The Great White Way

It is both fascinating and troubling to question why racism, with its well-earned historical stigma of wrongfulness and shame, continues to persist. It boggles the mind to think that here in America we have yet another wave of neo-nazis , a police force that targets minorities and gets away with it, a prison system that has essentially perfected legalized slavery and a series of on-going wars designed to subjugate and murder people of color. Yet here we are. 

 In the world of theatre, particularly as a means of livelihood and employment, white actors are hired much more frequently than minority actors. Entire seasons of equity houses might feature one or two minority actors, entire Broadway casts might feature 0 minority actors. Despite being a billion dollar industry, the Broadway league conveniently refrains from tracking minority casting figures, although they spend a great deal of energy tracking their audience demographics (spoiler alert: it's 85% white).

 In spite of the lack of data, independent groups have determined figures for minority casting on Broadway and found that in 2014-2015, white actors were cast in nearly 85% of roles. 

Art that exists within an echo chamber will never survive. And right now that is what the vast majority of professionally produced theatre represents. White shows for white audiences. Drastic changes are needed, but so far the proposed solutions are not doing enough. Most experts agree that non-traditional casting represents the most positive nudge towards inclusiveness in theatrical casting but numbers have stayed stagnant at around 10%, particularly on Broadway. Maybe that's why it's nicknamed 'The Great White Way'. 

  I do however find hope that theatre is one of the few places that a meaningful discussion is taking place. Increasingly, new plays are being written by and for minorities and are finding their way on to more professional stages. This is positive. 

   But, as is the case with so much in this country, so much of it comes down to money. So much of it. Bottom up, top to bottom. I believe that so much of the polarization that seems so glaring in our current political and social climate is about money. The vast majority of Americans have experienced no upward social mobility in close to two decades. That goes across all racial lines. However, politicians (just look at how our president won) obfuscate the fact that the middle class is vanishing due to corporate and political greed and instead sow more division on racial lines. 

   

 What we need is a much more progressive social democratic construct that completely redefines how the money is being spent. Like FDR, a new deal is needed, one in which trillions is invested in American infrastructure and lifts millions of people out of poverty. Ideology is an easily manipulated concept, and a universal push to eradicate poverty would do an incredible amount to reversing hundreds of years of racist blame games and bigotry.

  "THE LOOSE CONNECTION some voters have with policy preferences has become apparent in recent years. Donald Trump managed to flip a party from support of free trade to opposition to it by merely taking the opposite side of the issue. Democrats, meanwhile, mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for calling Russia the greatest geopolitical adversary of the United States, but now have flipped and see Russia as exactly that. Regarding health care, the structure of the Affordable Care Act was initially devised by the conservative Heritage Foundation and implemented in Massachusetts as “Romneycare.” Once it became Obamacare, the Republican team leaders deemed it bad, and thus it became bad. (Source- The Intercept)

Look, this is a huge issue and problem and source of national shame, and one that I am not going to do any sort of justice to in this trite blog post. Racism is real, people are manipulated to hate by power structure and duped by that same power structure to keep the power structure in place. We need to dismantle that.