Let’s talk: Race, etc.

Flashbacks lead to something that never was. Or is. You seem to feel like the walls crumble and the chairs melt away, the harsh lighting of the projector intensifies to stage lights, the draft becomes the auditorium breathing, and the warm body next to yours familiarizes itself like it used to in between longs summer days.

The projector flashes off and faces fill the void. Familiar voices waft up in the air. Gone.

Like 8 months passed, at least the t-shirts look the same “ETC”. I watch those I spent 3 days with and those I interviewed and those I befriended and those that befriended me all perform. My two worlds collide–interest with social, or academic and event, or myself and others. AKA the UM Educational Theatre Company did a show on race and I had all the feelings.

Race is something that I talk about everyday. It is something that I would like to only talk about, even. Something that I feel like should always be talked about and something that should never stopped being talked about.

So it was both terrifying and wonderful to see this show. Terrifying in that certain scenes and bits of dialogue come from real life–real lived experience. Terrifying that in most of life I’m in a space where racial oppression and racism aren’t spoken of right away. Terrifying in that most people I interact with don’t think about race, in that most people on campus are white and that because of this, like the pervasiveness of whiteness, race becomes a topic often not talked about and it is made invisible and immaterial.

Terrifying in that there are many topics that need to be debriefed more: biracial and multiracial identity, the politics of passing, and the different impact racism has on different racial identities. So I flee into fuzzy phone calls, torn book pages, and cups and cups of coffee.

What is at once infuriating becomes also reassuring. Wonderful in that race actively confronts each and every audience member by a removal of one. Wonderful in that this space is dedicated to talk about a topic that is so embedded in culture that the entire modern world is founded on it (the middle passage and slavery) without even acknowledging it. Wonderful in that it gives the time needed to hear certain stories and gives a voice to certain experiences and allows for a place for them to be heard.

Wonderful in that IGR is here to help to facilitate two dialogues about race and the show–only moments after the performance. But these dialogues, however basic they are, are so nice to be a part of in that it helps to refocus my world view and show me how much shit is truly everywhere and how much we don’t actively talk about it. The fact that only certain experiences can be shared in a facilitated dialogue–where the scene is set, rules established, and safety made certain–make me want to vomit everything I have ever eaten and then some. This realization is wonderful.

But I only can say half of this (read: all of this) because of my white privilege. I get the privilege of how and when I talk about race because my race (white) reads as neutral, normal, socially accepted. I won’t get my white racial identity brought up by the public, I won’t get my hair pulled, I won’t have my skin complimented, I won’t be asked where I’m from and no one will ask me if my mitten isn’t michigan but something else, somewhere even “exotic.”

I have the privilege of being able to talk about race and then walk away from it and into a safe space, which by safe I mean the entire world–all of society.

Events like these, like UMETC, especially UMETC, get me thinking. They get me uncomfortable, angry, passionate, loving, and disturbed. Good theatre does that. In all of my expert opinion, I wouldn’t go to theatre if I agreed with all of it or if I left feeling comfortable. And it is here, at U of M, where racial climate can be completely terrifying but at least we have these moments where we can briefly,

ever so briefly,

talk about it.

Before it crumbles away and we’re faced

with new memories.