Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play is meant to be provocative—certainly moreso than most other Broadway productions that transfer from Off Broadway theatres. The play itself is about a group of interracial couples who go to a kind of psychosexual couples' therapy that involves BDSM, reflecting Antebellum master-slave dynamics. During previews, the show even hosted a "Black Out," or a dedicated performance for black audiences, so they can enjoy and discuss the play without worrying about the reactions of white people around them.
As such, it's not surprising that it might make some white people (and others) uncomfortable; that is, after all, the purpose of provocative art. But it reached a head after the Friday night performance on November 29 during a post-show talkback hosted by the playwright:
Apparently, the unnamed woman missed the whole part of the play about white people taking up space and centering things around themselves. She yelled at Harris for—in her words—"being told as a single woman I'm not good enough to fucking raise [my own children]," and asked, "How the fuck am I not a fucking marginalized member of this goddamn society?" Read the rest
Thoughts and prayers. Video games are fucking folks up. He's white so let's call it mental illness. Apologists for the far right talking shit. It's always the same song and dance anytime some asshole with a credit card buys an assault rifle to do what they feel entitled to do to innocent souls. As an outsider who watches terrorist acts like the one that unfold unfolded in El Paso this past weekend, one after another, it's a tune that I'm tired of hearing. I can't imagine how the citizens of your nation must feel. I mourn for your dead the way that I mourned for our own when a similar tragedy struck a few years back. Mourning and rising up in protest are all that we as citizens have available to us to give voice to our outrage.
That's not the case, however, where a grieving nation is concerned. During the El Paso terrorist attack, seven Mexican nationals were killed. Six were wounded. Their nation's government, in their grief, has decided that it's had enough.
From Buzzfeed News:
Mexico's foreign minister on Monday called the mass shooting at a Texas Walmart that claimed the lives of eight Mexican nationals an act of terrorism against its citizens on US soil and vowed to take legal action.
Marcelo Ebrard, who had threatened to take action after the shooting, said the Mexican government will "definitely" launch legal action against the selling and distribution of assault rifles in the US, like the one used by the shooter in Saturday's attack.
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The North Carolina Ku Klux Klan offers you "racial greetings" and invites you to celebrate the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States with a good old fashioned parade, dressed in sheets.
Via Snopes:
A spokeswoman for the group, who provided us with the name Amanda, said the parade would be "unannounced." She did not give us any further information, such as the event's time or specific location, other than to say it will take place in North Carolina.
The KKK representative was responding to our inquiry as to whether the group had held a Trump victory rally on 9 November 2016 on a freeway overpass in the city of Mebane. She confirmed they had not, but she alerted us to the upcoming parade.
We reached out to the press office for Trump's campaign for comment and have not heard back.
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Dylan Matthews has a wonderful piece up on Vox, Taking Trump voters’ concerns seriously means listening to what they’re actually saying, which points out that in order to heal the great divide in the United States we're going to have to admit what Trump's popularity is all about: a fading, racist white majority is struggling to maintain primacy.
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