PROFESSOR BOB NOWLAN
TEXT OF SPEECH: RALLY PRIOR TO 2ND ANNUAL MARCH IN SUPPORT
OF PEACE, LOVE, AND DIVERSITY
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1998, OAKWOOD
HILLS PLAYGROUND, EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN
I thank the Rainbow Club and the other organizers
of this March -- and Rally -- for inviting me to speak to you today.
The recent murder of Matthew Shepard has brought considerable attention to
the issue of hate crimes directed against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered
people. This attention is welcome and helpful. At the same
time, however, it must be emphasized that while the brutality of Shepard’s
murder appears unusually extreme, this murder was not, and is not, an isolated
incident or a mere aberration. Many other glbt people been brutally
murdered, often with a similar degree of ritualistic excess as happened to
Matthew Shepard, simply on account of the fact that they were gay, lesbian,
bisexual, transgendered -- or suspected of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or
transgendered. Not only this, but also these murders exist on a continuum
of extensive, often intensive and, yes, quite virulent, everyday discrimination,
prejudice, and abuse directed against glbt people simply on account of who
we are. We must not forget this, and we must not forget that the climate
which enabled the murderers of Matthew Shepard to conceive of their actions
as justifiable is by no means limited to Laramie, Wyoming; we here in Eau
Claire live under these conditions too.
It is important that we are rallying
and marching today in support of peace, love, and diversity, but it is even
more important that we continue and expand the struggle for gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgender equality, and that we do so throughout our everyday
lives. Until glbt people enjoy effectively equal right of access to,
and effectively equal opportunity for exercise of, all civil and human rights
and all public resources, powers, and capacities, whatever “tolerance” and
“acceptance” we are able to achieve will be ultimately quite limited and precarious.
This equality, moreover, must be a real equality, and not a token equality,
or a merely formal, technical, or simply legal equality. After
all, if the laws are on the books, and yet they are not strictly enforced,
or if they can be evaded or circumvented in many spheres of social life where
they do not apply and where they cannot be enforced, then it should be clear
that merely legal reform -- including anti-glbt hate crime legislation --
while welcome and useful, cannot, in and of itself, be enough.
In order to achieve peace, love,
and diversity, we need to create the conditions under which it will be possible
for peace, love, and diversity to be normal, and not exceptional, states of
everyday social existence. We need to change the fundamental logic of
our society so that it is organized to promote and sustain peace, love, and
diversity and so that it does not, as it continues at present to do, to encourage
and reward war, hatred, intolerance and lack of acceptance.
It is significant that we will
be marching today through one of the main shopping centers of Eau Claire.
We need to confront the extent to which the oppression of glbt people, along
with that of women in general and of people of color, is reinforced and reproduced
in support of maintaining class differences such that the relative privilege
and advantage of a small minority is secured through the exploitation of the
socially productive and reproductive activity of the vast majority.
This vast majority is furthermore divided against itself in the competition
for survival and subsistence according to the alienative logic of social organization
in our class society: it is divided along lines of race, ethnicity, nationality,
gender, and sexuality so as to maintain the exploitation of the labor of
the upper strata while enabling the superexploitation of the labor of the
lower strata along each of these lines.
While I was a graduate student
at Syracuse University, the University each year sponsored a “celebrate diversity
week.” This annual event was so noncontroversial that each year the
Chancellor of the University issued a proclamation extolling diversity and
urging us all to respect, tolerate, and accept our differences, as they are,
whether we be men or women, black or white, straight or gay, rich or poor,
and First World or Third World. The inclusion of “rich or poor” and
of “First World or Third World” in this litany clearly signaled the ultimately
highly conservative limits of this kind of “celebration of diversity.”
Yet it is not only the gulf between rich and poor and between First World
and Third World -- rooted in each case in the exploitation of the latter by
the former -- that we should not simply celebrate, but also it is the ways
in which human beings have been socially constructed throughout recorded history
as men and as women, as White and as Black, and as straight and as gay that
need to be questioned, challenged, and changed. In other words, we
should not settle for merely celebrating ultimately unequal differences, rooted
in and shaped by conditions of oppression and exploitation, but instead we
must commit ourselves to the long and difficult struggle necessary to transform
and supersede these differences so that the differences we celebrate will
be differences among human beings who enjoy genuinely and substantially equal
positions in our society.
Yes, this is a long and difficult
struggle, and we will face numerous obstacles and setbacks as we engage upon
it while at the same time not being able to predict how long it will take
or how hard we will have to work -- and to fight. However, if we retreat
from this struggle out of apathy, cynicism, and despair we have not only surrendered
to the powers that be but also committed ourselves in effective support of
the maintenance and reproduction of the status quo. As an educator,
I have strived to teach my students to recognize and to take advantage of
the power that they do have, and that they can attain, to make a real difference
in the struggles to transform the communities, and the societies, in which
they live so as to advance the causes of human emancipation, social justice,
collective equality, and ecological sustainability. I urge that we
likewise commit ourselves to persisting in these struggles and reject the
cynicism that pervades our culture today.
When I was a very young boy in
the 1960s my parents were active in many of the progressive social movements
of the time, and I was strongly encouraged from the moment I can first remember
to regard engaging as an active, and as a critical, citizen to be a necessary,
and indeed a noble, responsibility. I was especially struck by the unofficial
slogan of Robert Kennedy’s tragic presidential campaign in 1968: “Some men
dream dreams of things as they are, and ask why; I dream dreams of things
that never were, and ask why not.” We who are here today, committed
in active support of peace, love, and diversity, need continually, publicly,
to ask both of those questions, especially the latter, and we must not cease
our struggles until we have obtained the answers -- and the changes -- that
we seek. We can make a difference.
Return to Professor Bob Nowlan's
Home Page
This material is copyrighted (©)
Professor Bob Nowlan
Last Updated June 29, 2002
