Leonardo Dorantes Lecture

Last week I attended the Leonardo Dorantes Lecture. The speakers included:
Dr. Ben Partee: Dean of Educational Programs, Luis Villegas: Trustee on the Board of Trustees,
Dr. Andreea Serban: Superintendent and President, and Dr Richard Pimental, a world renowned speaker, who has inspired a movie (The Music Within).

The Leonard Dorantes Lecture was created to honor a Mexican immigrant who was murdered in a hate crime in Santa Barbara. The lecture  series "was designed to heighten the understanding of of racial and ethnic differences and shared commonalities in Santa Barbara" (taken from the lecture brochure).

Dr. Pimental was an inspiring speaker, and much more down to earth than I was expecting after watching the movie preview for the Music Within. I took notes during the presentation in order to share his story in as comprehensive a way as possible for those who were not able to attend.


I think his main point was: "I ask myself, who are the victimes of hatred? Who are the victims of prejudice?...Those who hate, are too the victims of their hatred."

His lecture told like a storyteller. The first story was about his parents, a Chinese man and Irish woman who were married at a time when an interracial marriage was uncommon and unpopular. This shortly after World War Two, and there was a lot of racism towards the Japanese. A stranger assumed Dr. Pimental's father was Japanese, and spit on his mom. In turn, his father ended up punching the man and knocking out his teeth. He felt so bad for the stranger that he took him to the dentist.

The next day, his father was arrested for assualt, and because worked as a sparring partner, they held him for contempted murder. He spent three years in jail, and two years after release died from health issues. It was amazing that Dr. Pimental shared that he'd finally come to terms with this, and realized the stranger was a victim as well.

"We are all the victims of hatred and fear, whether we are the ones who are hated, or we are the ones who fear, or who simply suffer the aftermath of the circumstances."

Then Dr. Pimental went on to share some of his favorite quotes, a passion he'd developed when he was learning to write speeches. He shared that Oliver Windell Holmes said "Most people go their grave with the their music still inside of them". This is the inspiration for the title of the movie, the Music Within.

"We live in a world that tells people they don't have music inside them. Or they don't have music that is worth finding. The tragedy of that is if there are enough people who believe that about others, the people with music may start to believe it about themselves."

 He then went on to explain that, "Tolerance is not good enough for me." I personally loved this attitude- it's not just funny, its poignant!

He told the next story about how he had gotten drafted in Vietnam because he could not afford college. He got blown up while in a beer bunker, and he suffered hearing loss and a traumatic brain injury. After re-learning to drive and function normally, he wanted to use his gi bill and finally go to school, but was denied.



The rehab counselor said he couldn't go to college, because people with brain injuries cannot do university level work and cannot be successful. This of course infuriated Dr. Pimental and inspired him to do just that. He said, "Today we have over 380,000 verterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who have tramautic brian injuries, going to college and being successful...
The biggest threat to my being successful was not leraning to read lips, to do things over again, tolerate ringing in my ears. I had to overcome people's low expectations of me, a far greater barrier than any I had acquired on my own."

He then explained what the word discount meant to him. Similar to discounting a product during  a sale, its a sign that something is worth less than what it was worth originally.
"Discount: it what's when you believe that another human being is worth far less than they really are. Whenever you see someone discounted or whenver you are discounted, remember that is not your value. When they put that tag on you that says 50 percent off. I want you to remeber that you are not 50 percent off. You are worth 100 percent of your value to yourself to the ones you love and to me. Do not let anyone discount you. And do not discount anyone. The only thing you should be discount is an Iphone."

He then told us about his friend who he met, and the unusual way they met. He actually didn't want to meet him at all, but he helped Arthur Honeyman pick up a can of coca cola. "Many times the things that seem like the worst things that ever happen to you, ultimately are for the greater good. If you look back at the time at the things you hated at the moment, and you had been given a chance to go back in time and change them you would not. Because they were so important to you later in life."  Dr. Pimental realized he could hear him perfectly. He found out later that the speech pattern his friend  had as a result of cerebal palsy matched the pattern of his hearing loss.

He then told us an exceptionally sad story, about a waitress who approached he and Art at a pancake house. "The waitress came up to Art and said the cruelest thing I have ever heard. 'You are the ugliest most disgusting looking thing I have ever seen in my life. I cannot believe you have come to a place where people are trying to eat. You are going to make us sick...people like you should not ever come out of your house.'"

Instead of turning to tears or depression, his friend said to him: "So Richard, why do you think she's talking to you that way." She threatened to call the police on them, and they accepted. 

Art said, "I want to go jail, and Richard wants to go to jail too." Dr. Pimental explained how he could have left, fearing jail and just left the scene. But instead he chose to stick his neck out, and he told the audience that, "They charged us with breaking an ugly law. They prohibited people who are physically disabled from being out in the public fair. In 1972 we lived in a disability apartheid. 23 cities had that law." That was pretty shocking to me! He spent 20-30 years getting these laws off the book. They made it unconstitutional for such a law to exist and created The Americans with Disabilities Act.

"We did it so people with disabilities could have the right to do something that so many Americans take for granted. Have a spontaneous life. We did it so an ESL student today can decide to go downtown and walk down state street and come back alive, without people saying they were in the wrong place or the wrong time. There is no wrong place and there is no wrong time."

"There is nothing wrong with people with disabilities, there is just something wrong with the way we react to them. And couldn't you not put every group in that sentence. women, African Americans, any people. What causes hatred? Fear. Do you know why some of us are able to respect and understand what they fear. Those people who hate what they fear, don't respect themselves. The hatred they manifest toward others is simply the hatred they hold for themselves. You can't hate another if you truly respect and love yourself. That's why those who hate, are also victims of hate."

He then talked about how a joke can cause be painful. " A joke will draw as much blood as a knife."
He told the story of being at a retreat for tolerance professionals, where everyone was made to tell a discriminatory joke about their culture. A woman told the joke:  "Why there are only 1,001 mexicans at alamo? We only had one truck." The teacher made her keep repeating it. "By the 10th time, people in the audience were crying, and the woman who told the joke was in tears." She told her story, about being a child piling into a car with all of her familia. When she got out of the car, people looked at her with shame, shaking their heads at her family. The woman explained that by that look, "You have taken that part of our culture that we are most proud of, our loyalty to familia, and you make us ashamed to be ourselves." The shake of the head or the joke have the same effect, which I see as making someone feel discounted and stop valuing themselves and their culture. 

"I want you to consider the pain of hatred is not just discounting a person by a mythical standard, discounting them for all those things we hold important. We are the victims of hatred, and it is up to us to do something about it, not with retribution but with love, compassion and understanding."

The lecture was very moving, especially as I know people with various disabilities struggling to be understood. Beyond that though, the lecture helped me to think about the importance of accepting people for who they are, and how to get through prejudice and maintain integrity. 

Thank you to Dr. Pimental and his agent, Milt Wright, for letting me post this story and quote the lecture.