EIU talks brought issues of race and discrimination to the floor for consideration, which had an observance of about 100 people including students, faculty members and even Charleston residents Thursday night.

Linda Scholz, a professor of communication studies, said her students organized the event, but she has guided them through the process of creating the event.

Scholz presented a slideshow of some of the racist remarks made by students on Eastern’s Yik Yak app, as well as Twitter and Facebook posts. Once presented with the social media messages, the audience felt very uncomfortable; some said “Oh my God” or, “that’s terrible” in regards to some of the posts.

During the talk questions were posted on a screen and the audience members were asked to answer the questions through texts.

Polls showed the results of the questions and communication students in a group talked with other members in the audience on solutions to some of these issues others faced. One of the questions posed was: “Do you understand how whiteness works?”

A majority responded that whiteness was a social norm in the United States.

“Whiteness is an idea of conforming to a white society, comparing people based on being white, seeing the world through a white lens,” Scholz said.

One student said her father, remarried to an Asian woman, and her mother had surgery to open her eyes up wider in order to seem more American.

Surgeries such as this may have others who are not from the United States feel as though they are not OK with the person they are, which further proves Scholz’s whiteness theory.

Audience members were actively participating in some of the questions reflecting their intellectual and personal thoughts as they related to race and ethnicity.

Those in the audience associated normalcy or “right” being synonymous with the white culture.

The difficulties of talking about race was also brought up to the audience, and many of the students said they felt uncomfortable talking about race because they were afraid to unintentionally offend people, which seemed to be a common theme the audience members agreed upon.

Another topic of the night was how the media portrays minorities and victims of hate crimes differently, using the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner as examples.

A depiction of Michael Brown as a thief that deserved what he got, compared to a white victim that was described as a straight A student were some of the slides shown.

The central theme throughout the event was to stress the importance of opening up and speaking out about the unfairness. It showed that America has some growing when it comes to how people see certain races or ethnicities.

One student said racism and discrimination was not a hereditary action, instead it is a taught behavior.

One of the final aspects of the event was to ask the audience to make a pledge to help bring light to this topic and to spread the word.

Mike Ommen can be reached at 581-2812 or mwommen@eiu.edu.