On June 8, 2020, a letter was sent and signed by 300 artists who were Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). It has since been signed by over 100,000 people. After 5 years, the report card shows a failing grade.
On May 25, 2020, as COVID-19 was killing millions of people all over the world, one Black man in Minneapolis was killed by a not-all-that-rogue police officer. The George Floyd murder set off an equally virulent reaction to the pandemic, when, finally (or so it seemed at the moment), the inequitable, unfair, Un-American, and all-too-short lives of Black people across this country were brought into view. Driving While Black, which is an unwritten traffic cop’s privilege, has been around forever, but was now in the public eye — for some coddled white folks, it was the first time.
Meanwhile, with a societal screaming point still growing, a letter was written by BIPOC artists to White American Theater. To some, it was deemed a tedious screed to established (read: White) theater companies, not applicable to their needs. Of course, it wasn’t a screed. It was simply a statement of observation, and not incorrect, given everything that accompanied the 2020 George Floyd murder (and the 2020 murders of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and Andre Hill and Manuel Ellis and Daniel Prude and Walter Wallace, Jr. and Jonathan Price and Trayford Pellerin and Marcellis Trinnette and David McAtee and Jamee Johnson and Tony McDade and Maurice Gordon and Dijon Kizzee and Angelo Quinto and Carlos Ingram-Lopez and Vincent Truitt and Fred Cox and Joshua Feast and and and and and and…).
A month later, demands were put forth in a change.org petition by the same people. 100,000 signed on. The timing for a response could not have come with fewer consequences. It was predictable, if not wholly genuine, for hundreds of theater companies in America to put forth an anti-racist manifesto on their websites for all the world to see.
And why not? With no plays (and thus, no ticket revenue) and no need (and no way) to prove their newfound focus on equity, it was pretty easy to assert that racism was, in a word, bad.
A man walks into Sammy’s Deli. There’s a sign on the window that says, “LOX: $1.89 A POUND.” So the man asks Sammy for two pounds of lox.
“We’re out of lox. Want some herring?”
“No, I just came in for the lox,” said the man. “Thanks for nothing.”
“What nothing? The herring is fresh!” yelled Sammy as the man walked out the door and walks exactly two doors down to Sol’s Kosher Delicatessen.
“How much for lox?” he asks.
“$35.99 a pound,” said Sol.
“$35.99 a pound? How come so expensive? At Sammy’s they’re selling it for only $1.89 a pound,” said the man.
“So,” said Sol, “go to Sammy’s then.”
“I did,” said the man, “but they’re out of lox.”
“Ah,” said Sol. “So listen, if I was out of lox, I’d sell it for $1.89 a pound, too.”
If you can’t glean the issue out of this parable, I don’t know that there’s hope for you. If it were easy to do the right thing and make sure that the cultures in your community are not only represented on your stages, but in charge of doing work representing all the cultures in your community (not simply hiring Latinx people to direct Latinx plays, Black people directing Black plays, LGBT people directing LGBT plays, etc., but having all cultures managing the work of all cultures with no “default” to White folx), then everyone would have done it already.
If it made money, don’t you think that everyone would have insisted upon living up to those manifestos that, one by one, they took down from their websites?
To conclude, I think that a White male Jew should write a letter to his friends in the BIPOC community of artists. Here goes.
Dear “The Ground We Stand On,”
Thank you so much for your letter of June 2020. The pointed arrow of your words piercing the privilege of so-called White allies of your work gave birth to a movement that, unfortunately, the artists for whom it was meant have since abandoned.
Not that they didn’t try, or at least provide manifesto upon manifesto in support. As it turned out, however, it was too easy for these companies, run by friends of yours, to proclaim a determined effort to stanch racism and become equitable in every way; easy, that is, when there are no actual plays being produced because of a deadly worldwide pandemic.
No plays? No money. No money? No limits to empty promises.
But once the pandemic abated, your friends had the responsibility to incorporate these ideas of equity into actual work. Sadly, for the most part, they did not, as you know by now. Instead, they retreated behind their boards’ refusal to allow anything besides “making money,” which is the euphemistic way to express the elitists’ real desires — to produce works that make toxic donors, government officials, board members, and even some in executive leadership completely comfortable and hap, hap, happy.
DEI became a naughty acronym, rather than the simple act of doing the right thing. It became so controversial as to anoint a traitor to the presidency and celebrate continuous treachery on you and the rest of what remains in these Divided States.
But your friends, dear people. Your friends. As Marc Antony might have said, they are honorable people.
Some boards of directors see and saw the need for new points of view to represent the communities in which they live. They hired non-White leaders, some for the first time. That was a good thing. But then, as they always do, these same boards chose to do everything in their power not to change anything except use these talented people as figureheads, in the “some of my best friends” vein of thought. However, those folks were not figureheads. They understood the power they’d been given to make things right, as per your righteous demands. Still, fighting with bosses wasn’t always the most efficacious way to do the right thing, and while some are still fighting, many others threw up their hands in despair.
The tide is against these new leaders and they are getting bashed along the rocks, showing something the boards are calling “proof” that diversifying leadership is not the answer.
As far as BIPOC theaters are concerned, the behemoth White theaters would like nothing more than to form one-sided “partnerships” with them. After all, they’re continually being taken to task by a few adorable foundations who believe that they believe in advancing the causes of non-White theaters. These foundations, too, are run by honorable people.
They are still exploiting you, shaming you, diminishing you, and excluding you. Even after they’ve hired you.
You say that you see them. That’s good.
They know that you see them. And, for what it’s worth, they’re no longer pretending that they don’t see you. They do.
They Just. Don’t. Care.
They just don’t care when doing the right thing costs actual money and at the same time, using their words, “alienates the base.” Oh, and “the base” is comprised of honorable people, too.
I wish you nothing but success. It’ll be better for all of us when you succeed.
Signed,
A White Jew with arms open wide and a face wet with the spit of the elitists that run what stands as the American Nonprofit Theater Industry.
P.S. I’m also running out of steam. It’s been both a rewarding and Sisyphean task to change the failing nonprofit arts industry. Changemakers Books has published my trilogy in the past two years on the subject of making things better for everyone involved, but I’m afraid that those in power at the foundation, government, and large arts organization level merely see these words as mosquitos — initially to be feared, but then shooed away and swatted dead. Those books are pictured below. My royalties are a pittance and will never pay for the effort. Please buy, borrow (from the library), or steal a copy of each if you have to. Perhaps you or someone you know can take up the cause when I inevitably collapse and retire. Otherwise, I promise you: things will never, ever change for the better.
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