surrounded by women competing for his love.

“You have a minstrel show on TV in the twenty-first century?” King exclaims.

After seeing a rap video on BET, King’s response is no better.

“This looks like the KKK channel,” King says.

Williams commented on the images that these forms of entertainment and others like them perpetuate in the minds of audiences of all races.

“You’re too educated to accept this,” King says to Williams’ audience member.

Shifting from media influences to education issues, the audience member informs King of Bill Cosby’s statements about the rising high dropout rates—50 percent of black and Hispanic kids drop out of high school, Williams says.

“The lower-income, poor black people aren’t holding up their end of the deal,” Williams’ audience member sums up Cosby’s sentiments.

While the audience member criticizes Cosby’s indictment of the poor as responsible for their conditions, King defends Cosby.

“Did he lie?” King says. “Did he say anything wrong?”

After his stay in 2008, King comes to a sad conclusion about America.

“I feel like I’ve come back to the land of the living dead,” he says.

After engaging the audience in this imaginative scene, Williams explained its relevance.

“It turns out the spirit of Dr. King came here for this weekend, because of who we are,” he said. “If there was to be a spirit of Dr. King it would reside at Wesleyan. If there is a living Dr. King he lives in each and every one of our actions.”

Williams closed his remarks with a call to public service—much like the one Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama preached in his commencement address at the University this past May.

“At some point you’ve got to turn off the TV, you’ve got to get involved,” Williams said. “Act as the artists and sculptors who shape America, but you can only do this if you keep your eyes on the prize.”

Following Williams’ remarks, audience members were invited to engage in a dialogue, and many pressed the speaker for further explanation of some of these issues.

“We’re trying to get back to really bringing speakers that will leave us with some thought-provoking discussion,” said Sanford Livingston ’87, chair of the Wesleyan Black Alumni Council.

One audience member, Cheryl Johnson-Odim P’10, suggested that statistics may not tell the whole story and asked Williams to elaborate on what that fuller story might be.

“I appreciate his intent to identify the need for accountability and responsibility within the African American community,” Johnson-Odim wrote in an e-mail to The Argus. “At the same time, his presentation relied heavily on statistics, and statistics describe but do not explain. The lack of empirical analysis in his talk was somewhat addressed, though, in his responses to questions.”

In his response, Williams acknowledged both the need to combat institutional racism in America and the need for individuals to take up the fight as well, in instilling positive values in their children.

Kip Davis P’10, also in the audience, then followed up by citing his personal experience working with families in Harlem as evidence that even if parents emphasize education in the home, their children’s dreams may still be deferred.

“Those young people are so vulnerable and so easily hurt,” Williams responded. “They’re being given messages that they just don’t matter.”

During the book signing at Zelnick, however, Johnson-Odim and Davis had mixed reactions to Williams’ responses to their questions.

“I think there was a lot left unsaid,” Davis said. “It seemed to me that he’s expecting the victims to bear all the responsibility for changing their lives. It’s a mutual responsibility. The institutions that those at-risk interact with have to be held responsible as well.”

Johnson-Odim agreed.

“It was simplistic to think that people can change things on their own if there are systemic issues,” she said “The ’beloved community’ that Dr. King promoted recognized the need for the convergence of individual responsibility and institutional responsibility to affect progressive change that addresses systemic problems.”

Johnson-Odim also noted that the talk and the question-answer session differed in tone.

“I thought his talk was at a superficial level, but his responses to our questions showed that he had reflected on the deeper level of both problems and solutions,” she said. “I thought his responses to questions were much more reflective and much less simplistic than much of his talk.”

Ruby-Beth Buitekant ’09, who asked Williams to elaborate on the prison-industrial complex, similarly voiced appreciation for Williams’ ability to engage questions.

“He really listened intently to everyone who asked questions, which I really appreciated,” she said. “Even if I didn’t agree with everything he said, it was very sincere.”

Buitekant’s mother, Beth-Ann Buitekant P’09, who also attended the lecture, expressed disagreement with Williams’ views as well.

“I did agree with a lot of what he was presenting, but I also would like to see a stronger presentation to a white audience here,” she said. “He had a white, liberal audience and I believe that white people need to be held accountable for the misgivings in the black community. I don’t think you can speak of the underlying causes of what is occurring in the black community without engaging the fact that white people need to come forward and participate in healing the process and taking responsibility for the fact that institutional racism exists.”

A member of the Black Alumni Council, Lydia Esdayile ’85, praised the audience’s size and diversity, but similarly criticized Williams’ argument, citing her personal experience trying to improve images in the music industry.

“I agree with some of the things he said,” she said. “The solutions are more complex than he proposes that they are. The dollar takes the precedence a lot of time over quality and substance in our entertainment and music.”

While Ruby-Beth Buitekant had voiced similar concerns over Williams’ content, she praised his oratory skills.

“I think he was really able to capture people’s attention with the style he used,” she said. ’I always want people to push a little further when they’re talking to such a captive audience, but I thought it was fantastic.