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]