The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

Response and Discussion
Shane Moreman: These festivals are hugely
important, aren’t they? They are ways for
culture to be understood by a large group of
people all at one time. It is a performance,
and whenever we look at how culture has been
performed, we can find numerous examples
within the United States, one of which is blackface.
If you know a little bit about the history
of blackface, it was White people pretending,
putting on a black face and pretending that
they were Black. There was strategy to that.
Prior to the Civil War, Black culture was portrayed
as being very lazy, very stupid, and very childlike.
The reason the Whites would portray them that
way was it justified slavery: “There is no way we
can set these people free. What are we going
to do when they are set free? They are so lazy,
they are so stupid, they are so childlike. They
are not going to be able to take care of themselves.”
Those were the attitudes portrayed on
stage. Then, after the Civil War, you get Blacks
portrayed as untrustworthy—very angry. They
are going to harm you. How did that serve the
United States? The way that it was perceived to
serve the United States was to support segregation—we
have to exclude these individuals
because they are dangerous and angry, and
they want to hurt us. When you watch television,
you still see a history of blackface happening,
where actors are only allowed to portray Blacks
in a certain way and, outside of that way, they
get critiqued or it is not interesting for audiences.
Whenever we look at biracial individuals, the
research that I have done has found that
biracial individuals don’t have a way of being
biracial; they have a range of ways of being
biracial. I want to go through that range very
quickly. One way biracial individuals respond
to their multiple identities is they feel like they
are imposters. They don’t feel they are Black
enough or they don’t feel they are Latino
enough or they are not Muslim enough. So they
go through this racial struggle within themselves
that they are not enough of whatever it is they
are supposed to be. People of color in general
often feel this way—I am not living up to whatever
it is that everyone thinks I should be. Biracial
individuals struggle with this because they can
call upon different identities within themselves.
Another reaction to biracial identity is being a
mongrel—being a mutt. Again, it is this idea of
being impure and not being a whole person
because you are mixed. You look around you,
and you see people of pure blood—the Latina
whose family stretches back five generations.
You long for that, and you are just a mutt.
Another reaction is to take on the identity of
an orphan. You feel like you are orphaned
from society—that you don’t have a lineage
you can claim. This is something that Orit
discussed. How do you lay claim to any type
of lineage when it is not exactly yours? So,
you feel orphaned from this heredity.
A fourth reaction I have found is homelessness—you
don’t feel like you have a home.
It is not that you don’t feel like you have a
bloodline; it is that you don’t feel like you
have a place anywhere where you can
find yourself. And you wander about, trying
to figure out where it is you belong.
The last one is the one that I want to explore a
little bit with Orit [Sarfaty] and the rest of you on
festivals. The last identity label for multiethnic
or biracial individuals is that of a twin. This one I
have found in memoirs that have been written
by individuals who are biracial or biethnic. It is
at a time when they finally come to the concept
that they are both. Yes, they are Jewish, and
yes, they are Mexican, and sometimes they
are only Jewish, and sometimes they are only
Mexican. And these two individuals exist side
by side with one another. Like twins, they have
this interesting communication between the
two that no one else understands, that they
can’t quite explain to anyone else. It is this
relationship between the two that only these
two understand. They can watch the other
identity and see the other identity go through
what it is going through as if they are removed
from that individual but still feel very connected.
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