In his first visit to Iowa State University, actor and humanitarian Edward James Olmos greeted an enthusiastic crowd of almost 500 people at the Memorial Union’s Great Hall Thursday night to speak about gangs and violence in America.

The star of the movie Selena, which is currently in theaters, Olmos also addressed racism and the miseducation of children.

Olmos said the gang violence that is overtaking American streets is a result of movies and television that glorify it. Children are killing other children for no reason, he said, because America has a tradition in violence, “from the way we started the country, to the way our art forms continue to propagate it.”

As he laced humorous anecdotes with both Spanish and English phrases, Olmos condemned the many states that are passing laws demanding that children be limited to learning English first. “That’s like putting your kids ahead of mine.”

“We are still stuck in a curriculum that doesn’t accentuate the diversity that exists in this room,” he said.

The Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning star of the movie Stand and Deliver, the TV show “Miami Vice,” and HBO’s The Burning Season, spoke of the relationship between racial identity and education, saying most people do not know where they come from.

“I am a full-blooded Chicano,” he said. He said the difference between being Mexican and Chicano is that Chicanos are American-born people of Mexican descent, while Mexican-Americans are born in Mexico. But, Olmos said, many Americans do not acknowledge the distinction.

“So when somebody turns to me and says, ‘hey, go back home,'” he paused, whistled and said, “I’ve been here for 40,000 years.”

In his clarification of the historical roots of Chicanos, Olmos explained that they are an indigenous mix of red, white, black and Chinese peoples. “Before I was Chinese, I was black, indigenous and white. That’s what makes me brown.”

Olmos said the wave of English-only laws that have currently swept the nation, while economically sound, do not make sense. “I speak English, Spanish and computer,” he said jokingly.

Olmos cited the need for American children to speak more than one language. “If I have anything to do with it, my kids will be bilingual and trilingual.”

“I wish we could understand how to get out of this education that allows 95 percent for European studies and 5 percent for everybody else,” he said.

He asked the audience if they were proud of their Mexican, American Indian and black heritages. Many responded positively.

He then asked the audience members how many were proud of their white heritage. There were almost no responses. “People do not like their white parts because they do not understand it,” he said. “That is the way the mezclara (race mixing) happened. It was not a love exchange. We had hundreds of years of conquest in the Americas. We must understand what that breeds.”

Olmos’ appearance was co-sponsored by Minority Student Affairs, the Latino Council, Veishea, Latino Studies Program, the Multicultural Taskforce and the Hispanic Heritage Month Committee.