January 29, 2009

Washington Post journalist and author Eugene Robinson will speak on “We’re Someplace We’ve Never Been: Race, Diversity and the New America” at 7 p.m. Feb. 5 at California State University, Fresno. The speech, sponsored by the campus Martin Luther King Visiting Scholars Committee, is in the Satellite Student Union, 2485 E. San Ramon Ave. at Maple Avenue, and is free and open to the public.

Robinson is the author of “Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race.” The book explores race and explains why old conceptions of race in America are obsolete.

His lecture will cover topics relating to race relations and diversity today and how politics and culture have come together.

Born and raised in South Carolina, Robinson experienced the Civil Rights movement at its height, as he saw desegregation first hand when he was one of a few African-American students in an all-white high school. Robinson also remembers the “Orangeburg Massacre,” in which three unarmed black men were killed at a bowling alley in Orangeburg, S.C., in 1968.

In the 25 years that Robinson has worked for The Washington Post, he has covered local governments, worked as a foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London and served as The Washington Post’s assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section.

Free parking for the event will be available in Lots A and J.

For more information contact Roxanne Hinds at 559.278.8597.