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Ask the Expert • Pop
Quiz - Are you addicted to the Internet? |
With the early departure of the U.S. delegation
and controversy over discussion of slavery and the Middle East, was
the recent U.N. conference on racism a failure?
One national magazine described the United
Nations Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and
Related Intolerance as “The Disgrace in Durban.” Another
magazine saw it is as “largely a failure,” but saw some
“silver linings” in the beginning of a conversation the
world sorely needs. I wish the conference had been able to deal with
a more comprehensive set of issues—the problems of Afro-Latinos,
the Kurds in Turkey, the untouchables in India, the indigenous people
in Australia, and others so badly abused—but I would not conclude
that it was either a disgrace or a failure.
I prefer to see those who are frustrated and justifiably
angered by their predicament engaged in rhetoric rather than violence.
We may not have liked some of the things we heard in Durban, but it
provided a forum rather than a battlefield. All of us can learn something
from the passion let loose before and during the conference. We should
now have a better feel for the frustration
of the large numbers of people who are desperately seeking some sign
that the rest of the world cares.
I wish the United States had remained engaged. We had
an opportunity to help shape the final declaration. Even in our absence,
the South Africans and others willing to lead the search for common
ground took the conference light-years ahead of where it began. I
believe that
the highly respected Colin Powell could have taken it even further.
This was an opportunity to talk sense about reconciliation and reparation,
to shift the conver-sation away from individual
compensation to assisted self-reliance and participatory development.
The legacy of slavery and segregation, the intentional underdevelopment
of a people,
is all around us. We ignore it at our peril.
Was the conference a failure? Absolutely not. We have
the beginnings of a global antiracism movement where it belongs—with
the institutions of civil society. Let us not forget the role that
civil-society groups played in the collapse of Communism, the fall
of the Berlin Wall, and the ending of apartheid. Governments will
only address the issues of racism, racial discrimination, and related
intolerance if the people demand it. Durban may have been the beginning
of a global demand.
—James Joseph, former U.S. ambassador to South Africa
and the leader-in-residence for the Hart Leadership Program at the
Sanford Institute of Public Policy |
As students were returning to their fall-semester routines, we
asked them:
Are you addicted to the Internet?
National surveys suggest that young people in particular are spending
much of their time online. Our results—the product of non-virtual
conversations—suggested a similar picture.
One self-identified Internet
addict is Dylan Ashbrook, a sophomore. “When I’m writing
a paper, I check my e-mail every two minutes,” he says. “Not
because I think I’ve got any messages but because it’s exciting,
like the lottery, to think someone tried to communicate with me in
that two-minute span.”
A rare dissenter, senior James
Watts, is less excited by the techniques of quick communication. “I’m
not addicted to the Internet,” he insists. “I frown upon
the Internet. I like to be outside.”
Inside is presumably the place
to accomplish class assignments, but Jainey Bavishi, a junior, says
she is “really addicted to my Instant Messenger,” adding,
“I spend more time reading people’s away message some nights
than I spend doing my homework.” Says sophomore Elise Law, “I
don’t know what I would do without AOL IM. I don’t even
use the phone anymore.” Instant Messenger seems to have an even
stronger hold on Keri-Ann O’Leary, a sophomore, for whom the
allure of the virtual trumps physical proximity: “I talk to Evelyn
with it, and she lives across the hall.”
Similarly, sophomore Sandy Hernandez
admits she “definitely” talks too much using instant-
messaging, and says she’s nostalgic for phone communication—or
even for get-togethers that don’t rely on technology. One of
her classmates, Joseph Lee, says, “I use the Internet as a tool—but
I don’t think I’m addicted. I use it to get e-mail, read
The Chronicle, and read the newspaper back home.”
“You could use the word
‘addicted,’ but ‘effective’ is the word I would
use,” says Carla Brackman, a junior. “I have an online answering
service, direct mail, and all the info my little heart could desire
at my fingertip. So if I were addicted, it’s not a bad thing
to be addicted to.”
Of course, Internet access has
everything to do with Internet addiction. “I’m not addicted
because I only started getting the Internet at the end of my senior
year in high school,” says freshman Sammy Negrete. Says senior
Liesel Stanhope, “I live off-campus, so I don’t have the
Internet in my house. It’s not readily
available. If it was, I might use it a lot more.”
And what happens when Internet
addiction intersects with consumer passions? Sophomore Ted Mann offers
an example: “My roommate searches eBay constantly for the same
pair of shoes, even though he already has two pairs of them.”
—compiled by Lucas Schaefer ’04 |
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