A new century, a new `color line'
Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune
May 1, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Sometimes our efforts to stand up for the less fortunate actually can grease their slide backward into even less fortune.
That's what I thought of the verbal sucker punch with which August Wilson, the distinguished black playwright, walloped Bill Cosby, the distinguished black comedian.
When Time magazine asked Wilson what he thought of Cosby's controversial criticisms of black parenting, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright was dismissive:
"A billionaire attacking poor people for being poor," he said. "Bill Cosby is a clown. What do you expect? I thought it was unfair of him."
I, by contrast, think Wilson is being unfair to Cosby--and to clowns.
Black comedians have a long history of sometimes getting to the heart of the matter more quickly and effectively than most scholars, politicians or movement leaders. Anyone who dismissed Dick Gregory in the 1960s, Richard Pryor in the 1970s or Chris Rock in the 1990s as mere "clowns" would have missed something very important that was happening in black America.
These days Dave Chappelle's show on Comedy Central speaks volumes with topical skits--like his fake news report on what would happen if black Americans actually received slavery reparations. (Answer: Most of the money would find its way back into the cash registers of white businesses before sundown. KFC and FUBU would merge to become the world's largest company. Etc., etc.)
Similarly, it helps to have a sense of humor and irony to hear what Cosby's saying. Cosby has not, in his various addresses and interviews, attacked poor people for being poor. He has criticized parents who neglect the work that can save their children from a lifetime of poverty. That's a message that, despite a few naysayers here and there, has been favorably received by many African-American parents and educators across the country.
Wilson, who received his Pulitzers for "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson," is receiving a wave of attention these days because he is completing his two-decades-long project of producing 10 linked plays, each representing one decade of the black experience in 20th Century America.
The 10th play, "Radio Golf," opened Thursday at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Conn. Wilson says it is about "the failure" of the black middle class "who failed to return their expertise, participation and resources back to the community." That's ironic, too, since Cosby has given millions to black colleges and to individual black students.
Yet Cosby also expresses the frustration felt by many black Americans when they see black youths who fail to take advantage of the hard-won opportunities that the civil rights revolution opened up. Often, they are outright hostile to speaking proper English and achieving academically for fear of being perceived as "acting white."
I can understand the reflex of Wilson and others to lash out at Cosby for his candor, especially when it validates their own ghetto-centric sense of "being authentic," "keepin' it real" or "gettin' down with my peeps." But most black American parents, educators and others with whom I have talked or who have e-mailed me over the past year sound like they're on Cosby's side. After all, if you define the elements of success as "actin' white," that only makes blackness another name for failure. There's much more to black culture than that--or, at least, there should be.
"The problem of the 20th Century is the problem of the color line," W.E.B. DuBois wrote a century ago. The problem of the 21st Century, I would submit, are the lines of difference that are only masked by color.
Last year, for example, The New York Times reported a study that found most of Harvard's entering black freshmen and alumni of Harvard were either immigrants or the children of immigrants from the West Indies or Africa. I have since found similar disproportionate enrollment by black immigrants or children of immigrants at other universities. Why have so many slavery-descended black Americans not fared as well?
Thomas Sowell, the conservative black author and columnist, argues in his provocative new book, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," that so-called "ghetto culture" actually evolved from overexposure by generations of blacks to the culture of southern whites, a group that lagged far behind northern whites for centuries in literacy and productivity.
The result, he says, is an urban black culture that is counterproductive and self-destructive, no matter how much it is regarded by many as the only "authentic" black culture "and, for that reason, something not to be tampered with."
I will leave Sowell's thesis about the origins of black culture for him to argue. But, there's no question that, on the threshold of a new century, we black Americans need to re-examine not only what political, social or economic forces are doing to us, but also what we are doing to ourselves.
Posted: Mon 02 May 2005 21:04 Post subject: New Color Line
Imagine the half-German white mulatto August Wilson setting himself up as an arbiter of "blackness."
August Wilson was named Frederick August Kittel when he was born to a German father and an African American mother in 1945.
Quote:
Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel, on April 27, 1945, and was raised in the area of Pittsburgh known as the Hill District. His African-American mother (nee Daisy "Wilson) and German father (Frederick August Kittel) had six children: three boys and three girls. August was the fourth born and the oldest son. The community that influenced his early years included working-class people of various nationalities. Until high school, he attended Catholic schools alongside the children of European immigrants.
Look at this quote from the white mulatto Wilson (nee Kittel):
Quote:
"I'm opposed to the idea of colorblind casting," says Wilson, "because it's taking African-American talent and putting it in the use and celebration of European art. Basically it's as simple as that. You take a black person and you say, 'Here, you play King Henry IV, you play Shakespeare; these are all white characters, but you suppress your humanity for the moment and go up there and pretend you're the King of England."
Posted: Mon 06 Jun 2005 21:25 Post subject: wilson's daughter
First, the use of the phrase "Soul Patrol" is a horrible and bigotted epithet. I would be very offended if someone called me a "Salad Bowl."
Because Wilson's daughter has an African name that forces an identity on her? Come on. A name is a name. My friend Howard is Chinese. Did his parents force a European identity on him with a name? How many little "white" girls are named "India"?
Wilson's child has African ancestry. Why can't Wilson share his regard for this part of his heritage with his child?
Also, calling a Wilson a "white mulatto" is equally as bad as some one-dropper forcing a label on a mixed race person. Whatever happened to self-identification? Forcing labels on people and denying them their chosen culture is wrong whether done by "them" or "us."
Wilson has a right to tell the story of African-Americans because he is an American artist. Moreover, as someone who was raised by an African-American mother, why does he not have a right to his family's legacy? I thought the point of being multi-racial was to be able to openly celebrate are full identity?
A Google search of Wilson's biography yields this snippet from Dartmouth's biography:
Wilson has noted that his real education began when he was sixteen years old. Disgusted by the racist treatment he endured in the various schools he had attended until that time, he dropped out and began educating himself in the local library. Working at menial jobs, he also pursued a literary career and successfully submitted poems to black publications at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1968 he became active in the theatre by founding--despite lacking prior experience-- Black Horizons on the Hill, a theatre company in Pittsburgh. Recalling his early theatre involvement, Wilson described himself to the New York Times as "a cultural nationalist . . . trying to raise consciousness through theater."
By labelling Wilson a "white mulatto" and dismissing the legitimacy of his voice, isn't that stealing is heritage and culture?
Finally, Wilson is obviously WRONG about colorblind casting. He's entitled to his opinion but he's a writer and not an actor. (I would have liked to have seen Denzel Washington in Julius Cesar, which was performed recently in NYC.)
Posted: Tue 07 Jun 2005 01:16 Post subject: Re: wilson's daughter
triguy wrote:
First, the use of the phrase "Soul Patrol" is a horrible and bigotted epithet. I would be very offended if someone called me a "Salad Bowl."
Because Wilson's daughter has an African name that forces an identity on her? Come on. A name is a name. My friend Howard is Chinese. Did his parents force a European identity on him with a name? How many little "white" girls are named "India"?
Wilson's child has African ancestry. Why can't Wilson share his regard for this part of his heritage with his child?
His wife may have African ancestry as well. As far as how he sees his daughter racially, a few years ago 60 Minutes did an interview with him. In the interview he implied that he saw his daughter as black.
It shouldn't be surprising. He grew up in Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 50s & 60s where he was seen as black by his white classmates and mistreated because of it. He probably can't see himself as anything but black, and that may extend to his children as well.
Incidentally, I believe his first wife was a white woman of Italian ancestry.
First, the use of the phrase "Soul Patrol" is a horrible and bigotted epithet. I would be very offended if someone called me a "Salad Bowl."
Because Wilson's daughter has an African name that forces an identity on her? Come on. A name is a name. My friend Howard is Chinese. Did his parents force a European identity on him with a name? How many little "white" girls are named "India"?
Wilson's child has African ancestry. Why can't Wilson share his regard for this part of his heritage with his child?
Also, calling a Wilson a "white mulatto" is equally as bad as some one-dropper forcing a label on a mixed race person. Whatever happened to self-identification? Forcing labels on people and denying them their chosen culture is wrong whether done by "them" or "us."
By labelling Wilson a "white mulatto" and dismissing the legitimacy of his voice, isn't that stealing is heritage and culture?
A physical description of someone is not "stealing his heritage and culture". I understand that "self-identification" is important and should be respected, the fact is Ms. Powell was giving an accurate physical description. If I say i'm chinese, while posting my picture, and self identify as such, and someone comes along and says "Wortman_J, the 1/4 West Indian,1/4 Icelandic, 1/2 Italian mixed European, said this or that etc.". It is merely giving an accurate physical description as opposed to flat out questioning someone's right to self identify. In no way does this deny whatever he was claiming insofar as his racial heritage, or who he identifies with. It merely is a stated physical observation.
As for finding the label "Soul Patrol" "Offensive", I find it equally offensive that people can racially kidnap and ethnically rape individuals who are basically defenseless in terms of being a solidified, recognized racial group. Such as............Hispanics.
'
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