The last few months have been a wake-up call for many people. People of all ages and races are opening their eyes to the systemic racism that terrorizes and oppresses Black members of society. All over Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, people are declaring their allyship with #BlackLivesMatter, demanding justice for the officers who killed Breonna Taylor, and (my favorite) posting that black square for #blackout. Seeing my timeline flooded with support from my white classmates, old peers, and even some teachers has been a very weird experience for me. On one hand, I recognize that for our cause to be successful, everyone needs to be on the same page. However, it tickles me that certain people can raise thousands of dollars for Black Lives Matter but can’t be bothered to reach out to a Black classmate when they need it.
Black Lives Matter is more than a “stop killing us.” The kind of behavior and thinking that leads to the murder of unarmed Black civilians starts at home. It starts in our classrooms. It starts in our lunch table discussions. Instead of sharing a bunch of statistics about redlining on your Instagram story, perhaps you should start by recognizing the ways that you have subtly and maybe unconsciously silenced a Black person you might even consider a friend. I know that ignorance is a powerful drug and that some of you might not even realize how racially charged your actions are or the kinds of double standards that you uphold. “I’ve never called someone the n-word! I’m not racist!” Racism goes deeper than hate crimes and racial slurs. It’s consistently mixing up the only two Black kids in your class. It’s denying the existence of the privilege from which you benefit. It’s implying that your friend is prettier with their hair straightened or asking if her hair is real. For your convenience, I’ve curated a list of microaggressions experienced by Black students in performing arts majors at predominantly white universities. I’ve categorized them so you can easily find where you were problematic! You’re welcome. I chose to focus on examples in performance majors because I think the racism in the theatre and dance community is very specific and deserves its kind of attention. Plus, it was what I felt most comfortable sharing since it was my own experience.
I wonder who’s brave enough to get a little peek into what being a Black performance student in academia means.
Friends
I was referred to as someone’s “milk chocolate friend.” Yeah, I put a stop to that real quick.
This white student was sitting in my usual seat, and when I saw her, she said, “I’m gonna move…because I’m scared.” Then, she laughed.
In movement class, we had to recreate our other classmates’ walks. A white student was assigned to mimic mine and added a lot of extra hips. It made me very uncomfortable.
This white student dared to tell me that I would never succeed in theatre as a Black woman.
I was the only Black kid in class, and when a white student walked in, we all greeted her. She said ‘hello’ to everyone but me. I reached out my hand to introduce myself, and she looked down at it. I had to work with her that semester, and she ignored me half the time.
It was brought to my attention recently that a group of people who I thought were my friends would get together and complain that I only got cast as much as I did at the school because I was Black and gay, and they were being ignored because they were white girls.
When I was talking about the inequalities in casting at the school, my friend told me, “You guys keep saying you don’t have as much opportunity as we do, but it’s not true! I’m short and gay, and I will never be seen as a leading man! So I don’t have any opportunity either”.
Often, my “friends” will purposefully talk to me in a Black vernacular when they know damn well that they didn’t talk like that.
After I expressed my excitement for my impending callback for my first lead at school, a friend said, “I don’t know why they called you back because, in the real world, you’d never be considered for the role because a white woman plays it.”
When my friend discovered I was cast as a lead in Guys & Dolls, she said, “Wow, I didn’t know we did that here…good for you!”
My friends and I performed at a concert in NYC, and it was a pretty big deal for all of us (me and four white girls.) After the others left, I stayed behind because I had a ride and got to meet many cool people who seemed super into me. When I told one of my friends about the cool experiences I had, she just complained that she didn’t get any of that kind of attention because she was white.
The mainstage musical for our senior year was announced to be Marie Christine. It caused a lot of controversy because the white students felt personally attacked by the fact that they couldn’t be considered for the lead. I heard someone say, “Well, that’s not fair! They won’t cast me as Marie Christine because I’m not Black. Why would they pick a show for the season only they could be leads in!” It got so bad that the teachers brought us all together to talk about it, and that just opened a whole can of worms with how ignorant my friends could be.
After I expressed my excitement about being cast, my friend told me that I was only cast because I was a “colored person.”
Professors
I told my white professor how uncomfortable it made me when he repeatedly said different forms of the “n-word” in a lecture about minstrel theater to a room of predominantly white students. He said, “I’m sorry if that offended you, but that was the vocabulary used to describe Black people at the time.”
My Movement Lab professor told me that I wasn’t “articulate enough” but didn’t give me any specific examples of when I wasn’t “articulate.”
I told my professor that I was depressed, and he just responded with, “What do you want me to do about it.” I got kicked out of class, but a white student who never showed up and said the same thing got to stay.
During a comedy theatre class, we were required to make the teacher laugh as our final within a certain amount of time to receive an “A.” My final line in my time was, “I love chicken.” And when the buzzer went off, he said, “I would’ve laughed if you’d said ‘fried.’”
Once, I was told that the musculature of Black skulls resulted in a “beltier” sound.
I told a professor that my partner and I wouldn’t be doing a scene from The King and I meant for Asian actors. We agreed to find a new scene, but then he explained that he couldn’t find a scene that accommodated a Black woman and a white man in the Golden Age except for one scene from 110 in the Shade. We just wanted a cute scene with a couple of non-racially specific characters.
One of my professors took it upon himself to “talk like a slave.” He called Ebonics “Black talk” and proceeded to read to the entire class in Ebonics, saying he was talking like a slave.
Before my voice teacher knew my voice, he would say, “Let’s try to find some more songs that can show off your beautiful Black girl riffs” or something like that. Not all Black people belt their faces off or riff to Timbuktu.
In my Rhythm for the Dancer class, my teacher (a white man) went on a tangent about how he saw Black girls double-dutching on the streets of New York once and how it made him reflect on the “primal instinct that Black people have with rhythm” and how it was “the most beautiful and most mystical thing” he had ever seen.
I was told by my Voice & Speech professor that the statement “okay, boomer” held as much weight as the N-word.
While doing the type-cast talk, I was told I was the “second banana, best friend type.” When I asked the teacher for further clarification, the teacher said I could play a leading man too, because “it’s different for Black people.”
In Theatre History, we were learning about the controversial casting of Othello. My professor openly denounced the use of Blackface in productions of the play, so I thought I was safe. He then went on to excuse using Blackface in the opera because the role was “too hard.”
My friends and I (all Black) were standing in a group outside of class along with other groups of white students. A professor walked right up to me and my friends and said “Are you guys out here starting trouble? What kind of trouble are you getting into?”
My Voice & Speech told me that I was being racist toward the white kids in class because I wasn’t sitting next to them.
My Movement teacher called my afro “the perfect clown hair.”
My voice teacher gave me a great song by Sammy Davis Jr. When I asked for help with my next assignment, she gave me exclusively Black songs, mostly from The Wiz. It was almost all songs that I couldn’t and shouldn’t sing. I quickly realized she was tossing the Black songs she knew at me, hoping that one worked.
In my Freshman Year studio class, I was told I had to play the Nurse in our Romeo and Juliet project because I was “sassy.”
I noticed I was getting typecast in my studio classes, so I asked if I could work on more vulnerable characters…I got Doubt for my final scene and continued to play only sexually explicit or “aggressive” characters for the rest of my time at the school.
I came into juries with different hair, and my vocal coach told me that no one recognized me and asked who I was after I left. It was my junior year. I have the same face.
I told my professors that I was depressed, and they said that they thought I was using mental illness as an excuse. When a white student said that they were depressed, the same professor offered to help them get accommodations.
Any time there was a grouping of more than two Black people together, the head of the program would say, “I see the Black caucus has assembled.”
I asked my professor for advice about moving to LA, and he replied, “Your sense of self is so needed in this industry, but you need to learn your place.”
I had just opened a show with a professional theatre company working with our school. I was a main character that had quite a few monologues. I was in the hallway, and the head of the theatre school came up to me to congratulate me on my performance. He said, “I was surprised to see that you can talk! I’m so used to just seeing you tap dance.” I had been leading in straight plays at the school before.
Creative Team
My stage manager just started stroking my braids without asking.
When a white actor was late to rehearsal because he was in NYC for an audition, the director said we’d do his blocking another day. When I was late because I was at an audition in NYC, I was “unprofessional.” I had given them notice two weeks in advance.
In my first show at the school, my butt was used as a drum.
During a production of Romeo and Juliet, I was playing Tybalt and told to take the “ghetto slang” out of my voice when saying, “My man.”…mind you, I was neither changing the pentameter of the line nor the text.
I was cast in a mainstage production as well as the only other Black girl in our department, and someone looked at the list and said, “Why do they need both of them?”
I was playing Sarah Brown in Guys & Dolls at school. I was double-cast with a white girl. I constantly got notes to play the role “less aggressively” and more like the white girl.
A costume person for a new show I was cast in told me to wear a wig or straighten my hair because my character should have a more “professional” look.
I left rehearsal to get water, and after I left, the director said, “I can’t believe she left the room to get water; she won’t be booking a job in the real world.” Another castmate left to get water at the same time I did.
I was in a show where the director, a faculty member, didn’t like my choices and just told me I was doing “too much.” After twenty minutes of her roasting all my choices, she discovered that my “problem” was using my hands too much and that “no human would ever do that.” I’m half Puerto Rican and half Caribbean; everyone I grew up with spoke with their hands. That’s what I know.
After I left the casting room for the season, a previous stage manager told the entire room that “I was so untalented and unprofessional, and I was never going anywhere in life.”
These were just a small selection of the numerous examples I received from several universities.
This is not meant to attack anyone…well, maybe just a little bit. If you saw yourself in any of these instances, this is not meant to label you as a “racist.” It is meant to open your eyes to your own implicit biases and how they can come through your speech and help you understand how racially charged your language can be. If you didn’t see anything of yourself in these experiences, congratulations…you want a cookie? Check your friends. I also did this to provide a reference list for anyone who has a “hard time seeing how someone’s experience could be different because of the color of their skin.” Racism is alive and well, and we need to recognize and eradicate it in all of its forms if we hope to create a better world.
Don’t get me started on the microaggressions that I’ve experienced in the professional theatre world. Maybe I should do a part 2…
*This collection is intersectional. It includes statements from Black men, Black women, mixed race Black people, straight Black people, gay Black people, genderqueer Black people, bisexual Black people because #ALLBlackLivesMatter*
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