Sitcom Slaves

Slavery is back in style. It's trending in the arts world, in film and on stage, through curated museums. The unearthed American psyche is pulsing with unapologetic delight. Racism is over (at least according to over 60% of white Americans) so now gawking attention can be paid to bloody roots of American society. 

Kara Lee Walker's exhibit "Subtlety" had lines wrapped around the block to see an enormous Mammy-Sphinx with enormous breasts, butt and an Aunt Jemima handkerchief wrapped around her head. The warehouse-size sculpture was made out of sugar and mostly white crowds flocked to take hilarious pictures of themselves by the enormous slave's butt crack, vulva, or breast area while making funny faces. Obviously "Subtletly"lived up to its title for many in the crowd who shoved faux fists up the slave's ass in order to post to their Facebook wall.

On stage, "An Octoroon" had an incredibly successful run as a re-imagining of a 19th century play about slaves and a 1/8 racially mixed woman. In the new hipster version slaves lounge around cracking jokes like in a sitcom, talking in contemporary urban vernacular. Audiences roared with laughter, again mostly white and privileged. On the day I saw the play, my seat neighbor was a Latino woman who rolled her eyes throughout the piece while the crowd delighted in the sassy, funny slave homegirls chatting it up while they idly plucked cotton with their fingers like they were doing rote office work. The audience in back of me were two well-known black artist who sat rigid the whole time and quickly fled the play afterward. 

Last night I caught "Father Comes Home From the War," another play that re-imagines slavery for a white audience as a slight inconvenience. The author doesn't bother to explain the conundrum of why if it's such a slight quibble, are people willing to die to escape the white collar doldrums and hum drums of the sitcom slave. In the first act of the play, the slaves enter joking about the approaching day, taking bets on what the protagonist is going to do, and remaining as chatty and free as "The View" panel. A guitarist sits on stage strumming and giving the scene the mood of warm nostalgia and home-life. A female slave suggests to her lover that they go back to the cabin and spend all day in bed. She must have banked her slavery vacation days to afford that luxury. The sitcom slaves wisecrack, talk in folksy metaphors, simile-ize their plight. It's very comforting, entertaining, and safe. The mostly white, upper-middle class audience sits enthralled at getting a peek into the life of their darkest curiosities and being assured: it wasn't that bad and it's long in the past. 

The hit series "Orange Is the New Black" is apart of slavery chic. Granted it's about the female prison industrial complex, but most of the characters fit the plantation mode. What makes OITNB innovative is that they have thrown a white observer into the mix to serve as the anchor for the audience to observe the wild comings and goings of shackled and caged women of color. For Halloween, dressing up as Crazy Eyes was very popular last year. 

The trend is only getting stronger with mammy roles, movies about black servants, and servile people of color. For me it's clear what I must do: get on this gravy train...or rather gravy ship.

It's clear that I need to write my own sassy slave and/or servant piece. As I sat watching "Father Comes Home From the War" the idea came to me: a Cirque du Soleil of slavery. Wise, sassy, folksy slaves with acrobatics and fireworks. And jokes. Perhaps they (slaves and or pre-civil rights era servants) find some time machine portal and are transported into the present before an audience for an evening of circus entertainment, song, festivities. 

Maybe the portal keeps spitting out oppressed people from different periods into the circus who are forced into these wise, sassy, joking roles. 

Perhaps we'll have wise and dancing Native Americans coming out of the Trail of Tears, folksy Muslims who were massacred in Bosnia, sassy gypsies, gays and Jewish families from concentration camps. They'll dispense these Yiddish tidbits of wisdom, borscht belt jokes, sing a folksy song, get enslaved and/or slaughtered, and then another group pops out of the portal and into the circus ring. 

Perhaps halfway through the show after the raunchy black slaves and athletically ripped Native Americans and singing Rwandans, people will start to think....'hey, something is weird here. The Holocaust is a serious thing and not to be taken lightly. I don't see anything funny about the Puritans who were slaughtered." 

Maybe the time machine will just keep spitting out more jokes, more genocide, more circus. I could title the piece Cirque du Blanc. And perhaps we can all sit back and finally see genocide/enslavement/ debasement on even comedic grounds. And perhaps that will be when we all stop laughing.

White Privilege Among Friends and Facebook

In the midst of Zimmerman trial, a few 'friends' approached me. Apparently I talked too much about race. It wasn't appreciated. It made them uncomfortable. I thought about this for a while and resisted the urge to explain the sociological and historical terms of why Trayvon Martin is indicative of a larger problem. I became aware that I was dealing with White privilege and then I did something I should not have done: I stayed silent. I censored myself because the issue that endangered my actual ability to live...made them squirm. They would rather not talk about it. Some of these friends were spiritual, others were atheist, but I did notice one common trait: they were all White men.

I noticed that other people of color were experiencing the same thing in person or on social media sites. I would look at the Facebook newsfeed and notice the occasional comment of weariness: did we have to always make this about race? Once again, these were almost always White men. In one incident there was a questioning of why the news was only showing the young picture of Trayvon. Why was the news not showing the much larger and I guess scary, threatening Black man who was still gunned down for walking back home. When I explained the protocol of how the news media defers to the family to ask for pictures, his suspicion remained. Why was the media still running this picture, as if there was some conspiracy involved to show a murdered Black teenage boy as innocent victim of an overzealous neighbor with documented past incidents of racism, rather than acknowledging that the only conspiracy involved was one of facts aligning with our previous experiences of racism in America.

It's a blessing to have so many friends of different colors, ethnicities, and religions. But the issue of White privilege has to be addressed. For people of color to be told by their White 'friends' that they talk about race too much, the scenario should be flipped. In the midst of inequality, how can their counterpart be so silent?

Willful blindness and silence doesn't make one more Christian or Buddhist or spiritual. Quite the opposite. To allow systematic injustice to go on and to not even speak of it because it's messy or not your family, is a sign of weakness and privilege. It makes you a part of the problem.

The concepts of karma and emptiness do not mean we ignore the world and injustice. But we use the world to work through our own stuff. Activism on and off the cushion is a must. But there can be no work done when the inequalities of the day are ignored. Having a friend of color doesn't mean you've escaped the matrix of White privilege or have 'figured it out.'

This morning I saw a story about a Black man in Florida who was beaten up by a cop, arrested, thrown in jail for a night, and brought to court for walking on the wrong side of the road (the story can be read here). This is something that all people should be aware of; not because it highlights an isolated incident. The reason why this is news is because it's symbolic of systemic inequality. Although these societal problem appears to flares up every once in a while in outrageous crimes, they exists on a subtle level in the lives of millions every day.

When I walked down the street yesterday and hear the car doors lock, I am aware of the small, everyday things. I can't knock on the car window and explain to this person that I just came from a workshop at Juilliard. I can't explain to the cop who wants to frisk me that I'm actually an award-winning writer on a fellowship to the best arts school in the country. I can't explain to the women on the Upper West Side who scrunch up their faces in anguish/anger/contempt when I walk into a subway car, that I would no sooner ask them for money, than I would own a gun, or smoke crack, or do any of those things they may associate with someone who looks like me. None of these things can be said. Instead, people of color walk around with those everyday slights, with a feeling of anxiety and low-level paranoia.  It's not helpful to be told to bottle this up until the next riot or crisis, at which point people of color will be forced into another artificial dialogue, contrived to assuage the immediate fears of violence but not to address the actual problem of racism.

As a nation, we have to do better. As friends, we have to talk about what concerns us. There is no such thing as 'talking too much' about an issue if it's in the news and directly affects the your friends. Instead of willfully creating a wall of ignorance, we can use social media to actually break down those old barriers and listen to each other.

That is all. Namaste. 

African Americana: A Social Satire

AFRICAN AMERICANA

At the end of last year I was asked in a small Brooklyn museum to write a piece about Obama and race. I remembered my stint as an Obama staffer in the 2008 campaign and all my traffic stops with the local Cleveland police force. I decided to try my hand at a social satire blending my memories with some cultural archetypes. What came out of that was "African Americana."

Even though it was just a workshop production on a blank stage I was so happy that Jesse Phillips-Fein (curator of the Obama to Occupy Festival) asked me to join in on the parade of shows at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX).

Fortunately someone recorded the show and -with the permission of all those involved- I put it on youtube. Even though "African Americana" went up in January 2013, it feels like it happened years ago. It was nice to get this web clip this weekend from the talented videographer, Denae Hannah.

A month later I adapted "African Americana" into a full-length play "Obama-ology" which was workshopped at Red Shirt Entertainment. I'm looking to keep this satire going because, unfortunately, it's all too relevant these days.

A Pill for Racists

Is this the cure for racism, sexism, or homophobia? Probably not, but Oxford University scientist say that the common heart disease drug, propranolol (40 mg), does show signs of shifting discriminatory thoughts in individuals that's above statistical error.

In an environment of increasing hostility, coercion, and fear, maybe we should all take two and see how we feel in the morning. If we use drugs to treat restless legs, why not racist heads?