Duke self-segregates. So what? There are reasons why it's a bad thing. People often point them out.
My personal fear is not that it implicates us as racists, or that it says something deep about our need to be around people who resemble us, or that we congregate by the styles of partying and socializing that we prefer, as determined by the cultures in which we were raised as kids. Probably, these are all somewhat true.
My concern is that racial lines all over the world--Duke is not the only community that segregates by race--tend to denote power lines as well; people on one side have more freedom to live the lives they choose than people on the other side, and the inhabitants of the freer side always have an incentive to perpetuate that disparity.
I spent last spring--2003--in New York studying in Duke's Leadership and the Arts program. There were 18 of us, from all different corners of Duke: frats, sororities, selective-houses and none of the above. Black, white, Asian and none of the above.
One night we went to a play called The Blacks: A Clown Show. It was playing at the Classical Theatre of Harlem. I happened to have dinner with my professor that night, before the show. I asked him what to expect. He told me a bit about the playwright, Jean Genet, and the Theatre of the Absurd--which is characterized by intentional complexity to the point of essential incomprehensibility. In other words, expect to be confused.
We were indeed confused by this performance by an all-black cast. It was full of odd plot twists and odd plots, all of which progressed simultaneously. But we were too offended, infuriated and shocked to note our confusion.
"What the hell was that?"
"I am not racist, and that play made me feel racist."
"I am black and I hated it."
Two days after the performance we returned to the Classical Theatre for a "talk back" on the show. At a critical point of debate between Amiri Baraka and Roscoe Lee Brown, Brown, a member of the original U.S. cast (which also included Maya Angelou and James Earl Jones) said, "We must be careful not to mistake the metaphor for the theme. The metaphor is black and white. The theme is that power corrupts."
Power corrupts.
There is general consensus about the role of an audience at the theatre. It is a body of passive observers, invisible in dark space, charged with the task of judging without being judged. But not this time.
In Harlem, we were quickly informed that for two hours we would have no authority over what we believed. Our assertion of identity was prohibited; we were told what we were by the actors, the only people in the room with power. Defined by our audience-ship, helpless to affect the situation, and made to feel the injustice of it, we were placed in a manufactured world in which we had no power. And we had each paid 20 bucks for it.
It felt dishonest! Presumptuous! Reverse-racist! We cried oppression! Offense! The vocabulary begins to sound familiar.
This is not a play about how racial differences divide us. It's about how as humans we regard differences as assets because differences--physical and intellectual--provide the occasion to acquire advantageous authority, or at least a sense of it, over others. Whether it is money, connections, parents, intelligence or popularity, we each have some string that can be pulled when fear of subordination seeps into our conscious brain. Even "I go to Duke" can serve the purpose in certain social settings.
Talking about racism and self-segregation is not going to change the human condition of wanting power. But an experience like the one that 18 of us had in Harlem seven months ago can make a person understand--in a different form than an intellectual condemnation of slavery after having read a book or 50 books on the topic--that he or she likes power, that it is a dangerous possession and that it has historically been used and still is employed for destructive ends.
Duke could use a production of The Blacks: A Clown Show. No, Duke needs one.
In the coming months, the play will be performed at Duke--by Duke students, employees, faculty and Durham residents. Let's take "race dialogue" at Duke to a new level--the stage.
Mary Adkins is a Trinity senior and a Chronicle guest columnist.
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