Ms Harris has instigated much discussion about race with this article and that is important. Without discussion, the ignorant are not enlightened and nothing gets resolved.
I don't understand the negative feedback posted and did not see an "us" vs "them" mentality. I saw the "blackout" performance as a safe place for a group to witness and comment without fear of judgement. I did not interpret this to be to the exclusion of a multi race audience for subsequent performances.
Keep writing and provoking your audience toward important dialogue Ms. Harris!
11
I can't help but wonder what Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving would make of this "fraught, but invigorating" production?
4
Not all the "white" people in an audience are purely Northern European. Plenty of us have African heritage from slaves and slave owners yet look European - I want to understand it, want to make amends for it, want to deal with it. To make assumptions based on the color of someone's skin isn't always the best strategy, I know who my ancestors were. You don't.
46
The writer acknowledges at the end that audiences have to "endure" this play. Broadway shows are supposed to entertain, enlighten and uplift. You can be provocative and edgy and still do that (Book of Mormon, Angels in America, Hamilton). Why would I plunk down hundreds of dollars to "endure" something that makes me feel depressed, gross and hopeless? I wonder what performing this is doing to the mental state of the actors? Each performance must exact a real emotional toll.
This seems to be a disturbing trend in entertainment. The recently released "The Joker" is all about making the audience feel anxious and awful. Even the critics who like it say it's unrelentingly dark and depressing, a huge downer with few if any redeeming features.
With Trump,impeachment, global warming, mass shootings, social media malaise, the opioid crisis -- I could go on and on -- the last thing I want is to go to the theater and walk out depressed and upset. If that makes me insufficiently woke, so be it.
52
@Christopher Hoffman Have to disagree. Art is not only here for entertainment. Art is here to dissect the world we live in. Sometimes that dissection is painful, but in the end you're healthier for it.
41
@Christopher Hoffman Well, just another question (I asked one above of the author): if you lived in NAZI Germany, circa the destruction of the Weimar Republic, what would you do? Go to a Cabaret to be entertained, or look for art that compelled you to act to put a stop to the very real horrors that were being built? Your post indicates you'd like to be, yes, it needs to be said in a confrontational manner, a Good German.
10
Art and entertainment are different. If you want to feel good every time you go to the theatre, don't.
30
I think I can empathize with the writer's frustration at having to see theater, even the theater written and performed by those within her own community, in an audience in which she is a minority. It's always a strange thing, being in a minority, and I believe that around 12% of the US population is African-American, very much a minority. It's something Black people always have to think about, and I as a white person rarely have to think about. But as for the insensitive or thoughtless comments - I hear them being made all the time. By people of every skin color, ostensibly rich and ostensibly poor, etc, etc. People are just prone to saying dumb things.
31
A review that is as rich in irony as the piece itself. Ostensibly about the internal baggage complicating INTER racial commitment, love, sexuality, and marriage, as I read it, the reviewer appears to suggest that audiences be segregated to fully and freely react? Or, should there instead be a requirement that every other seat be assigned to a different race to ensure that the reactions to the complexities of such relationships (on both sides) are shared across races? A form of theatrical post-bellum school busing? As with any good play written by an author for the author’s own psychological reasons, the play should and does resonate well beyond racial and sexual identity, and dealing with the respective preconceptions of others - to the social meaning of Yale, to whether wellintentioned pyschology interventions are good or evil and whether marital therapy works, academic partnerships, to our city’s mixed race gentrification, to female sexuality - for whom is the twerking - isn’t it a form of power here too? Are sexual fantasies of being degraded degrading? If so, to which partner? All in a good show too.
27
This is wonderful! Rants and raves about this play and race. We're continuing to talk, fellow Americans, we're continuing to talk about race. Let's keep the dialog going. Be nice. Be kind. Listen with an open mind and keep talking.
22
I'm Jewish. When I've been in more than a few hospitals, I see crosses on the walls; it doesn't make me cringe. At Christmas, everyone is all excited about their gifts; doesn't bother me at all. When I go to the Met and see all of the great art through millennia featuring Jesus, that doesn't bother me either.
We all have a choice. Live here and be in a minority (speaking of, when did you last hear Jews called a "minority" at 2% of the population, while blacks (13%) and hispanics (22%) are a "minority"?) and understand that many people may see and interpret things differently than we do, or go to a place where you are a majority (umm...for us, just one country -- Israel; for blacks and hispanics, over 3 dozen countries).
Tolerance isn't just about people putting up with us. It's also about putting up with them. The Times seems saturated for the past few years with articles like this one. Maybe Jews and Greeks and Poles and Italians and Lithuanians and Vietnamese and Chinese should all get their daily columns complaining about others make them feel?
40
@Allan H.
While you may feel "integrated" into the larger society I, who am Jewish as well, do not feel the same way as you do.
I am acutely aware of my minority status. It is usually driven home by an insensitive or outright anti-Semitic remark. Sometimes it may be directed directly at me. But other times it is made in general, without regard to who I am.
I'm not very religious, certainly not Orthodox. However, at Christmas & Easter, who & what I am is always front & center.
But I believe you completely miss the point. African Americans have suffered in ways most people can never fully understand.
Similarly, The Jewish People have suffered, especially in Europe in ways most people can never fully grasp.
Why is it you cannot have empathy for a people who have suffered for no other reason than where their ancestors are from?
We Jews should have a greater capacity to grasp the immensity of the pain African Americans have & still suffer.
Maybe you need to get in touch with your past & how that makes your feel.
Tolerance comes from understanding & understanding comes from empathy.
50
@Lester Arditty Your considered white just like a WASP in today's America. Does that make much sense to you?
6
@Allan H. You may be Jewish, but you probably present as a white American. So, you're general experience in American society is nowhere near as prejudiced as a Black American. And Jewish Americans' history is nowhere near as persecuted or fraught as Black Americans. Really, it's not a contest. It's okay to just let another group have their feelings about their complicated pasts--it doesn't detract from yours.
30
It sounds like this play is about black people and white people in the most intimate sort of relationship with each other. What better play for black people and white people to see together? (Unless maybe the white people are in the play to be one-dimensional stereotypes, and if that’s the playwright’s point, well touche, and turnabout’s fair play.) Certainly nothing wrong with performances for black people only, or for white people only. But maybe there could also be a performance where people of any color are welcome and the seating is mixed around so the colors get mixed around. People of different colors might end up enjoying talking with each other about the play and learning something lovely about each other. If it were advertised that way, I bet loads of people would sign up. Probably a pipe dream, but it seems like sometimes the opportunities to retreat to our corners can also be the opportunities to meet in the middle.
7
Wow. I'm disappointed by all the white commenters making this about themselves and writing how hurt they are, as white people, to hear that black people suffer at the hands of white people. White folks, we have to do better than this. We ARE the problem that we inherited from our ancestors. Take a seat and let people of color express their grievances about a country and system that has tortured, oppressed, murdered, and looked down on them FOREVER. Civil rights happened within our parents' lifetimes; even the least racist among us still function within a racist system. Please stop making this about our hurt white feelings. You don't need to feel good when a black person speaks up about discomfort — in fact, you should feel terrible, and that feeling should cause you to act to make the world more equitable place.
85
No, Julie—"we," the left-leaning, empathetic readers of the NYTimes—are not "the problem." The problem is *actual racists,* of which there are still many millions in this country. They live in towns and drive on roads named after confederate generals, and are proud to do so.
But actual racists are unrepentant, so no one bothers to hurl grievances their way. Instead, we on the left work within a closed system, one in which people of color—disenfranchised within the larger US system—actually wield *extraordinary* power: the power to determine what counts as acceptable speech; the power to forge orthodoxies of belief that lie beyond debate or questioning; the power to make sweeping (and often negative) generalizations about people based on their skin color; the power to wield outrage indiscriminately and with impunity. And well-meaning non-racist white people, who are no longer allowed to empathize, join ranks, or show solidarity (it's racist, it's a presumptuous expression of "privilege," it's whatever...), have only two roles: to recite penitential bromides, as often and as publicly as possible, and to reprimand white dissenters as "fragile"—as if our only objection was to the reminder that "black people suffer at the hands of white people."
Nothing you've said is original, and nothing you've said here helps people of color in any way. You're reading from a script, putting your eagerness to "feel terrible" on display, as if that were virtue. It's not.
30
@julie
Who in the world is complaining about hearing about black people suffering at the hands of white people?
My reading of hte objections boils down to this:
"White people have no right to think anything they say - positive, negative or infinitely in between - when hearing about black people suffering at the hands of white people - can be anything but biased."
Case example #1:
The man who said he couldn't bear 12 minutes of this much less 12 years.
What was the underlying intent of this comment:
(a) to express an incredibly tone-deaf, racially insensitive view?
or
(b) to express a profoundly empathic view which carried in it a depth of respect for what black people suffered at the hands of white people?
I administer Rorschach tests, among other things, for a living. I never really thought much of the scientific evidence for them.
perhaps I should swap out the 10 cards and give people this essay - and the comments!
19
@julie My family was in Italy for slavery and didn't come over until after WWII. I'm the son of immigrants. How am I now lumped in as "white" along with those who owned slaves? This country has truly lost its mind and ability to understand that different ethnicities exist.
9
The us vs them mentality used by this author is so dangerous and sad for our country. Shame on her.
8
"I know the prospect of seeing slavery depicted in this way is a turn off for many black people — their hesitation and dubiousness is understandable. "
It was a turn-off for me a white cis male. The first third, not knowing that the slave play was therapy play, that the most white audience was laughing, eg, at the twerking, was appalling to me. "It's slavery you idiots!"
“As the mostly white audience trickled out of the theater at the end, I overheard a man expressing relief to his companion: 'I couldn’t last 12 minutes of all that, never mind 12 years!'
During the Black Out performance of “Slave Play,” I was shielded from having to endure such gross remarks for a couple of hours. ”
I think the comment holds true for most people in America today. No?
Should it not have been said? Or does the author feel she owns all legitimate perspectives on all things racial?
7
Interesting to read the author's opinions, feelings and judgments.
We should all be open to looking in the mirror for any prejudice or intolerance within us, or wrong views or understandings. And try to learn to be better humans.
Plays and conversation can help with that.
I also believe such a process applies to all of us, not just some of us.
2
@ella - thank you so much. I couldn't seem to find (including in the NYT Theatre review) too much input about the actual quality of the writing in & of itself. It appears as if all of the "controversial/disturbing aspects of the piece have been buried beneath a political dialogue. No denying the power of art to disturb, as James Baldwin so accurately stated. If a play doesn't enlighten in some way then what's the point? Yet things like structure, character & plot development etc. are still vital aspects of what we would call a good "play". In my opinion there aren't any topics off limits- but they have to be justified by ability & adherence to form & structure. In only one comment did I hear about the writing as being uneven in sections. It sounds like something one must see & hear for oneself.
2
For those questioning why the "12 minutes" comment was offensive, I can offer a possible reason. It is a comment of privilege that doesn't take into account the person experiencing the abuse. People who were enslaved did not have a choice. They had to endure to survive. The comment is completely oblivious, haughty, and akin to, "Let them eat cake".
3
@Elle I hear - I couldn't have lasted 12 minutes as a slave- as an acknowledgement of the horror of slavery. I've had a similar reaction to my grandparents account of their survival of the Holocaust, that I couldn't have lasted 12 minutes in the Holocaust.
7
@Elle
This is the quote:
“I couldn’t last 12 minutes of all that, never mind 12 years!”
Way way too much is read into this, including by the author of this piece. It is plainly an acknowledgement of the intense suffering experienced by the characters in the film. More like "I don't know how people survived that. I don't think I could have" than "let them eat cake".
12
Is this celebrating the community of an audience, or despairing in a bridge that can’t be crossed? Is this claiming that the play works upon audiences in pernicious ways, or does she suggest that the audience comes to own the play? Is a play ever meant for one specific race? Do white people see this play in the same way? Must we be the thing in question in order to talk about the thing?
Ms. Harris welcomes the relatively non-judgmental freedoms that come with the Black Out: “If we all interpreted and felt about it differently, it still meant something to have the relief of freedom from judgment to express those responses.” And yet she judges the guy who feels “12 Years a Slave” offers a repellant view of slavery – probably a common takeaway -- as making a gross remark.
She also notes the (whiter) audience was more “muted” the second time she saw this. Of course they were! They were confused. They were uncomfortable. They were guilty. But they were also there.
They were there to engage with experiences that likely differed from their own, to find connections among the disparate views on stage, to lean into theater for the sake of democracy.
I, too, felt muted when I saw this play. But the only way through this is to talk about it. What was all that ABOUT? What struck YOU? What did you find funny? Why else do plays exist other than the chance to experience, then reflect? I wish I got more of a sense that Ms. Harris wanted to have a conversation about the play.
8
@PBJT
Also, the whiter second audience might have been more muted because at the Black Out performance, "People got out of their seats to go to the bathroom when they needed, people spoke, people laughed loudly, talked back, people (mon dieu!) texted with their ringers off and screens turned low. And the whole room felt free. It was like a concert more so than a play and like people in the room were discovering a new amazing band.” (that's from the article that the "Black Out" tag in this piece links to). That doesn't sound like your typical Broadway experience, but it does sound like fun.
I wish the writer of this essay could have had my seat on a Saturday night preview of "Slave Play." A black man sitting in front of me made loud homophobic remarks whenever the two gay characters embraced or kissed.
23
Fantastic perceptive writing, Aisha!
2
I'm white but I get Ms. Harris's perspective on this play.
I've had lots of training in diversity issues and was a mediator in conflicts of diversity so perhaps I just have more comfort and familiarity with it.
There is a lot of diversity within the white community. Some white people are too defensive and sensitive to being blamed or criticized so they can't be open to other points of view. Some white folks are open but nervous and tend to laugh or make inappropriate comments when they are uncomfortable and uncertain what to say. Some white folks may have had their own traumatic experiences and memories of that get triggered when they see traumatic experiences of other groups but they may have difficulty explaining that.
There is not enough room here to go into all the variations but I know it's a challenging subject and it takes a lot of perspective to see all the different aspects of it....
9
So, black people want to be segregated, or don't they want to be? So tired of the "privilege" and "wokeness" tropes. So tired of these NYT pieces in which the author espouses a theory and then uses anecdotes to support the theory.
24
I, too, am having a hard time digesting why the "12 minutes" comment was so "gross." I guess if one seeks to be offended, there are endless opportunities to be gratified.
36
Well it's clear that the message of Martin Luther King failed to catch on. It's not the color of your skin...
Yes, America should acknowledge the role in it's past played by slavery, racism, and discrimination. But obsessing on it is dangerous and destructive. The American left has made a bargain with the devil by making identity politics a central part of its own identity. This is a dangerous road we are on.
I invite readers to go through the exercise of rewriting the article substituting different races, groups, or identities for "white" and "black" in the article.
28
@Dave
That "bargain with the devil" of making identity politics a central part America's identity?
...I'd say it started before an American Left even existed, back in 1619.
5
Thank you for your excellent writing!
3
"It’s an experience I’m all too familiar with, having grown up in predominantly white neighborhoods and schools,..."
"The audience was mostly white, "
I'm not sure you'll get a lot of apologies from the white folks for being in the audience in your presence or in the same school system or neighborhood as you. Maybe, who knows.
I attended a high school in Detroit that was about 55% Black and 40% or so white. There were a number Black students who were angry and upset they were going to the same school as so many white kids. They were vocal about this. This was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That problem eventually worked itself out, apparently to their satisfaction.
On a lighter note, when someone would pull the fire arlarm (always a false alarm) the students would gather around and sing refrains from a song by Sly and the Family Stone... "Don't call me... "
Eventually the Detroit Public Schools enacted an Afro-centric approach to education. At one point, to increase the students' self-esteem the lesson plan posited that ancient Egyptians flew to their daily activities using gliders.
And on and on it goes...
6
Wow, a black woman sharing her experience seeing a play twice sure makes us white people upset. Can't believe these comments. People, a person shared her experience. If you go see the play, you can share yours. Why so defensive?
The 12 months a slave comment; I know I have said dumb stuff when I was uncomfortable or so affected I didn't know how to "be" with the discomfort. You probably have, too. I try to learn to be silent with myself. It's often best. And spares me a future of cringing at my own ineptness.
17
Obviously, this play isn't entertainment, but a kind of penance. Blacks attending will bathe in pathos, while hapless whites self-flagellate and purge themselves of imaginary guilt. Thanks, but I'll pass.
21
@Timothy :Spot on, as they say.
The writer carries on about the white folks in the audience - white folks respond with varying perspectives and opinions - white folks are called defensive.
It sounds there are now two racial trump cards to be played in race baiting - calling someone "racist" and/or "defensive". With those accusations all meaningful discussion is ended.
5
"As the mostly white audience trickled out of the theater at the end, I overheard a man expressing relief to his companion: “I couldn’t last 12 minutes of all that, never mind 12 years!”
During the Black Out performance of “Slave Play,” I was shielded from having to endure such gross remarks for a couple of hours."
Just a question - was this man, presumably white, expressing relief, or a form of admiration for the strength of spirit of Solomon Northup? I wasn't there, I didn't hear the inflection or tone of the remark.
I understand that there's an enormous gulf between white and black people in this society, and that gulf has been created and enforced by white people. A significant piece of that gulf is that black people have been forced to view their lives and experiences through the lens of white people (I use the word "gulf" to be polite and it is short-hand for millions of lives' experiences, to be clear).
8
It is priceless to see this op-ed listed next to an op-ed that questions whether or not we are an empire in decline.
Absolutely priceless.
18
Life is its most joyous (often in retrospect) when I have attempted to experience it from a view point other than my own. To belittle or criticize anyone for sharing their thoughts, emotions or experience is to deny myself the opportunity for great joy. With humility I seek the understanding that comes from leaving my comfort zone and the responsibility to share my honest opinions and experience. I’d like to experience this show without being a person of any color. What a fabulous idea to offer it at an affordable rate!
2
The play is about race and the differing ways that European and African Americans perceive each other from the African America perspective. This necessarily forces anyone in the audience to relate what they see to who they see next to them.
We all feel and react to the people who we perceive. It's part of our wiring. If we see a person moving, we sense how that person feels moving. If we see a person enjoying or suffering, we do too. If the story is about how stereotyped views of people affect the characters, the audience will do the same while viewing it.
The play is about the experience of African Americans with respect to European Americans, and it's not composed to educate European Americans but to speak to African Americans. No surprise that with who one views it the experience will differ.
8
With African Americans amounting to at most 1 out of eight people, the likelihood of any audience being mostly African American is low. If a play is known to be only be appreciated by African Americans, then perhaps that will result in a mostly African American audience. This play seems to be one of those kinds of plays, one which non-African Americans will never appreciate.
If one cannot appreciate the intention of whomever created a work like a play, musical performance, visual art, or written work, it means that the work is biased to appeal to a specific audience. One must be an insider, with a unique set of preferences and of biases to experience it as it was intended.
Great art offers universal experiences that are open to all and anyone may appreciate them. Great art is rare but anyone can appreciate it, and any human being will enjoy it.
Slavery is not a problem anymore. But the legacy of slavery still happens to be a problem. The reason is that it became wrapped up with ethnicity and the attitudes about ethnicity which persisted even after slavery was abolished. People were not treated as equals despite all the principles expressed with the founding of the United States and the unequal treatment persisted with great cruelty for many generations. It created very different attitudes towards our country, depending upon one's ethnicity. Those attitudes are not similar nor are they easily reconciled. They reflect long standing divisions which defy the common history.
7
I would have loved to have seen this play during a "Black Out" performance. Just to experience the shared understanding and history of that audience. As it was, while there were many people of color in the audience the night I saw the play, I did find myself checking my reactions against those white folks around me. And I will note that the folks I saw leaving the show early were white. It's an uncomfortable show, no doubt about it.
I was at the Roundabout to see "Toni Stone" and my heart was ripped out by that show. I was in the front row, amidst a smattering of African Americans, perhaps 15 people tops. At the talk back, the well-meaning moderator invited us to turn to the stranger next to us and "tell us how the show affected us". I was instantly uncomfortable -- how would I reveal the depth of my feelings and experience of this show to this white woman who just wanted to wax nostalgic about her father's baseball games? This was just another day at the theater for her, while it was a moving and heartbreaking experience for me.
That's why a "Black Out" night is a good thing. To have an experience with people who have a common point of history and reference. (Movie theaters had female-only audiences for showings of Wonder Woman.) Of course everyone is welcome at the theatre, but why not also encourage audiences specifically oriented towards the subject/demographic of the play? It can make all the difference in how one gets to experience it.
13
I think you have to make a choice... you can either support a "Black Out" performance which essentially discriminates against everyone else that isnt black (i.e. segregation) or you dont support that.
If this white woman was so blaise why didnt you pour your heart out to her? Seems to me like a great opportunity missed because of prejudice... it's up to everyone to create unity and opportunities are missed everyday by the millions to make our society more loving. Sometimes that involves taking a chance and just going for it. I've noticed that we have backed into our tribes and I almost never see that outreach by blacks or whites for that matter. It makes me very sad.
Personally, I'm against "Black Out," a euphemism for "Black Only" or "No whites allowed." Segregation is a reflection of prejudice and it's wrong no matter who embraces it.
19
@Diva - I was at the African-American History Museum 18 months ago. After exiting the reflection pool, I still needed to sit down. Another woman sat next to me and we looked at one another. We both pretty much said simultaneously "I am overwhelmed." We sat some more than I looked over to her and said "can you use a hug?" Yes she said and we hugged with tears in our eyes. I am white, she was black. I don't know how I would react to this play and I won't kid myself that I would understand let alone have a visceral reaction because of my whiteness but I hope I would be affected enough that if you were my seat neighbor, you and I could have some meaningful dialogue. Please don't check your reaction around me. I need to know and understand things better, if you would be comfortable sharing with me.
9
@Jacqueline What both Jacqueline and Diva may have missed is that the Black Out screening was while Slave Play was in previews. It is not unusual for movie/play producers to have specific screenings in advance of an opening. They are trying to build excitement and an audience for an event.
3
If the people who enslaved other human beings invented ‘whiteness’ to justify their crimes, then skin color is not the operative feature of “heritage” in the United States.
Instead what our ancestors passed forward is the horrifying justification — the myth of whiteness — that’s now everywhere entangled in economic, cultural and political structures.
So exposing the way racism expresses itself in libido is effective. But prioritizing that may seem like an affect. Racism is a political construct designed to preserve ruling class power. If we want to dismantle it, we need to dismantle the pernicious myth of “whiteness” itself. Until we take that on, we can not move forward.
23
@Alix Hoquet
The pernicious myth is the significance of race. But dismissing race as a false concept tends to dismiss the real impact that the false concept has produced. So one must hold contradictory beliefs at the same time. Race is nonsense but race has mattered.
4
Thanks for this excellent piece.
8
Congrats to all who made this play possible but, to the author of this essay, don't run from the truth, there are a few million black people who would also be afraid in certain parts of Oakland, Harlem, St. Louis, Chicago, South Central LA etc. Facts matter.
17
@BackHandSpin I was more afraid in certain parts of Staten Island than I ever was in Harlem.
11
@BackHandSpin this is just an awful comment. Out of this entire article about having to constantly check oneself against clueless and often harmful white norms and demands you choose to share THIS response to her personal experiences? It predictably illustrates her point, and yet I’m appalled.
16
@Zoenzo and as a former resident of Staten Island who is Black and rushed out of many white neighborhoods for fear for my safety, I can second your point of view.
5
Ms. Harris, I mean this in all sincerity: describe the effect you would like this piece to have on the black people reading it. Then describe the effect you would like it to have on white people.
Next, describe the effect you would like it to have on human beings in general.
Then tell me, is it possible to be a member of all three groups?
41
The opinions epressed in this article are terrifyingly DIVISIVE.
I am a bi-racial "Latinex", human rights lawyer, and the opinions expressed in this article scare me.
"A Black Out"? Will there also be "Latinex Out." How about "Jewish Out", whenever a Haloucaust film is shown so that people of the Jewish faith won't be made to feel "uncomfortable" by the presence of non-Jews.
This is crazy, and will do tremendous harm to the the cause of equality and civil rights. We need to mix, and feel all the uncomfortableness of all that mixture if we are to progress. We need to engage, not segregate. We need to talk, not be dismissive of the other because the "other should know."
Recently I traveled to Cuba, and the Blacks and Whites consider themselves CUBANS- not black or white, but simply Cuban, and Cuba has a history of slavery very similar to ours.
Yes, there is racial discrimination in Cuba, but there isn't this racial hatred and divisiveness. Racial integration in Cuba doesn't seem to be so fraught and self-conscious. Cubans don't see a Cuban person of another race as "the other," but simply as another Cuban. I hope this divisiveness never poisons Cuba's race relations.
The opinions expressed in the article, shared increasingly by many on The Left, is scaring many people. It is this idealogy of racial divisiveness that will guarantee Trump another term.
121
@zoe Thank you, good point. You are exactly write about the politics of hate/racism and how Trump benefits form that.
17
@zoe I wrote essentially the same thing but my post has not been "approved" yet. We are in such crazy times that I've been wondering whether my post would be approved since it's not "politically correct." Thanks for speaking for me, for now.
24
@zoe puerto ricans hold the same view, they are all puerto ricans regardless of skin color.
13
I find this opinion piece moving and enlightening. I am so glad to read it. I am glad to now recognize the white southerners were traitors in the Civil War. And to glorify that evil is still traitorous.
I am glad to understand that being black might make one uncomfortable in a mostly white audience seeing a show about slavery. It breaks my heart as a white person. I blithely watched a play about an ancient black tribe in Africa, with all black actors and written by a black fellow member of an acting group we belong to. The audience was mostly black. There was no racism in the play because this was long before white men came and pillaged and raped Africa. It was about a power struggle between rural tribes and early Egypt. It was a bit of a fable as well. I wonder now if anyone black in the audience felt uncomfortable with the white audience members being there. It is sad but sometimes being white is being blind as heck! I am again glad this opinion piece helping me to see more clearly I hope.
8
“A power struggle between rural tribes” and you think there is no racism in that? On the contrary, this is the source and basis of racism - the source and basis of slavery as well.
3
I haven’t seen Slave Play yet, but I’m happy that white people are finally having to experience (if only momentarily) the uncomfortableness and otherness that nonwhite people have experienced and endured for centuries. This is where genuine empathy comes from. Walk in our proverbial shoes and maybe we can begin to actually communicate and cooperate with one another (as Homo Sapiens).
8
As an Asian, the show Miss Saigon is literally everything the author feared what Slave Play would be in a majority white crowd. A story about a seventeen year old Vietnamese girl... and a white soldier in an American occupied Vietnam. With no knowledge of how Asians are viewed in the west, this should not seem weird to anybody. But eventually you figure out why middle age single white men like to go to underdeveloped SEA countries, or you find out about Woody Allen.
Who wrote the play and who the play is written for is never truly independent of the play itself, especially if it tackles race.
14
@C. Miss Saigon, Madam Butterfly, South Pacific...
2
This article brought to mind a humorous moment with a gay, black roommate I used to live with (I suppose, given the nature of this comment section, I have to add I'm a straight white guy).
Back in the early 90s, we lived as roommates in NYC for 5 years. I was in a doctoral program at the time. When I got together with friends, we usually met somewhere outside the apartment, at a restaurant, a park, etc.
One day, my roommate and I were hanging out on the roof (one of those east village apts with a great view of both Brooklyn and the Jersey skyline).
At one point he said to me, "Hey Don, is the reason you don't have people over because I'm gay."
I looked at him with my best ironic/sarcastic/are-you-really-saying-that?? look, and said, "No, it's because you're black."
We both had a big belly laugh about it.
I hope this article doesn't mean that the days of such easy laughter about such things are over.
60
@Don Salmon Lovely comment. Due to the unrelenting grimness of the NY Times and other media on these topics, however, "such things" unfortunately are not only over - they are cause for eternal banishment from "woke" society.
9
I loved Slave Play. It was shocking, provocative, offensive, and thrilling.
Part of what I loved was that the couples were all interracial. We were watching whites and blacks uncover painful truths. And the truth is, as Americans, we are all in this together.
There was a line in the play when white people are described literally as a virus, as a form of biological warfare, because of the diseases that we brought to the indigenous people of America.
That was hard to hear, though I understood the sentiment.
I want to be part of this conversation and to listen. In fact, I paid Broadway ticket prices to do so.
Now I'm being told that I'm the wrong audience for this play. Even if I support black filmmakers and playwrights, I'm simply making those experience worse for the people of color who have to sit next to me, cringing at me and my white reactions to the play.
If I can squirm through a close examination of how my whiteness hurts you, Ms. Harris, and sit for over an hour of being called a disease, I think you can squirm through my squirming, and understand that we both want the same thing: a future where whites and blacks are true and equal partners in our society.
That, to me, was the very point of the play. We have to openly, and honestly, discuss this together, or else we'll never past our past.
94
@Sean You say you want to listen, and yet you haven't heard what the writer is saying. You've made it all about you, when this is only about how Harris feels differently amongst primarily black and primarily white audiences. Are you a member of any group that is often discriminated against? Gay? Trans? Female? Fat? Disabled? Can you not imagine that being in an audience composed of all wheelchair-bound people (let's say you are as well), at a show about the nuanced problematics of being physically disabled, would be a significantly different experience than being the one disabled person in an audience of able-bodies? If you've had the very lucky life of having never been the target of systematic and pervasive discrimination, then now is the time to exercise your empathetic response and to listen - REALLY listen.
23
@Sean Well said.
5
@Sean
As I read Ms Harris's column, I felt empathy with the audience during the Black Out performance of Slave Play as she described it. Here the audience didn't feel on guard or in any way defensive, had the audience been largely white.
As a member of a minority (while not black), I fully understand how a majority presence tends to inhibit the reactions of members of minorities (or a group which restrain their actions/reactions because of a dominant ethno/cultural group presence).
Sean, I'm not sure you fully grasp the pressure a mostly white audience brings to bear on a black person in that venue.
You should not feel hurt by what Ms Harris wrote, since she described what it was like to see the play with two different audiences; how the experience different & how it was the same.
What Ms Harris pointed out is the Black Out audience was able to view the play without the added pressure black people feel all the time when around white people.
So if you squirmed a little during a night out at the theater, try to picture what it's like to go through your whole life in real life situations, in dread of a dominant culture which doesn't understand you & sees you & those like you through a skewed lens all the time!
If you can try walking a mile in another person's shoes, you may be able to begin to develop the empathy needed to bridge the very real gaps our society has.
26
As a person of non-color who regards himself as woke as I can be given my background, Please explain what about “ “I couldn’t last 12 minutes of all that, never mind 12 years!” is insensitive ? Do you not agree with that assessment ? Surely everyone in the audience, Balck and white, was thinking that . I must have missed the point, but please don’t cop out with a response like “if I have to explain it to you you will never get it.”
115
@John Whitc I think that the exiting audience member spoke as one who has always had choices. Obviously his reaction was personal. I don’t begrudge him that because I understand opening one’s mind is a long, hard process.
Yet I cannot imagine anyone who understands and lives choicelessness, and understands it by virtue of who they are, would have that reaction.
As a white person I am somewhat, though probably only somewhat, aware of the marvelous choices given to me.
As a woman, I have known the choicelessness of women, as women, all my life.
Maybe the only real choicelessness we universally experience is as children.
13
@John Whitc the problem is that they endured for a lot more than 12 years.
16
@Dan D. and are STILL enduring!
6
Interesting.
21 years ago, I was brought in at the last minute as an accordion player for the show "Ghetto."
Ghetto was about a Jewish ghetto in Vilna, Lithuania during WW II, focusing in particular on the tortuous conflict between the Jewish natives and Jewish officials who were placed there by the Nazis.
As someone with a Jewish background, brought up in a rigorously secular household with almost no conscious connection to my Jewish roots, I found it a profound and searing experience, and was honored to be part of what I considered to be a brilliant and moving play.
Evidently, many audience members felt the same way. At the end of the play on each of the four nights I performed, one or more folks would come up to the performers and show them the numbers still embedded on their arms from the time they spent in a concentration camp.
It just never occurred to me - at the time or since - that there was an issue with the ethnic or religious background of the audience.
However, the NY Times theater critic, Frank Rich, had a problem. He was horrified by the idea of the goyim (non-Jews) seeing this problem of Nazi collaborators aired in public. He stated his problem in no uncertain terms, and the show (previously quite successful) closed the week after his review.
41
The author wrote:"I overheard a man expressing relief to his companion: “I couldn’t last 12 minutes of all that, never mind 12 years!”
Then: "During the Black Out performance of “Slave Play,” I was shielded from having to endure such gross remarks for a couple of hours."
Can anyone explain to me what the author, Aisha Harris, meant by this. I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just curious.
54
@Grant it feels a bit wrong to say that when people did have to endure that, not just for 12 years but for that many generations, as a result of what other people did to them, and presumably the whiteness of the speaker reflects their privilege to do so
16
@Hannah Thank you for trying to explain, but I still don't see how what the guy said "reflects [his] privilege." That's projecting quite a bit into what he said.
25
@Grant
I have the same question.
2
Great commentary and I hope to get to see this show, Yes, extremely uncomfortable, but we have to unpack this, for all of our sakes'. As a white guy having been in relationships with African American men, there were always unspoken dynamics I'm not sure either of us were comfortable or knowledgeable enough to surface -- it seems like this approach is a necessary way of doing that. The POV of audience ethnicity is also accurate -- I'm becoming aware that us white liberal, educated males live in a sort of Matrix-like bubble convinced that we know and can empathize with African Americans' experiences. We can't. And entertainment/media has for a long time held this "us" and "them" duality. This is a step toward grappling with that.
10
Thank you. Please write more columns.
10
A very thoughtful article expressing what I believe is an honest and insightful assessment. I appreciate this honesty as I try to understand my fellow humans of a different race as we try to move through this life in some harmony and understanding. Unfortunately, I have zero desire to spend two hours watching anyone talk sex, jabbing each other with dildoes, re-enacting any master slave scenario. Rape fantasy is not my thing and I fail to see any redeeming value in portraying it on Broadway. You can spin it all you want as a socially important spectacle; I find the whole idea tacky and tasteless no matter your race or sexual orientation.
29
This sounds so hideous that I'm glad, as a white person, I wasn't welcome.
16
So are white people supposed to see the play or not?
20
@Wolf Yes. But surely you can understand the difference between being black and seeing it with a mostly white audience and being black and seeing it with an all black audience.
4
@Froxgirl But if it's "not all about you," why should he? Can't he see it as himself?
2
I'm reminded of my college experience of reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and being the only white person in the class who didn't think that the point of the book was that during his performance of the Hajj, Malcolm came to think that not every single white person was a racist. White people have to get beyond "it's all really about me". We can never see things in just the way that black people or other people of color do, but we have to do our best, or we'll live forever as clueless, and very dangerous, racists.
19
@Stephen Merritt
Sounds great! But what do black people need to do? Surely not just stand there and point fingers.
5
Why is “I couldn’t have stood 12 minutes of that” a gross comment? Isn’t it rather an admission that the person has come to a new understanding of the suffering the slaves endured?
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@Alyce The twelve minutes remark is flippant. It minimizes the enormous impact of the twelve years of wrongful suffering of a man, and turns it into a casual aside, a mere joke! It is worse than gross. It is callous, unkind and shows how self-centered the speaker was, making it about himself.
8
@Alyce No, because that's an excellent definition of "centering" - making it all about how YOU would have been impacted.
7
“Instead, your experience becomes about your white neighbor and how they’re receiving it. What are they laughing at?”
The back of the stage being a big mirror makes this by design though.
3
I love you Aisha Harris!
I’m not sure commenters on this article read it, if they think she was suggesting segregated audiences. Her article is an invitation - she is explicitly endorsing the notion that bold, racially provocative work is not just for the traditionally white, high-end theater-going audience ...even as the playwright acknowledges his awareness of his play’s inevitable and deep situationality in and confrontation with the white gaze. (I also love you, Jeremy O. Harris.)
-from a white cis-male
6
@Frank Boudreaux
"I could absolutely imagine it, and thus understood why this specially curated audience needed to exist"
What part of that explicit quote - equating specially curated with racially segregated - did I misunderstand?
8
Oh. I thought you saw my point because you make it. But rereading, perhaps I’m mistaken? Right, Specially curated is not racially segregated. Wait. Right? Hmmm. A.Harris’s whole point is inclusion - not being token in racially homogenous audience. Further reason to lament if that explicitly clear point is not being effectively absorbed.
1
@Frank Boudreaux
So -we are at the point where 'inclusion' now means making a special effort to exclude others - OK - I totally get it.
"Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
6
I would like to see this play but left the column at the word "dildo"--just not interested in seeing that on stage. Sorry.
12
It's early yet and a first cup of coffee, but wanted to articulate as best I can an initial response. Slave-play as a kink, is or probably is a sexual desire of most people whether or not they realize it is, or whether or not they acknowledge it is as they engage in sexual partnering dynamics -- every sexual power dynamic is in some manner a slave-dynamic; every person with a sexual inhibition, probably fantasizes on some level having a sexual-slave relationship, whereby that partner performs without having to be told, without judgement, without refusal, liberated to have. And fascinating to utilize and dramatize this basic and base human desire if not instinct to therapeutically work through racial experience.
1
@CPBS
I might suggest less coffee to quell those broad-brushed assumptions about "most people." Chill.
8
@hotGumption and I might suggest it may not be as broad brushed as one might imagine. Quite comfortable, thanks.
"I overheard a man expressing relief to his companion: “I couldn’t last 12 minutes of all that, never mind 12 years!”"
The writer termed this comment "gross" which to me says a lot about the disconnect between races in the U.S.
White and black relations in this country often seem like a failing marriage where neither side hears, feels or understands what the other one is saying.
I'm white, my wife is black. I saw Eleven Years a Slave and walked out because the brutality made me feel like vomiting. I think I lasted 12 minutes. Extreme violence of the screen often affects me that way, whatever the context.
My mix-raced son's reaction when I told him was concern about what the audience must have thought of me. He may have been relieved when I told him the audience was mostly white.
I'm so tired of human fixation on tribal identities, but I can not complain about it. I'm privileged and not a victim.
As far as I'm concerned, the issue we should be focused on is the economics of racism. Fix that and the rest will follow.
Meanwhile, keep melting the tribes into one.
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@alan haigh
Here comes that old saw "privileged" again. You may be. As a white woman who had no money for much of my life despite working multiple jobs and, in addition, being a single parent, I felt mightily not privileged for decades.
Privileged to have children, not privileged in any other way except having the breath to get up every morning. If I could retire any word form the language it would be "privileged."
I was unable to compete on equal footing with married men who had wives taking care of the home, I was vulnerable in certain ways because of my single status, and it was a fearsome time. So you may be privileged, I was not.
20
@hotGumption Obviously the privileged are not all equally so. However, I know that when I meet with successful white men in a business context I tend to have less to prove than others who don't look like them or share cultural references with them.
The term privilege will become an "old saw" when blacks in this country share proportionate wealth with whites. You can say the same about men and women in general if you want, but they are more likely to share wealth with each other.
Nevertheless, I strongly support equal pay for equal work.
6
Me too.
1
I have seen and heard and know this play.
My black African American maternal and paternal ancestors were enslaved in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia where they were owned by and bred with my white European American ancestors.
My maternal and paternal grandparents knew their enslaved parents. They told me tales of their parents enslaved lives.
My living 96 year old maternal aunt knew her enslaved grandfather. My late 96 year old old maternal aunt knew both of her enslaved grandfathers.
This thearical fiction is my American past and present
One morning one of my enslaved black African American great grandfathers was in the slave quarters when they were summoned for work. He was a boy.
One of the enslaved men said that he was too sick to work that day. But he was verbally and physically assaulted by their overseer in order to make him work. The man rose to work. He walked then began to run towards a nearby creek/ river jumped in and drowned.
That poor human beings suicide over slavery enforced in my great grandfather a determination to survive and thrive. He and his enslaved wife sent five of their daughters including my grandmother to HBCU educations as teachers
19
@Blackmamba
5th paragraph...theatrical..
1
@Blackmamba What a wrenching and at the same time inspiring story. This is the story of human spirit.
1
"But for those of us who choose to endure it, we might just find a new way of living in that uncomfortable space, and reimagine the possibilities of what theater can give us."
Great. If it's all the same to Ms. Harris, I'll stick to my current way of being uncomfortable. I, personally, don't think black folks need to learn a new way to feel lousy. "Slave Play" ain't that deep. If white folks dig it, all the power to them.
20
Wonderful piece.
1
Does anyone really think that the way to get beyond racism is to consistently focus on it?
29
@Andreas Does anyone think that the way to get beyond racism is to avoid discussing its realities??
24
@Andreas You are correct, but this piece doesn't just talk about racism, it accentuates the artificial skin-color divisions between people.
3
@Andreas Yes?
4
I get the desire to be around people with whom you have a shared understanding of life, but in this country that is not what we need. We need open discussions with people who see the world differently - we need to be open to other views and work to understand each other - not label and push people away.
This is how Trump gets re-elected. By a left that is intolerant and uninterested in being with others or discussing issues without branding everyone who acts or thinks differently as bad.
32
@BMD
Exactly. The "dirty little secret" of the Left is that a good percentage of them can be just as intolerant as those they accuse of being intolerant on the Right.
If we are going to get past the interests in the country who seek to profit by stoking division, we all need to be willing to step out of our comfort zones and listen to all of our stories, for really that's the best of what we have, that's what endures. As "Tyrion Lannister" put it in the final "Game of Thrones" episode, "What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There's nothing more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it." And yes, listening to them can be difficult, there are truths hard to face. And the biggest challenge may be in accepting other people's reactions, even if they're diametrically opposite from our own. We don't, we can't have their experience. But we can broaden our own by listening.
We need to reclaim a common narrative as "Americans." Using the worst of the past enhanced with a heavy dose of BDSM erotica may or may not be the best way to get there but this play does offer that one perspective. There should be others.
10
@BMD Oh, it's the left that does that? I thought it was just the idiots of any persuasion.
@Patrick The only time in my lifetime that there was a sense that we (Americans) were pulling together was during WW2.
3
I truly fear for my country. Given current trends, a civil war grounded in mutual racial antagonisms seems increasingly likely, if not yet inevitable.
Like the "reparations" debate, its all about power - who gives and who gets.
Mao Tse-Tung wrote that "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." We may live to see those words bear bitter fruit here, in our lifetimes.
No one will benefit in the end.
32
@manta666
But right now, the race hustlers hold all the cards. The burden of everything is only on the whites and the whites alone. I’m not sure how much protections minorities will have here when the country explodes from all the tension but I suspect no one will be the benefactor here.
4
I had mixed feelings about this article. The writer is completely right that the history of racism and the legacy of slavery in this country weight a play like this one in different ways for audiences of different races and backgrounds. At the same time, the writer seems to view white audiences as embodying an unvarying stereotype of privilege and liberal defensiveness that can't possibly reflect people's real lives and personalities and perspectives. When did we lose the idea that art helps us empathize and identify with characters and situations that may be very different from the ones we come from? Or the idea that we do better when we view each other as individuals, seeking similarities -- rather than as exemplars of contemporary identity politics who bring nothing but unbridgeable differences to an intense experience like "Slave Play"?
126
@Blackmamba Jews were hardly beloved in this or any other Western country. That we live in a society where the oppressed are left to prey upon each other is not news, it is not unique. But to hint that Jews have been the source of the oppression and exploitation of black people is pretty much doing the dirty work of the real oppressors. And you are doing more than hinting here.
Seeing only the oppression of one's own nationality is going to lead only to more oppression. It does nothing to get to the cause of the problem.
Also, your views on art are specious at best. You set up a straw figure and even then, you miss it. Art can empower and inspire great things. Or, like Gone With the Wind or D.W. Griffiths' Birth of a Nation, it can empower and inspire despicable acts. And those two films are cut from the same cloth.
15
@Tom
Well said.
@Elizabeth
Art isn't and never will be life nor reality.
The Gershwin Brothers, Al Jolson and Benny Goodman could profit from using black African American Christian stereotypes behind their white European American Jewish power and privilege.
Jews were not enslaved in America. The Holocaust was not perpetrated in America by Americans against other Americans.
No black African American person had any role in choosing their identity.
2
Yet again, as a white woman, I feel that forever I'll need to crawl through hot sands to prove -- though I'll never be able to -- that I care about and empathize with and decry horrors of slavery, and pursuits and engagements in my life have demonstrated that.
BUT... instead, let's just segregate all film audiences for the best experience so no one need worry that they will be misunderstood!
I cannot change my skin color but do not presume to know what's in my heart and why it's there nor surmise that I could not feel as deeply as you at this showing, through my own personal lens.
The comment of one "older white woman"(Blindspotting) is not the dialogue of all white women. Let's not pretend that it is.
Long ago, while exploring in a largely deserted big city in a blinding snowstorm, armed with my camera, I saw three black men emerge from the clouds of snow, walking toward me.
My reaction was curiosity about what brought them out into the blizzard. But I couldn't ask. They crossed before they got to me. I wondered: Did they think I'd be afraid or were they afraid of me, or did they simply have another destination in mind? Who knows.
Can we ever start moving past us and them? Please? So many of us have and do.
105
@hotGumption Re-reading your first paragraph does it not strike you as a wee bit strange that you've made this about your own "suffering"?
The play existing isn't really much of an ask of you. As a matter of fact the Black Out does away with asking anything of non-PoC. You're spared!
14
@hotGumption Your defensiveness is telling. And while we who are white do not get to decide when it is time to move past, the systemic racism that still surrounds us suggest now is most definitely not the time.
5
@JBC
The replies are so predictable I could have written them in advance. Society belongs to all of us and people with differences need to harness themselves together to move the challenges rather than balkanizing.
In no way is my comment about MY suffering nor about defensiveness. But the two replies have played the tired card -- everyone white is suspect -- that is turning off numbers of people.
There has been systemic racism and sexism, and genderism and ageism forever. But gains are notable in all areas (perhaps with the exception of ageism) and more invigorating than the old plaints.
Not one bit of my comment feels strange to me and clearly some other people found something in it that moved them to ally with it.
7
Thank you for this review. I am a white woman who grew up in the legally segregated south, and remembers being told by my grandmother that I could not sit in the back of the bus. I aspire to be anti-racist in my actions as I have recently learned that to be in favor of "inclusion and diversity" is insufficient. Having just visited Colonial Williamsburg, I am reminded how slavery polluted every aspect of our country's founding and that we white Americans continue to benefit from our forefathers' and foremothers' participation in slavery. It is the privilege of a white person to assert that color of one's skin should not matter in this day in age. It matters. A play about sexism will be experienced differently by a an all woman audience versus one that includes men, even though one may wish to pretend that the female gender is no longer "stigmatized." So I can empathize about how different it would be to see a play about slavey as a black person in a black audience.
65
Thank you, "white woman who grew up in the legally segregated south." I am a white man who grew up in an era when discussions of race relations, however tense, hadn't devolved into a sadomasochistic ballet in which any utterance from a white mouth, no matter how sensible, can—indeed must—be dismissed out of hand as evidence of sublimated racism or oblivious "privilege." You wanna play that game? Fine. The woke crowd will squeal with glee at penitential boilerplate about how AWFUL it is to think "the color of one's skin should not matter in this day and age." And you can all collectively go nowhere together.
Those of us who embrace Dr. King's legacy can see that these are only the cheap thrills of a Pyrrhic victory, the confusion of a tragic impasse for progress. Does the color of one's skin matter in *this* day and age? Absolutely, and unfortunately. Should one be ignorant of atrocities on this continent that hinged on questions of skin color? Never, ever.
But must we retire the very *aspiration* to live in a nation where people are judged, personally and structurally, primarily by their actions, beliefs, and the "content of their character"? My god I hope not. That used to—and still should be—a worthy goal, regardless of current fashions.
4
@Beth Williams I honor you and I will quote you.
@Kaylee How dare you?
1
An eye-opening play that's well worth seeing. A caveat: the writing is uneven, with some scenes working better than others. The banter between the sex therapists didn't work at all for me, for example, and seemed relatively amateurish. But the actors and the director managed to pull off the most audacious scenes, and that is an impressive accomplishment.
10
Works as this play is exposing the reality of an America founded on slavery more than the founding documents which are theory. Slavery is the practice of what this new country was about. The only dissenter from the 3/5 compromise was G. Morris who clearly saw the cognitive dissonance at stake in this compromise. He declared: "It was incongruous to say that a slave was both a man and property at the same time. Instead of attempting to blend incompatible things, let us at once take a friendly leave of each other."
The "Great Compromise" was how the Congress would have two champers. "The Greater Compromise" was agreeing that slaves were 3/5 a person.
Morris was author of the Preamble which enunciated four points of a society seeking a more perfect union and "to ensure domestic tranquility" was one.
Yet, ensuring slavery denied this Republic would have domestic tranquility today.
And now we have an administration which espouses racism publicly and in divisive policies. We are doomed.
6
The reality of enslavement was much more real than any play on B'way. Naw, Bruh. I'm good.
22
Well, I wouldn't have thought of all that on my own, so thanks for writing the piece.
5
I find it hard to comprehend that in this day and age some of us are being stigmatized for the color of our skin! Maybe I am just hopelessly old-fashioned in my belief that people should not be judged by race, color or creed, nor held responsible for anyone’s actions but their own. Extirpating racism from America should not require unending human sacrifice.
17
@Larry Are you under the impression that centuries of racial violence and hatred can be undone by everyone just politely agreeing that racism is bad? Institutional racism didn't end with the civil rights movement. It's a battle we'll be fighting for many years to come, and it will require sacrifice, hard questions, and thoughtful analysis like that which is provided in this piece.
6
@Larry Yes, people are still being pulled over for 'driving while Black'. Maybe ask one of your Black friends about their experiences.
3
I have very mixed feelings about this piece. Obviously, audience members bring very diffetent expectations and experiences to the theater, and the history of racism in our country still imposes a huge emotional layer on top of the usual variations in audience member reactions. All the same, not every audience member of, in this case, a particular ethnic group will have the same response. And, is there not something to be gained, in teaching moment terms, of having members of different groups share experiences? Analogies are tricky and, in the US, race can be a heavier cleavage issue than others, but, as a Jew, I have often wonder what non-Jews experience when seeing "Indecency" or even "Fiddler on the Roof." Still, I would prefer the audience of any play I see to be as diverse as possible. I can imagine a black playwright getting gratification from the reactions of both a mostly black audience and a very diverse audience. And, of course, the response of every audience, regardless of ethnic representation, will be different. So, perhaps the answer is one of letting a million audiences flourish.
31
@arp - I suspect they see just what I see as a non Jew but a human being- an homage to family , tradition, endurance humor and human nature. Baldwin and Faulkner are both great novelists, not great white or black novelists.
7
I can totally see why someone would want to see this play in an audience where they felt comfortable.
I've been in venues where the source material was very far removed from the clientele. Seeing emotionally raw content presented as a carefully curated & pricey consumer commodity is ironic and maybe not that educational. As a white person seeing a black play in an all-white audience it's actually too safe an experience.
36
@Red Ree
Your reasoning is why I never seek out violence in the "arts." I keep it removed from my life as much as possible. We already know it exists; why indulge in re-enactments?
3
Ms. Harris makes very thoughtful criticism about the expectations and reactions by white audiences. In my opinion, it's due to their discomfort in admitting some truth that they are witnessing. I can't imagine laughing at some of the examples Ms. Harris pointed out. For me, it shows denial as a way for for a white audience to express their uneasiness. It's time we see racism for what it is, but I guess in 2019, we're not ready to admit it.
42