Last year, the College invited Dorothy Allison to deliver the keynote address for the series of events in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This selection of a white lesbian speaker resulted in some controversy, presumably because her gay-rights activism would detract from African-American rights, a traditional focus of the holiday. I believe this controversy was unfounded.
Civil rights movements empowering various groups cannot exist as uninvolved entities, just like we cannot define people by pigeonholing them into categories such as race, gender, age or sexual orientation. Do the words "Elton John" only call to mind "white," "male," "58-year-old" and "gay"? More than likely, the answer is no. (I think of "Bennie and the Jets.") Similarly, we cannot claim to be able to traverse only select lines of discrimination and inequality while ignoring others. Doing so is both self-serving and hypocritical, since it calls for propagation of rights of one group in the face of denial of rights to another. That line of reasoning, as described by Chris Schooley '06 in his letter to the editor, "isn't a type of equality: it is the definition of inequality" ("Equality Means Equality for All," Jan. 19, 2005).
To avoid this pitfall, a holistic approach toward diversity should be taken. This is an approach which recognizes that individuals differ from one another in too many aspects to be neatly described by conventional rubrics. The movement for civil rights of one group should be tied to those of other groups in an effort to promote tolerance and acceptance of diversity throughout a culture.
The fight for civil rights must therefore not consist of antagonism along such stereotypical divisions as white vs. black, thin vs. obese, old vs. young, straight vs. gay or some other idea of a confrontation between the tyrants and the tyrannized. Similarly, the ultimate goal of these movements must not be the empowerment of select groups defined by arbitrary characteristics like skin color, sexual identity and orientation, or national origin. Instead, their objective should be the creation of a society of tolerance and equality, where these attributes bear no particular significance and individual members are seen as complex and un-categorizable as they really are.
The philosophy of Dartmouth's Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, as stated on the website of the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, recognizes such "complexities." To this end Reverend Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., the keynote speaker for this year's event, "Between Heaven and Hell: Religion, Politics and Civil Rights," will examine religious preferences as another part of the complex web of identity, diversity and tolerance. Rev. Dr. Forbes is a Senior Minister at New York City's Riverside Church, which is described on its website as "an interdenominational, interracial and international church," a church which would indubitably accept Dorothy Allison.
