Des Moines activist Ako Abdul-Samad stressed the value of community activism and honesty in a lecture Tuesday night.

In the lecture “A Deeper Truth: Revelations of the Soul,” Abdul-Samad addressed the importance of knowing the truth regardless of perception.

“I think that diversity is a bunch of crap,” he said. “The term diversity has become a buzzword. It makes us feel good inside.”

Terms like diversity make people feel good, but at the same time prevent them from becoming involved, Abdul-Samad said. To become involved in activism, people first must understand themselves, he said.

Abdul-Samad said people do not understand themselves because they grow up repeating societal lies. When a person lies, more lies need to be fabricated to cover up the original lie, he said. The first and greatest lie in American history was the attribution of the discovery of America to Christopher Columbus, Abdul-Samad said.

“How can you discover a place when people are already there?” he said. “When he didn’t discover America, he turned around and renamed an entire race of people.”

Beginning with Columbus’ labeling of Native Americans as “Indians” instead of using their tribal names, Abdul-Samad said that as a group they were dehumanized and misunderstood.

“We promoted that lie because we never challenged that,” Abdul-Samad said.

Eventually, this lie and others were told to children and passed down through generations as truth, he said. Many groups have been ignored in this way throughout history, and people have become unable to separate the truth from the lies, Abdul-Samad said.

Abdul-Samad said the invention of the light bulb is an example of this. Lewis Latimer, a black man, invented the filament that was crucial to Thomas Edison’s invention.

“You know nothing about my contributions, you know nothing about me,” he said. “That’s how we keep ourselves into racism and into sexism.”

Abdul-Samad said the word “black” has grown to have negative connotations. He said the Webster’s Dictionary definition of the word includes descriptors like soiled, dirty and evil.

“We’re taught subliminally to deal with black in a negative form,” he said.

Abdul-Samad is the chief executive officer and founder of Creative Visions Human Development Center, a community center in Des Moines. He was elected to the Des Moines School Board in 2003 and is also on the board of directors of the National Conference for Community and Justice. In addition, he is the former vice president of the Islamic Center of Des Moines and a counselor for the Iowa prison system.