Race

I recently went to see a play called Race by David Mamet. Not surprisingly, it had a lot to do with race, and a lot of connections to CRT and Loewen. The play dealt with a white man accused of raping a black woman. He hired a lawyer team made up of one black and one white man; their assistant/secretary was a black woman. Throughout the play, each character took a stance on the alleged rape based on his or her ethnicity. The black woman reacted the most violently, and eventually she sold out the defendant to the district attorney.

Loewen says that "the very essence of what we have inherited from slavery is the idea that it is appropriate, even "natural" for whites to be on top, blacks on bottom" (144). This is evident in Race when Susan, the assistant, raves about how "the white man" has historically taken advantage of black people, especially black women, through slavery, salary, and sex. This also relates to CRT tenet #1, which holds that racism involves white-over-color ascendancy. The man the firm is defending is very rich and has no idea that he has exhibited racist tendencies throughout his life. Racism is such an ordinary part of his life that his motivations for raping the woman were steeped in white-over-color ideas.

The play was stamped with many references to both CRT and to Loewen, but perhaps the most interesting statement has no direct connection to either. This statement was, "Only a black man can talk about race." Food for thought.