Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS/
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You can't blame council for not wanting to get burned. But in the process, certain uncomfortable truths were avoided about (1) the refusal of the local office of a billboard company to accept an ad from the Committee on Gay and Lesbian Concerns and (2) the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.
One way of looking at it is this: In the struggle between civility and full honesty, Roanoke's city leaders chose civility, and may well have made the right decision in doing so.
Another way is this: The little ol' council of little ol' Roanoke, Va., got caught up in the cauldron of social issues that are fracturing the nation - and in its response reflected the difficulty that Americans are having in talking straight to one another.
The ad refusal, and the request (currently on hold) for council to do something about it, was alluded to by Mayor David Bowers in a statement at Monday's council meeting (and published in adapted form on this page Friday).
But Bowers did not confront the issue directly. He never, for example, used the words "gay," "lesbian" or "homosexual." He referred to the controversy as "the item [on council's agenda] regarding the diversity issue."
The city, Bowers said, "is resolved to respect all individuals of any race, of any sex, of any creed, or of any color" - a litany that managed both to exclude gays and lesbians, in the sense of recognition of them as a group unto themselves, and to include them, in the sense that all people fall into one or more of the categories that Bowers did cite.
Also generally unmentioned have been the merits, or lack of same, of the committee's messages. "Celebrate Diversity" said the slogan seen on billboards last year; "Diversity Enriches" was to have been the slogan seen this year.
The reason such a statement should be deemed so offensive as to compel a for-profit firm to turn down a bit of business is beyond me. That's not to say, however, that the slogan deserves automatic nods of agreement.
The unpleasant fact of the matter is that you could make a strong case these days against the celebration of diversity. The current fondness for glorying in those characteristics that separate one group from another - black vs. white, male vs. female, straight vs. gay - may well be engendering rather than easing hostility, and reducing rather than elevating the respect all Americans owe each other as fellow citizens, as colleagues in the democratic experiment.
Council's gingerly handling of Monday's march on Washington, D.C., began with the letter that put the matter on the docket. William White and Delvis "Mac" McCadden, council's two African-American members, asked Bowers and the four other members to join them "in support of this day and its historical value."
White and McCadden are middle-aged, sober-minded professionals and civic leaders; one a Democrat and one a Republican. In their letter, they saw the march on Washington - where 400,000 (police estimate) to 2 million (organizers' estimate) black men rallied in support of racial unity and taking responsibility for their own lives - as a way for "America's African-American men ... to enlighten themselves as to their responsibilities to their families, to their community, and to their country." In a nine-sentence letter, the word "responsibility" appears three more times.
"We were elected to serve all of Roanoke City," White and McCadden wrote, "and we do so today, though we are thinking about our brothers who are marching in Washington, and those who are at home today helping to shock America's African-American communities into responsibility."
Those are sentiments to which most Americans would assent. They get to the core of what was good about the Million Man March and, clearly, what White and McCadden liked about it.
Certainly, the need for transformation is urgent. Nearly one of every three young black males in America is in prison, or on parole or probation - about the same ratio as 18- to 23-year-old black males who are in college. Black men are also victims, nine times likelier to be murdered than are white men.
But absent from the letter was any mention of the march's chief organizer, Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan is a bigot, plain and simple. Maybe his tirades against whites in general can be taken as a way of attacking the genuine evil of white racism, though that's a stretch; his anti-Semitism is still loathsome and inexcusable.
That stuff is not what White and McCadden are about. But the unfortunate reality is that Farrakhan's starring role was part - the not-so-good part - of what the Million Man March was about. The question is whether the positive part is best-served by ignoring the negative, or whether the negative grows unchecked if left unilluminated.
by CNB