Tonight we went to see a play Clybourne Park which is a companion and follow up of the play Raisin in the Sun. The play Clybourne Park was good but very disturbing.
The first act of Clybourne Park is about the white couple in 1959 who reselling their house in an exclusive white neighborhood to black family who are the subject of the play Raisin in the Sun. The couple is haunted by the suicide of their son who committed suicide a few years after serving in the Koran War.
Their son had been haunted by the innocent people he killed in the Korean War. The pressure of racism is brought to this couple not to see their house to ‘colored’ people or Negros. The overt racism is upfront with the background being the death of the son from wounds of the war.
The second act takes place 50 years later when the neighborhood, all African neighborhood near downtown, is now gentrifying. “A white couple seeking to buy and replace the house is being forced to negotiate with local housing regulations with a black couple representing a neighborhood organization.” The black woman is a descendent of the first black family that moved into the house. Racism is now more subtle but is there and explodes at the end of the second act. At the end we have a flashback of the white mother in 1959. Bev, catching her son awake late at night (and probably writing his suicide note), and naively saying, “I really believe things are about to change for the better.”
The play is disturbing and haunting for me since it ties together the two issues I am presently devoted much time and energy to: Stopping the teaching of reflexive killing, at Marquette University and the issue of the local Catholic Church taking the money it made from closing three Catholic churches in North Central Milwaukee and using it for the corporal works of mercy in the same area, the poorest and most segregated part of our city. ( See Catholic Church in North Central Milwukee ). Marquette does not like to hear it is teaching killing but does not refute the problem. The white people with control of the money do not want to hear about modern day racism segregation but continue to justify it by neglecting poor persons especially African Americans.
The issues of racism and military teaching how to kill sadly are alive and well in Milwaukee. We did not say for the Q and A afterwards which is just as well. I do not think I could contain myself from saying this is happening right now today, in Milwaukee.
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