You dress like a black bobby soxer or greaser, one of Sandy’s many friends.
In 3rd grade, in the 60’s, my class was assigned a biography book report. I was very excited about giving my speech on Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and early civil rights activist, that is until I realized we were supposed to deliver it in character. What was a little towhead white girl to do? My mother and I were flommoxed and when she realized my subject my teacher was similarly unsettled, but how do you tell a little girl she can’t do her report on an important American hero, particularly one whose biography had engendered such a great learning experience for said kid?
I ended up going off to school without blackface but with a black fuzzy wig. I’m sure I was a bizarre sight. i remember wondering how the one black kids my class felt about this but I didn’t have the guts to ask.
Really, now. Grease (and that era) is about as “what white people like” as can be. Do you think black people in the 50s were wearing poodle skirts, doing the hand jive and bopping to the Big Bopper right alongside Sandy and her buddies? (Do you think they got to sit at the counter at the diner next to Fonzie and Potsie?) Somehow I don’t quite think that describes the average black experience of the 50s.
“RD: For white people, their identities rest on the idea of racism as about good or bad people, about moral or immoral singular acts, and if we’re good, moral people we can’t be racist – we don’t engage in those acts. This is one of the most effective adaptations of racism over time—that we can think of racism as only something that individuals either are or are not “doing.””
“For white people.” Gag. How about I’m just a person, with my own thoughts, desires, definition of identity, etc instead of being lumped together with other white people with whom I may share nothing other than the color of my skin? Don’t you see how racist that is?
If the goal is to build a harmonious and color blind community, then protesting over those ridiculous plastic hats seems quite counterproductive to me. How can anyone even stop laughing long enough to be angry? I think people have lost sight of the goal. Wasn’t it equality? If it was, then every time they resurrect some ancient history of oppression or prejudice they undermine that goal. They undermine equality because they remind and/or inform their fellow Americans that at one time someone thought they were an inferior people. All the while, the vast majority of college students weren’t thinking anything special about, say, Mexicans, but now some activist just put those old ideas back in their heads. Being in their 20’s, most college students had probably never even heard of Speedy Gonzalez or the lazy, drunken stereotype supposedly associated with sombreros. In fact, as contemporaries of NAFTA (on the Mexican side there’s actually the term “NAFTA baby”) they had a very positive view of Mexican productivity. They keep hearing how Mexicans are making products formerly manufactured in the United States, in fact. That’s today’s reality, not cacti or bandidos. Congratulations, now your peers are going to think about lazy siestas instead when they look at you.
“Popular dance programs, such as American Bandstand and the Milt Grant Show, would not, at least initially, allow black and white teens to dance in the same studio. Black teenagers could not help but be aware that white America considered them vastly inferior, and that straying over racial boundaries could have humiliating and/or devastating consequrnces.”
My dad (a white Philadelphian of that era) used to dance on Bandstand in the fifties. I’ll have to ask him if there were black teens on the show then.
Of course AA kids were subject to racism. My point was that there would be nothing bizarre or racist about a black student dressing in a poodle skirt or leather jacket because minority kids who dressed in these clothes certainly existed in the 50’s.
However, today’s kids - myself included - still benefit from the work of slaves, the acquisition of Mexico’s territory, the land and resources taken from Native Americans.
And I don’t think any of us are too keen to give it all back and start over.
We did Oklahoma my senior year, I’d had a lead in the spring musical every year before that. I didn’t get Laurie, you know why? I was too tall. Curly was just barely my height. And FWIW, he was also black. So goes life in the theater.
Heaven forbid we ever think about, much less reflect on, the experiences of others.
I have been reading along and don’t post much but I read a lot of these threads and am on CC a lot. Just have to note that a new trend in theatre seems to be race blind casting. At our HS, Cossette in Les Miz was African American for instance and when my daughter (who is white) was Rosalind in As You Like It, her father was African American. They just do it completely race blind and it works. (I’m not sure that it would work to do Othello that way but in most cases it does…) Similarly at our local professional regional theatre (which received a Tony this past year for best regional theatre), they just did The Crucible with race blind casting. Abigail Williams was white while John Proctor was African American and one of the other key girls (can’t remember her name now) was of Indian descent. Costuming was vaguely historical with some contemporary items/looks mixed in. Broadway has had an African American Cinderella (and the movie with Brandi as Cinderella had a mixed race cast).
So then it never ends? We never move on? We keep wearing forever the labels that divide us? We keep bringing up the sordid past, even at communal events that could otherwise be fun and unifying? We make sure our sensitivity stays perpetually raw to the extent that a silly party favor evokes cries of racism? That sounds like hell to me.
This is just amazing logic. As soon as I got an INS stamp in my I-94 at JFK I and all my unborn children and grandchildren became forever in debt to “marginalized” people. Not the case for immigrant from Africa.
But wait, my people invented a lot of good stuff that “marginalized” people use every day. Maybe “marginalized” people owe me something too?
Personally, I grew up saying “gypped,” and never had the slightest idea that its origins had anything to do with the Roma. I just thought it was a completely innocent verb. I didn’t hear the expression “jewed me down” until I was in my thirties, and was shocked, because it was completely obvious that it referred to a Jewish stereotype.
“An afro wig on a blonde or a blond wig over afro, not fine”
Who am I to tell a black person (in this case one with an Afro) what they are “allowed” or not “allowed” to wear? or what hair texture they should or should not have, or what hair color they should or should not dye their hair if they are so inclined? Don’t you see how offensive that notion is?
I really don’t know whether you benefit from the institutions that benefit white folks generally.
But “in debt”? This isn’t a thread about reparations, it’s a thread about students saying they find something offensive, and maybe instead of a knee-jerk reaction like “oh that has nothing to do with me why don’t you get over your stupid PC touchy attitude”, listen to what they have to say.
The “right” to drink and wear sombreros at Bowdoin without criticism or repercussions isn’t constitutionally guaranteed.These kids are at a school with a student body whose elected leaders have said - in writing - that’s not something that’s cool to do.
Someone much smarter than me once said “When you have the facts, pound the facts. When you have the l;aw, pound the law. When you have neither, pound the table.” The facts seem relatively clear here. I personally find it pretty illuminating that those of you on the pro discipline side don’t seem very interested in constructing an argument based on the facts at hand.
“Do you think black people in the 50s were wearing poodle skirts, doing the hand jive and bopping to the Big Bopper right alongside Sandy and her buddies?”
Yes, as others have noted they were wearing the same fashions. White people didn’t invent any kind of jive, and they certainly didn’t invent rock & roll. Black people had teen dance parties. They would have been separate parties, but I don’t see why everybody nowadays can’t have fun with that popular culture together. We’re talking about the 1950s, not the 1850s; life for black people wasn’t some never-ending torment.
The racially casting HS director cited above is the problem, not the parts written for white characters in musicals. You can cast anybody you want in any role you want. Look at the runaway success of “Hamilton.” The drama teachers need to be fired if their lack of imagination is leading them to racially discriminate against their own students. Sheesh. Do they say they can’t do any plays with characters who are over 18, because there’s no one to cast in those roles?
