[NEohioPAL] Berko review: RAISIN IN THE SUN (Cleveland Play House)

[Anastasjoy at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/14/08 12:48:58 PM, TBROWN at plaind.com writes:

<< so who runs the government, the churches, the courts, the media and the

banks if not the citizens? these are not abstract institutions but

institutions made up of, by and for the community.


to seek to blame chicago's sad racial history on anyone other than

chicagoans (some more than others, to be sure, but. . .) is a dodge, and

a shameless one as well.


we're all racist to a certain degree or other, and the sooner we own up

to that fact, the better off we'll be. >>

????

This is way off base. I grew up in a community that was red-lined and flipped 
in a period of four years in the 1960s, an educated, activist community where 
people had some understanding of mechanics of power in the city - and there 
was nothing they could do to stop it. In fact, in the Chicago of the ’50s and 
’60s, the courts, church, government and media were controlled by a very tiny 
sliver of the community — white, male, mostly Catholic, of certain ethnic gro
ups (being Irish helped). Everyone had their place and you didn't get out of 
it.  There's nothing "shameless" about saying that the people in my community or 
even the angry Polish women of Gage Park in their big blonde beehives (my mom 
called them "anti-busing hairdos") shreiking at the busloads of debarking 
black kindergarteners at the commencement of busing had no power to affect the 
decisions made by Mayor Daley or Cardinal Cody. In fact, at this far remove, I 
can sympathize with those women who were acting out of fear and their very 
sense of powerlessness. In the summer of 1967 a group did stand up and say "This 
is wrong" during the Open Housing marches led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day 
after day that summer, Dr. King led his group to Mayor Daley's doorstep in 
Bridgeport, asking to speak with him, and every day they were turned away. He 
could not even get Mayor Daley to TALK to him, let alone influence his thinking. 
Are those open housing marchers equally responsible for racism and 
segregation? Read To Sleep with the Angels, about the catastrophic 1958 Our Lady of 
Angels school fire, to see just how overwhelming the might of the combined 
political-religious-judicial-media cabal was and how helpless an entire community and 
city were against it and its desire to protect and exonerate the Catholic 
church.

It's easy to say, 40 years down the road, with my old community now stable 
and thriving (albeit now segregated and black) and having spawned the new First 
Lady-elect who grew up five blocks from me, that we are all equally 
responsible but that was not the reality of the mid-20th century Chicago which Lorraine 
Hansberry captured so poignantly in "A Raisin in the Sun." Not understanding 
this background trivializes her play and suggests that it's mere whining.

BTW I wasn't attacking Roy's review, just pointing out a careless word use, 
which I see now he says came from the press release. 
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