Separatism Masquerading as Healing

Why Race-Exclusive Theatre is a Step Backward

- Winkfield Twyman, Jr.

“To experience the work sitting in a sea of whiteness is even more of a challenge; to remove the white gaze eliminates at least one hurdle in examining and experiencing the work.” Inda Craig-Galvan.

Let’s talk about a bad idea—a very bad idea.

The first play I ever saw was A Raisin in the Sun, written by playwright Lorraine Hansberry. A Raisin in the Sun is the story of a Black American family and the American Dream of homeownership in a white neighborhood. The production was named the best play of 1959 and ranks among the best plays ever written. I encourage all readers who have never savored A Raisin in the Sun to do so.

I watched the play in 1973 with my classmates in junior high school. Did I experience the performance in a sea of 'whiteness,' given that my school was 96 percent white? The play left a good impression on me. I felt no challenge, no white gaze. I felt communal understanding about ambition, enterprise, adversity and triumph over adversity. We all shared awareness—an incomparable feeling.

Now fast forward to today and the London Theatre. 

Black playwright Jeremy O. Harris has created a different idea. Beginning with the debut Broadway production of his Slave Play (2019), his artistic work has been staged on occasion for an explicitly majority black or black-identifying audience. Why desire a race segregated audience? One can feel the sounds of black joy without racial constraint; the communal understanding that this is our space, our work, and our shared awareness.

The various rationales are not persuasive. Why is race separation at the theatre ill-advised?

Black Out presumes a black community needs healing. There is no black community in the world. There are around 1.2 billion black people of recent Sub-Saharan descent in the world. A community is defined as “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.” Clearly, black people living in San Diego are not living in the same place as black people living in London, Lagos, Harare, Nairobi or Fiji. Ancestors from a common place called Sub-Saharan Africa do not create communities. Ask an Igbo teenager from Nigeria living in Texas whether she feels in a community with descendants of American slaves. Genetic race alone does not create community.

Nor is there any particular characteristic to satisfy the definition of community. If there are over 1.2 billion black people, there are over 1.2 billion life stories, experiences and perspectives. There is nothing there to support the load-bearing weight of the label “community.” 

Moreover, who needs healing? What does the label “healing” in the context of a black community even mean? Does a well-adjusted black American doctor, the daughter of an oral surgeon, who is married to a doctor and lives in affluent suburban Maryland, need healing? How so? From what I can tell, the doctor is living well and doing fine. Does a black American lawyer, the daughter of a former Howard University treasurer, who is married to a high-powered lawyer and lives in an affluent suburban neighborhood need healing? Do I, as the beneficiary of a small-town American upbringing, need racial healing? One may well need healing from the social contagion that racism is afoot in the land. However, excluding white individuals from a play will not contribute to such healing. That’s just resentment and small-mindedness.

The other reasons for Black Out performances signal Black Fragility to me. One should say what one wants to say, regardless of whether one is among only blacks, a mixed-race group or all whites. I strive to be the same me in all settings. It is called authenticity. Who is so fragile that one can only speak up in one’s racial tribe? When I watched A Raisin in the Sun with my classmates, I would have confidently asked any questions I might have, even if I were the only black person in my class. 

As for feeling the sounds of Black Joy without racial constraint, what exactly is “Black joy?” Individuals can be joyful. A racial group of 1.2 billion individuals cannot be joyful in sync. The slogan “Black Joy” means nothing to me. 

My last objection questions communal understanding. Communal understanding is a conforming shibboleth. Suppose one is a non-conformer? Suppose one considers Blackness of no importance or little importance to one’s sense of self? I have been in all black settings and felt understanding. And the exact opposite has been true as well. I was bored to tears at the “Black Table" in junior high school. I felt no communal understanding. I felt alienation in my Black Sunday School class as kids unable to read slowed down the pace for me and others. I have felt extreme disaffection at an all-black identifying gathering where a Dad warned, “they were going to put us back in chains.” I keep my distance from delusional people. 

One might feel alienation and marginalization if one, as an individual, attended a Black Out performance where the audience believed “Blackness is Oppression. Nothing Else Matters.” The Black Gaze is not fun for a non-conformer. 

And one more thing, Mr. Harris: separating black theatre goers from others is not a new, edgy idea. Abolitionists were fighting these bad ideas back in the day. In any case, standards for great plays have dropped during my lifetime.

I encourage no readers to savor Slave Play.  

---

Winkfield Twyman, Jr. is the co-author of Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America. He is a writer, commentator, and former law professor. He has written for the Chicago Tribune, the San Diego Union Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times Dispatch, and several other publications. He can be reached at twyman.substack.

---

🚨Upcoming Events from The Equiano Project🚨

End of Race Politics with Coleman Hughes & Inaya Folarin Iman

Tickets available Here. (Free Tickets for our paid subscribers. Email ada@theequianoproject.com to receive your code.)

Similar content to the article…