Brothers Gonna Work It Out*
*With apologies to Public Enemy.
Last night I worked my shift at CENTERSTAGE and saw Elmina's Kitchen, a powerful statement on British Blacks in Hackney, England (a Northeastern British melting pot/ghetto). Delhi ,the owner of Elmina's Kitchen, a West Indian/Carribean takeout named after his mother, the previous owner, is a ex-boxer, ex-con, and ex-husband trying to steer his 19-year-old son, Ashley, into a world of legitimacy and away from a world of easy-money thuggery. From his father and neighborhood thug, Digger, who berate him for being too "white," to his newest employee, Anastasia, who berates him for being too "dead," Delhi's good intentions please no one, not even himself. But honest ways out of the ghetto are few and far between, and getting out with your integrity, in Delhi's opinion, is more important than getting out. If he can get out.
Kwame Kwei-Armah's play is awfully bleak, and every black playwright has done a version of it (particulary note August Wilson's Two Trains Running) but, as someone else said, the real tragedy of the play is that it has to be rewritten again and again, a shot across the bow for each new generation to straighten up and fly right, each fueling more bloodshed and hatred.
posted by Jen @ 8:57 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
A play - I haven't seen one of those in a long time. This Friday, though, all that will change.
"the real tragedy of the play is that it has to be rewritten again and again, a shot across the bow for each new generation..."
With my limited experience of race issues, can this problem ever be solved? How many generations does it usually take? Are there any historical examples of how long it took other oppressed people?
That's great news! What play are you going to see?
A lot of people point to education as the way to alleviate the ails of an oppressed class, but the African-American community, IMO, has a unique bargaining place at the power table that they are reluctant to forgo: the drug trade. As long as there's the promise of easy, albeit dangerously obtained, money, no one will want to go to school to earn $500/week when they can earn $500/day in the drug trade. Now that it's been eschonced into our culture (ie, into rap music and movies), it will be even harder to break up.
For other oppressed communities, it seems the picture is the same, although not as bleak. The Hispanic community has no equivalent chip at the bargaining table and must undergo traditional means (ie, education) to rise to power. Of course, this is just my general opinion; there are certainly more factors that are involved in each community.
Unfortunately, virtually every ethnic group pulls from the drug culture to varying degrees. I saw it all the time in my teaching at a community college. Very, very sad to see these smart, talented kids coopted and confused by whacked out priorities. Being an outsider it's difficult for me to say much more than that.
Glad you liked the play, though. I found it pretty powerful.
$500 a DAY? I am so there.
I think the last play I saw was "To Kill a Mockinbird" in Boston back in the fall of '99.
I think the last play I saw was Richard III at Shakespeare Theater. It was good, but that's been a couple years. I went to the symphony last night (free ticket!) and I'm thinking that I really need to work harder to do more stuff like that going forward. However, it's expensive -- too bad free tickets don't grow on trees.
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