Anand Giridharadas is a NY Times columnist and an author who came to Oswego State in March on behalf of the Voices of Diversity organization on campus.  The Indian American poked jokes at gaining the new title of “diversity speaker” during his opening remarks, before continuing on to tell the crowd about his new book, “The True American.” Giridharadas charmed the crowd with humor and asked that the audience take out their phones and tweet what they believed was a true American. Giridharadas’ remarks were relevant to the current political election and added to national conversations about immigration and profiling.

Giridharadas told the story of an immigrant Bangladeshi man, Raisuddin Bhuiyan, who made his way to the U.S. with aspirations to complete his education and work in IT. Before making it there, he was shot in the face by a revenge-seeking Texan named Mark Stroman, who was doing what he thought was a retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attack. Though he was shot from a distance of five feet, Bhuiyan, who Giridharadas referred to as “Rais,” survived. Rais, pursuing his goal of being a faithful Muslim, chose to forgive Stroman and went so far as to even ask the state for an appeal of the case, saying he forgave Stroman and wanted to save him from the death penalty.

He said he was fortunate to have been able to travel to so many countries with his parents at a young age and that since his parents were originally from India, he always felt he belonged to two places instead of one.

Giridharadas moved from Ohio to Paris at age seven because of his father’s work. While living in Paris for three years, he was able to experience many different countries by moving across borders using ground transportation in Europe. He said how being able to cross borders expanded his mind and hooked him on travel. He said borders are meant to be crossed.

“The idea that you could just get into a car and go to another country, you just can’t do that in America. Well maybe here you can actually because you are an hour away from the border [of Canada],” Giridharadas said.

Giridharadas said his urge to be a part of the world in a global sense came first and was followed by his desire to write. Writing is his way of being able to travel while earning a living. He said he likes to show readers through his articles, what other people’s realities are.

Giridharadas got started writing when he took an internship at the New York Times in his final year of high school. For one month, he was able to see the writers who were celebrities to him. In other fields, students can’t always work on their craft until they have licenses or degrees. But as a journalist, he explained, you can get writing experience at any age.

Giridharadas came to Oswego primarily to talk about his book, which deals with two individuals participating in opposite ends of the justice system. It’s a story of individual growth for a criminal and forgiveness for the victim of his crime. Giridharadas believes the prison system is one of the largest issues plaguing our country. He said, when future generations of America look back on history, they will wonder why we didn’t “do war” over our poor prison services. Giridharadas said the first thing wrong with the prison system is how many people are in it.

“I think our prison system is probably a very good candidate of something that we all vaguely tolerated that is probably going to look barbaric in the rearview mirror of history and you know we incarcerate more than 2.2 million people, more than any other country, more than China, which has 1.6. We have 600,000 more than China, which has four times as many people as us and is an authoritarian, communist country. So a country four times smaller than China and has freedom incarcerates more people,” he said.

Giridharadas commented on the fact that political officers who worked hard to toughen our prison systems are now looking to reverse them. This week on Tuesday, New Yorkers voted in the primary elections.

“You have Bernie Sanders who essentially pledged to within his first term make the U.S. not the first incarcerator in the world and if Bernie is committed to that, it means he would through means of attrition, he would release 600,000 prisoners in four years, which is kind of an incredible, insane, bold plan,” Giridharadas said of the democratic presidential candidate.

He continued to talk about how some people are unaffected by the incarceration system in our country, especially if they live in a decent neighborhood with low rates of crime and few individuals leaving their homes to spend time in jail.

“If you’re a black man born today in this country, you have a one in three chance of spending time in jail at some point in your life. I just don’t think it’s possible that one in three of any group are natural-born criminals. So there is something that is sweeping enormous numbers of people off the streets and putting them in prison and I think it’s a stain on this country, that fortunately a lot of people now are addressing,” he said.

Giridharadas spoke about a variety of human emotions from the desire to travel to anger, violence, racism, remorse and ultimately forgiveness.