| re: Question re: Once On This Island revival - a white Daniel? | |
| Posted by: ntjvy 08:12 pm EST 02/07/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Question re: Once On This Island revival - a white Daniel? - Chazwaza 07:34 pm EST 02/07/18 | |
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| I don't think that you're reading too much into it, I thought quite a bit about it after viewing also, I just came down in a different place on it. Fair point regarding blackness and pigmentation. I should say that "blackness isn't exclusively about pigmentation" and "lack of pigmentation doesn't not eliminate the lived experience of blackness". That's not to say that people of different skin tones don't experience their blackness differently because of it, just that a lack of pigmentation does not equal a lack of blackness. I think that, at least when we're speaking about race in a national sense, it could be argued that there is a specific set of cultural characteristics that come with blackness. That doesn't mean that those characteristics are universal but that it is likely that a Black American who is descended from Black Americans will likely have experienced some of that set. This of course is diluted when we look at Black Americans who descend from immigrants rather than from enslaved Africans, but then there is the set of shared experiences that comes with living as a Black person in a society that has created a specific set of behaviors that is applied to people of color, and which varies in nuance depending upon perceived subsets. I apologize for the run-on there. This isn't the same for white Americans who, by and large, have the privilege of a heritage with fewer traumatic interruptions to their narratives down the line. So while whiteness isn't connected to a specific set of shared heritage and culture, I would argue that blackness often is. I think it's just as odd to argue that blackness IS about pigmentation. Historically, white people have insisted for centuries that if there is "one drop" of traceable black "blood" in a person, than they are indeed Black. An excellent example of this was Plessy vs. Ferguson in which Homer Plessy, who had one Black great grandparents was denied access to a "Whites Only" car in the Jim Crow Era south. He looked "white" for all intents and purposes, but in the eyes of the law he was black. Had nothing to do with pigmentation. In many, many ways, I don't think this has changed (of course legally it has. . . technically). There's an odd disconnect for me in that you're recognizing that colorism that exists in and around Black communities is a thing, but in the same breath arguing that Powell is too light to convey this conflict. Like that IS what colorism is about. The difference in privilege and perception that comes with different skin tones. (Because while I don't think race is exclusively about pigmentation, colorism is). "You're not Black enough" is part of this also, and that's essentially what we're saying here. Powell despite being an authentic representation of a person of color in real life is not "black enough" to play a person of color on stage, because audiences only see blackness as a skin tone thing and can't possibly conceive of the idea that someone who has light skin may also live as a person of color. And pigmentation can vary dramatically even within the same family, between mother and father and child and even between siblings. That may make one family member lighter than the other, but I still contend that it does not make one whiter than the other. For what it's worth, I don't see the relief worker bit at all. Again, lots of this is messy, thinking it through. |
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