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Episode #1517
Edward
James Olmos
February 18, 2000
| Holloway: |
Host
Jay Holloway |
| Olmos: |
Edward
James Olmos |
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Holloway: His
name is well known on the big screen and television, but he'd
rather be known as an activist. Meet Edward James Olmos next
on Black Issues Forum.
Voiceover: This
program is made possible in part by contributions from UNCTV
viewers like you.
[THEME
MUSIC]
Holloway: Throughout
his career Edward James Olmos' work has been highly acclaimed.
He has received the LA Drama Circle Award, the Emmy, three
Emmy nominations, two Golden Globe Awards, and in 1988 received
the Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Jaime Escalante,
the dedicated math teacher in "Stand and Deliver," which he
also produced. Most recently he was award the PASS Award from
the National Counsel On Crime and Delinquency for producing
the anti-domestic violence documentary "It Ain't Love". Edward
James Olmos is in North Carolina at UNC TV to host "No Greater
Calling", a public television special to help public understanding
of why professional development, high standards, and the use
of best practices are so important to teachers, and to our
system of public education. Mr. Olmos, welcome to North Carolina.
It's a pleasure to have you on Black Issues Forum.
Olmos: It's
a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Holloway: We're
actually on the set that you've been working on while here,
"No Greater Calling," but you're very active in public broadcasting,
particularly with the Latino public broadcasting productions.
Tell me why you're so active in public television.
Olmos: I
think that public broadcasting is the only television that's
really worthwhile seeing. We do set the standard. Things like
Discovery Channel, most of the television ideas that have
come from more advanced viewing, the History Channels ands
stuff like that, come out of public broadcasting. They were
things that were marketed and understood in the fifties and
sixties and then pushed forward by the commercial and cable
companies. We are the leading edge in public broadcasting,
and I'm very grateful, and I wish that we would stand out
even more. Our diversity-I am right now heading the Latino
Broadcasting Productions, which is an arm of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting and the PBS stations all over America.
We feed them productions that are Latino based. There's the
Latino Consortium, there's the African American Consortium,
the Native American Consortium, the Asian American, the Pacific
Islanders. There are five major consortiums that help develop
diverse product for public broadcasting.
Holloway: With
all of these consortia why don't we have more diversity on
public television and television in general?
Olmos: I
would have to say mainly it's the issues of the kind of people
who watch Public Broadcasting. Since they devoted the majority
of Public Broadcasting to a certain segment of the society,
one being European American in culture another being an age
range of between 25 to 55 and up. They've gotten that market
strongly in the last 30 or 40 years, but they didn't really
go after the diversity in the communities because at that
point, when it started there was maybe 90%, or 85%, European
American and then everything else. Now when its almost 50/50-people
of color versus European Americans-we have a problem, a big
problem, and that's one of the issue's we've been trying to
deal with over the last ten years, and especially in the last
two years since we've been a part of the consortia. One of
the things we do know is that our client, of the viewing public
that we have right now, the European Americans on PBS right
now watching our stations are not the youth of the European
Americans. Therefore we will start to loose our constituency
in the future. We have to start really realizing that the
future lies within the diversity of the different cultures
that represent American society. So we are, hopefully, going
to see much more diversity. We'll push through into a higher
level of understanding of that and maybe even push the major
commercial and cable television stations to go the same way.
Holloway: Speaking
of that change, I know you have some strong views on how to
change public broadcasting and the entertainment industry,
maybe from ownership more on the camera and behind the camera.
You want to share those views with the audience?
Olmos: Well,
I think that when the images that we see are balanced on a
corporate level, an economic level, an entrepreneurship level,
we'll start to see that filter into the programming and the
products, and the whole aesthetic of the economy and the things
that make the different art forms function. It takes us knowing
that there may be 347 seven public broadcasting stations throughout
the United States of America and I would say 99% of them are
being executive directored, or directed, or their presidency
is held by a European American. That right there gives you
the emphasis as to why the programming isn't diverse. Its
not that European Americans don't know about diversity, they
do, but for some reason, like the major networks, they sometimes
lose their perspective. They need to be understanding of that.
If you had an Asian American or if you had an indigenous person,
or an African American Person, or Latinos running the station,
actually the leadership of the stations were under the control
of people of diverse cultures, you'd see more diversity on
the network. That's really the understanding that needs to
be understood now. We must show the diversity of this country's
beauty, which is its strength. A lot of people think that
it's military strength, or that it's economic strength, or
the strength of our educational systems that really push us
to a higher level of understanding in this time and period
in life, but it isn't. What makes this country the best country,
the best country in the world, and the best country to ever
exist on the planet in the history of the human species is
the fact that it is really a representation of every single
culture, and every single language and religion that is found
throughout the world. They live here as US American citizens.
Holloway: What
can our viewers do if they're interested in seeing more diversity?
What can they do to help?
Olmos: I
think that the responsibility is in viewership. I wish that
people would do one of two things. One is turn off their television
sets and read to shed the example for their children that
are around them, because that's the only way that children
are really going to continue to read.
Holloway: Now
you're a TV person, and your saying that. I imagine people
would be shocked to hear you say that.
Olmos: I'm
sure they would, but the truth is we can do with less television
and more reading. The second thing is that if they are going
to watch television and go to movies, or do whatever they're
going to do, they must understand that they are actually placing
a vote every time they go the events that they go to. In other
words, when "Stand and Deliver" for instance, a wonderful
motion picture, came out in 1988, you never see a "Stand and
Deliver" Part 2, and you never will, because Part 1 didn't
make it at the box office. It was a tremendous success in
video. Tremendous success now, years later, being used throughout
the country and around the world as a motivator and inspiring
students and motivating the teacher. The reason that you see
"Halloween 57," or "Friday the 13th 65" or "Terminator
3," or "Rambo 5" is because people continue to go see them.
They went in mass. They placed their vote. You'll see "Blair
Witch Part 2," I didn't see "Blair Witch Part 1." I thought
it was basically a good way to waste two hours of your life,
and when you got to the end of it you would rather have those
two hours spent in knowledge and understanding than to try
to understand why you spent it watching something that lasted
approximately as long as it took you to watch it. I can honestly
say that entertainment, per se, is needed, it relaxes the
body and makes the mind grow in its own way, but we must understand
that we place our vote every time we go out and do whatever
it is. That's why people advertise. So if we want to see a
change in, say, programming they should partake, and when
there's a great program they should watch it, and they should
talk about it. Hopefully, people will understand that when
there are good programs don't go waste your time. I'm 52 years
old. I can't see myself wasting my time neither making them,
nor participating in certain films. Why would you want to
spend one minute of your life not doing something that you
really want to remember when you get close to the end?
Holloway: Speaking
of something you really want to remember when you get close
to the end, people who follow this program know this is not
the normal set of Black Issues Forum. For those scanning the
dial, this is the set of "No Greater Calling," its going to
air April 18th on UNC TV, and you're the host.
This program will air on UNC TV first and then across the
country. Its about the professional development for teachers.
Why is education so important? Why is a program like this
so necessary for people to watch and vote for with their viewership
as opposed to these other Blair Witch Projects?
Olmos: I
think you'd have to really, everyone is part of the choir
when it comes to education. Some people decide to do it through
the institutions that we have-public education, colleges,
universities-others decide to go out on their own life, and
let life itself educate them, but education, everyone knows,
is the basis. We're here to do two things. One is that we're
born to die. The second one is to fill this life period between
those points with the sense of happiness and the sense of
fulfillment. The more knowledge that you get, the more you
realize how beautiful this life is and the more you appreciate
it. As you grow older wisdom sets in and knowledge sets in.
The more knowledge you get, the better you feel about yourself
and your surroundings. Knowledge is the key. Teaching is the
most noble profession, and it truly is the most necessary
profession that we have on the planet. We could do without
football before we could do without teachers. We could do
without popes before we could do without teachers. We could
do without doctors. We could do without presidents of the
United States before we could do without teachers. The reason
I say that is that there has never been a pope that became
a pope without being taught. There was never a doctor, or
a lawyer, or a president of the United States, or a basketball
player, or a football player that wasn't taught to use their
brain in order to be able to execute the work that they've
now accomplished and become masters at and doctors. Teaching
is the most essential, and it usually starts by way of the
parent. The parent teaches the child. It could either be the
parent, the grandparent, the aunt, uncle, whatever, but it
starts at birth, you start to teach a child and then it moves
forward. As you start to get to three, four, five years old
other people come in to help teach the child to make them
full and whole. Teaching is truly the gift, and call it what
you may, but we have really decimated the teacher in the United
States of America and around the world. As much as we do appreciate
everything that they do, we don't show our appreciation for
them. In economics we pay the basketball player, or the actor,
or the engineer, or the astronaut more than we pay the person
who got them to that level. We really have somehow switched
our whole understanding. For instance, we pay $35,000 dollars
to incarcerate a child, and we pay $5,000 dollars to educate
that same child in a year. So $35,000 if they go to prison
but only $5,000 if they stay out of prison. Something has
really gone wrong. We've sent tremendous messages. If we were
to pay $300,000 dollars or $400,000 dollars per teacher in
grammar school from kindergarten all the way up to the sixth
grade you would see a rush of great teachers who would just
say, "I want to stop what I'm doing, I want to focus in over
here." Yes. Teaching is not about money. Yes, teaching is
about giving. Yes, teaching is about sharing. Its not about
fame and fortune its about truly the gift of sharing and giving.
Its almost sainthood when you get into being really successful.
If I could augment that feeling, if I could augment that understanding
by getting the brightest and the best who would commit themselves
to giving themselves to it, because not only could they do
great work, but they could actually financially support their
structures and actually develop them stronger, that would
enhance everything. It's sad because we don't even begin to
look at that. We would rather not even talk about this in
public forum. Every time we get into educational referendums
the elderly turn around and say, "I don't want to give another
penny to education, I would rather give it to taking care
of the elderly. We don't need to give them this. Education
should be an understood thing and let them figure out how
to do it." I agree with them. I don't think it should come
from the taxation of another thing. I think maybe if we ended
up not weakening, God forbid that word were to even be mentioned
among the military, but if we were to use some of the military
dollars instead of building a bomber for five billion dollars
if we turned that money over to the education system for educating
children, and paid our teachers accordingly you would see
a gigantic, a huge turn of events. You would see the entire
system of our country change, and it is a change that is so
much needed. I think in the 21st century you may
see it, in your lifetime for sure.
Holloway: Speaking
of that change, there needs to be a change in the widening
gap between the performance of Black and Latino children,
and that's due to performance and teaching certainly can make
a difference. Are Latinos as concerned about this widening
gap between them and white children in public schools?
Olmos: Yeah,
I think that the indigenous people are the ones who are leading
the pack in fear. Their decimation has been total. When you
start to look at the children, you start to see the condition
of what we're doing. Their behavior is a direct reflection
of what the adults are doing in the society as a whole. That's
why the Columbines are such startling realities that just
wipe everybody out. We have to really understand that the
arts education, they're backbones, the way the messages get
from point A to point B. I call them the backbones because
the backbone really guards all the messages going from the
brain to the rest of the body. If you break the first or second
bone on the backbone you're in trouble, break the third bone
you're paralyzed, fourth bone or fifth bone your quadriplegic,
you can't feel anything from here down, and so none of the
messages get through. That's how important that backbone is.
That backbone shields the methods in which the messages get
to the toes and the rest of your body. Well, education, the
arts, they are the avenues in which the guards shield the
messages that go through. We have a problem because the messages
we are sending right now, by way of education, are very, very
difficult to take. They have been centralized amongst our
understanding, they have been centralized on the historical
understanding of the European contribution. 94% to 95% of
the history that we teach in this country is European based.
It's what the pilgrims did and forward. Before the pilgrims
we might have maybe 1% or 2% of the time in the history of
the time, in the history of the 12 years from the first grade
to the twelfth grade that you will take and study, pre-Columbian.
You start to study our history and you see a wonderful history,
brilliant. Its built one of the strongest countries in the
world. The only thing that it's lacking? It's lacking in it's
diversity. To this day you personally, an educated person,
cannot name me one American born in the United States of America,
male or female, national hero of Asian ancestry. You can't.
You can't name me one national American hero born in the United
States of America of Latino ancestry. If it wasn't for Martin
Luther King we would not have national hero of color in this
country. God bless Martin Luther King. That's the condition
and the shape we're in. That really balances out the very
basis of understanding of what our children are being taught.
Holloway: That
brings a question. How can our viewers impact the content
that being taught about their own culture and other diverse
cultures?
Olmos: Well,
first the intellect has to be moved. That comes by way of
our literature, our ability to put down in writing the beauty
of culture. Most recently, we really don't have a wide variety
of really well-read, culturally diverse books in this country.
Maya Lin, there's a few of the gigantic books that have come
out, one or two maybe five, that the whole nation had read.
Things like "The Catcher in the Rye" that quality where they
use it to really show. They don't use culturally diverse books.
They say, "Well we don't really have them." We've never really
developed them. We have them but we've never developed them
into the curriculum of our country as a whole. There's where
we end up losing. We end up losing. We end up losing a tremendous
amount of children who have nothing but love and compassion
in their hearts when they start, but after five, or six, or
seven years of the same diet, I don't care how good the vitamin
is. If you give a person just one vitamin, whether it be A,
B, C, or E, whatever vitamin you put into them, but that's
the only vitamin you give that body, that body within five
or seven or twelve years will be so anemic, will be so hurt
that it won't have grown to the right level of its growth
because it didn't have all the vitamins that were needed.
Our children do not have a well rounded balance of vitamins
of the historical contributions of the different cultures
that make this country great. We know nothing about the indigenous
people here. If we deal with it we're going to have a problem
too because we're going to have to deal with the incredible
holocaust that was caused upon the indigenous people has been
well defined, but it's not taught to our children because
its too brutal, too gruesome and would make everybody understand
that we have a lot to be thankful for, but even more a lot
to be forgiven for as a whole society's growth.
Holloway: We
just have a couple of minutes left. We're in a new millennium,
new century, new year, and people of color are still very
under-represented. Why?
Olmos: Again,
it's a fear factor, compounded by the fact that we are dominating
now by way of the people, the kind of people, the cultural
dynamic of the country itself. Where once we were European
dominant, we are not European dominant. If we were ever to
count all of the people who live in this country, we would
know that there are well over forty-million Latinos in this
country. Well over, closer to fifty million. The Asian population
has exploded around the world, but especially in the United
States, and they filter into their communities much stronger
and with less activity of documentation of the legalities,
or illegalities of what they're doing. The Latino has definitely
grown at such an extraordinary rate, and will only do even
more so as we travel into the next decade.
Holloway: Will
surpass African Americans as a.
Olmos: We
already have. No one will acknowledge that because it will
change the basis of the economics again. All of a sudden the
African American will be not able to share the pie the way
it is being shared so they don't want that to happen. The
European Americans don't want it to happen because it will
definitely become a reality, but guess what? In eight to ten
years there will be a big voter change in the country and
that's why people are learning how to speak Spanish. I think
that that's the future. The future is in being able to be
bilingual and be understanding of the beauty of the cultures
that helped make this country great and stop the fear. Fear
only comes because people don't understand. Once you understand,
its beautiful. There's only one race. I don't know how we
got into calling the Africans a race and the Caucasians a
race and the Latino's a race. Those aren't races-those are
cultures. There's only one race, and that's the human race,
and it comes in different colors. It's like having a species
of birds or trees.
Holloway: Look,
I want to thank you, and I tell you after speaking with you
we may have that Latino American national hero here sitting
right before us before its all over. Thank you so much for
being with us.
Olmos: Thank
you so much.
Holloway: Its
an honor to teach, to give children hope for the future, to
give them the skills that they'll need to succeed. There truly
is no greater calling than to be a great teacher. Be watching
for the premier of "No Greater Calling" this April 18th
at 8 PM on UNC TV with host Edward James Olmos. Thank you
again, he's an actor, educator, and activist, Edward James
Olmos, for being our guest on Black Issues Forum tonight,
and thank you very much for watching. I'm Jay Holloway. You
have a blessed evening.
[END
OF PROGRAM]
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