It's no longer enough, if it ever was, to critique interlocking systems of oppression without offering affirming alternatives of how society should and can reconstitute itself. As we move into the inevitably more demanding multilingual, multicultural environment--both nationally and globally--of the next century, our greatest task will be an inversion of the commonly assumed equivalence between difference and disunity. We must re-write this equation, demonstrating again and again that unity does not require unanimity, that unity--that is, a sense of social cohesion, of community--can and does derive from the expression, comprehension, and active nurturing (and not merely tolerance or fetishization) of difference.

This is the new standard of civilized life that now demands our urgent labor, a new world order, if you will, that subverts traditional conceptions of social order: a standard which in effect subverts the meaning of the word "standard" itself. For the new order must be comprised of multiple standards: shifting, open-ended, dynamically transforming, so as to engender ways of thinking and living that privilege no one set of cultural differences over another but affirm virtue in all.


This perspective forms the key inspiration and overarching theme in STANDARDS. Page after page eloquently testifies to the commitment of a new generation of America's best and brightest to shaping a radically redefined vision of our future, where old repressive dualisms of race, class, sexuality, gender and nationality no longer reign--a future in which not merely some but all of us are free to explore and express our richest humanity.

Marlon Riggs
Oakland, 1992

 

 
	 
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MARLON T. RIGGS was a producer, director, and writer, who graduated with honors from Harvard in 1978, and received the MA from UC Berkeley, where he later taught Documentary Film in the Graduate School of Journalism. His films include Tongues Untied, the acclaimed account of Black gay male life; and Ethnic Notions, for which he was awarded the Emmy. Mr. Riggs' work has been published in the anthology Brother to Brother, as well as in arts and literary magazines, including High Performance, Black American Literature Forum, and Art Journal. A media activist, he testified before the U.S. Senate, and wrote extensively on the issue of censorship. Mr. Riggs was also on the policy committee of the national PBS, and served on various other panels, including the National Endowment for the Arts. Marlon T. Riggs died of AIDS-related complications in 1994. We remember him with deepest respect and admiration.

Riggs' final film, Black Is...Black Ain't, was shown across the nation, to much acclaim.
More information on the press release at this link.
 [ http://www.colorado.edu/journals/standards/V5N1/riggs_release.html ]	 
  	  	

 "Introduction to STANDARDS: V5N1" © 1992, 1995 by Marlon T. Riggs
Original Graphic Images ©1995 by Lenni J. Calipo
http://www.colorado.edu/journals/standards/V5N1/contributors.html


 Journal Contents Page:
http://www.colorado.edu/journals/standards/V5N1/toc.html

 standards@colorado.edu


About Standards:
http://www.colorado.edu/journals/standards/V5N1/About.html