To the Editor:
I am writing in response to the article entitled "MLK speaker choice sparks debate" (Jan. 16) regarding Dartmouth College's selection of a lesbian speaker to give the keynote address at the commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I was dumbfounded to read that many self-described advocates of civil rights for racial minorities objected to a homosexual addressing the legacy of the struggle for equality in American society. The fact that the article contained quotes from students who considered themselves pro- "equal rights for blacks" while opposing equal rights for homosexuals indicated to me how the issue of equality in America has been confused, and how people who may once have been the target of bigotry and discrimination have now become so sheltered from the harsh reality of secreted and veiled disrespect for human beings in America today, that they forget how much more closed and oppressed society was a mere few decades ago.
To call the struggle for equal rights for blacks something separate from equal rights for any other human being is to defeat the cause of equality. The rights of one human being are the rights of all human beings. To arbitrarily apply the term "rights" to a certain group of mankind while denying or merely ignoring the appellation of that term to another isn't a type of equality: it is the definition of inequality. It is this sentiment that was the linchpin of pre-Civil War Southern ideology. It is in this vein that the oligarchs of "Animal Farm" held that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
The struggle for equality isn't the story of the black against the racist, or the woman against the sexist; it is the story of the oppressed against the oppressor, the disrespected against the disrespectful. Susan B. Anthony started out as an abolitionist. Frederick Douglass ended as a suffragist. The barriers that Martin Luther King and others broke down were those of social convention: from segregation on buses and in schools, the attitude of whites was, at best, that to mingle with blacks was distasteful and beneath their race. The idea that women could work in offices and factories alongside men was, in the 1970s, seen either as repugnant, or, worse, as an opportunity for the appropriation of sexual intercourse. These conventions have been for the most part ousted out of the American mainstream.
Blacks and whites and women coexist on a more level playing field than ever before. But inequality still persists. The existence of disrespect and hatred for homosexuals is the legacy of hatred for blacks and others. A gay friend of mine was recently told in a frat that dancing with another man was making certain people uncomfortable, and that if he didn't stop he would be beaten. How long ago would that have been said to a black man dancing with a white woman?
