" DEDHAM, MASS. - Over the years, schools have celebrated Black History Month in myriad ways, but it's doubtful any staged a play that draws on the controversial genre of minstrel. Until now.
Earlier this month, seventh- and eighth-graders at the exclusive Noble and Greenough School performed Douglas Turner Ward's "Day of Absence." A satire first produced in 1965, the play reverses the tradition of "blackface" minstrel shows. Set in a sleepy Southern town, it puts actors in "whiteface" to show how lost whites would be if a racist fantasy came true and all the blacks suddenly, mysteriously disappeared.
Director Nina Freeman, a black graduate of the school, had hoped her mostly white cast might generate a flurry of discussion about race among playgoers - through their frequent usage of the term "nigra" on stage and depictions of pathetic white people unable to care for themselves. Yet those most changed by this provocative production may have been the provocateurs themselves.
"At our age, all we've done are happy plays like Cinderella, and this is a dark subject," said Caroline Eisenmann, a seventh-grader from Wellesley, Mass., as she took a break from folding programs before a final dress rehearsal.
"At first, we didn't want to do it, didn't want to say the word 'nigra'.... But we learned this is a way to bring a message. I hope [the audience] figures out this isn't a negative message."
Fears lurked near the surface among her fellow thespians-in-training. Maybe blacks in the audience would take offense at references to "darkies" or "jigaboos." Or whites would resent being portrayed as fumblers who couldn't change a diaper or cook an egg without help. Or maybe everyone would sigh impatiently at yet another lecture on the virtues of diversity.
"I'm sure I'll get comments, like, 'Enough of this white-bashing,' " said Ms. Freeman, a 22-year-old English and theater teacher. "Of course, I worry about it, but I'd rather that theater be provocative than predictable."
The students' production of "Day of Absence" opened with actors in white masks - a modified version of the original use of white face paint. Soon they lifted the masks, but they continued to caricature the white characters, whose panic spread with news that their nannies, garbage collectors, delivery persons, and switchboard operators had vanished. ....."
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Ivy League School Holds Funeral For Michael Brown And Non-White People Killed By Racism
"Preparing for the soon expected grand jury verdict in Ferguson, Missouri, students at the University of Pennsylvania held a ceremonial funeral on Friday afternoon for “black and brown bodies” oppressed by the evils of capitalism and the racism of police officers.
Known as the Students Organizing for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), the multicultural student group founded in 2012 has held a litany of stunts on the Philadelphia campus to “create a more conscious and active community at UPenn and in Philadelphia,” according to the group’s Facebook page.
Since the beginning of the school year, SOUL has deemed Friday “#FergusonFriday,” a day when members wrap-up the work week with symbolic graveyards, performances featuring blood-drenched bodies and most recently a mock funeral to demonstrate against the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
“Judicial system + capitalism + police brutality = representing the systemic oppression that has contributed to the genocide of black and brown bodies. Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail. The WHOLE damn system is guilty as hell,” warned one Facbook post from earlier this month........
In addition to eulogizing Michael Brown, the couple dozen members or supporters of SOUL circled around the ceremonial coffin on Friday, pleaded desperate words on immigration reform, and even how the American public is misinformed about the true story of the Civil War. Once these justice seekers finished lamenting the state of the horribly racist world in which they live, group members grabbed and hugged-out their feelings. The hugs were described as “solemn,” according to Campus Reform.
The ceremony wrapped up with the students walking single-file to the casket, where they poured water into a bucket, an African tradition."...
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Children sing about changing the world:
I’m so tired of hearing about race I can’t describe how annoyed I feel. We seemed to be doing a lot better before we got a president who says racially divisive things and throws in his indictment of police before the facts are in. What this president has done to America and race relations is treasonous. He is the enemy from within.
This has put me entirely off my appetite. argggh...
Child abuse, plain and simple.
While I would be willing to believe individuals within the Baltimore police committed a crime (depending on the evidence), I want a fair, evidence-based trial. If there is not enough evidence for a conviction, or if the evidence in a show trial cannot be trusted, then I do not want a conviction. These police should be treated exactly like any other accused criminal should be treated.
Our maids and general around the house workers were....surprise...our parents. In short, most white families didn't have maids, servants, or hired help. That was true for many communities in the north. Outside the big cities, most smaller towns and cities had few to no black people living in them.
I went to a link he put in his article “everyday feminism”.
WHEW! It’s bad. Real bad.
When reading to your child and stressing education is considered White Orivelege the world has gone insane
***to show how lost whites would be if a racist fantasy came true and all the blacks suddenly, mysteriously disappeared. ***
Strange. I’ve lived in towns with no minority populations and everyone survived just fine.
Now we’ve got lots of Latinos, Asians and others, and as far as I can tell, everyone still survives just fine. The jobs poor whites used to do are now filled with minorities who are using those jobs to reach better jobs.
Unbelievable how European whites managed to create Notre Dame, classical music, the Industrial Revolution, etc, without their black nannies and maids.
Funny, I don’t feel “privileged”, where do I sign up to get mine?
“Even progressives are getting tired of privilege-checking”
TOO FLIPPING BAD.
You ‘progressives’ did this to us, so now I’m going to enjoy watching you CHOKE ON IT.
Another mature adult in the educational system.
The idea that these white kids’ privilege is part and parcel of the same “dominance” enjoyed by their poor brethren in northern Idaho is laughable. But then that may be the point of this white privilege business, to distinguish Idaho whites from their Manhattan counterparts.
Writing from northern Idaho, I'd be very grateful for any distinction between myself and - one can hardly use the word "counterpart" without assuming a commonality deeper than the color of one's skin - my Manhattan fellow citizens. If they are.
This whole ideological con game has grown tedious. It is little more than pure bigotry dressed up in pseudopsychological jargon, with a set of premises that grow steadily more outlandish and never questioned. From such luminaries - is the word "luminary" racist? - from black luminaries such as Cornel West we have a weird reformulation of Original Sin and a steady assurance that magic is at work here, that White Privilege is all-pervasive but invisible to those who are not permanently addicted to chronic guilt-tripping. To call this nonsense is to dignify it. It is an intellectual fad on the order of Pet Rocks, and the only lasting wonder is that it was ever taken seriously to begin with.
Time, I think, to draw the curtain and behold the pathetic, ignorant, bigoted, racist simulacrum of a man behind it and to laugh him into the puddle of fetid goo more than which he never was. The mantra will continue to be chanted, to be sure - if you can't think, you can always chant, pound drums, spew slogans as if they were diamonds of wisdom within the dung. We see the dung. There are no diamonds.
Saturday Melissa Harris Perry went on a rant about how whites created those poor crime ridden areas in the city, going back 60 years ago :
1) Segregation laws(60 years ago )
2) Red lining for home loans for blacks, white parents have ‘wealth’ to pass on to kids, blacks don't
3) White flight, whites took that privileged $$$ with them leaving those black areas with nothing
Also Sunday I listened a bit to the local Rush replay, he quoted some British sociologist saying that kids that get bedtime stories read to them have an ‘unfair advantage’ over other kids.
Racialist proselytizing.