Although I had read the text, libretto, and seen Ragtime rehearsal previous to the production opening, I was not offended by the usage of the term”nigger” until I saw the production live. After the show, I found myself wondering why I had such a visceral reaction to Michael Oliver’s portrayal of Willie Conklin. Despite having some historical roots, I know that Ragtime is essentially a fictitious play. Furthermore, I know Michael well and I am certain that outside the context of acting, Michael would never use such derogatory language. However, despite these facts, I found the prevalence of the word nigger in the musical unsettling. Consequently, I decided to research said term in hopes of discovering why Conklin’s use of the term bothered me.
The term “nigger” did not always have a negative connotation. Deriving from the Latin word niger (meaning the color black), variations of the term were used to describe black people. It was not until the late 19th century/early 20th century that nigger became a pejorative word in the South and other places in and outside the United States. Today, complexity to the term has been added. Although the word still has largely negative connotations when people of Caucasian descendant use the term in reference to blacks, within the black community, black people transform the meaning and visceral reaction to the word when they refer to each other. Despite the controversy, certain sectors of the black community use the term to highlight companionship and community.
With that being understood, I believe I understand why I had such a visceral reaction to Willie’s (or Michael’s) usage of the term “nigger.” I have spent the majority of my life in the South in a predominately white and often times racist community. Consequently, my experience with the term is negative. Furthermore, while viewing the production, I was no longer Kimberly Welch, a Duke student, watching her peers perform a play. In that moment, I was simply a spectator–a spectator who became vividly aware of her race and the race of others around her during the performance. Entrenched in the world that the Ragtime cast had created, the lines between reality and play blurred. I believe this speaks to the effectiveness of the production in producing a thought provoking, uncomfortable play that tells the story of the era of Ragtime.
Kim, did you see my post from early March, “What a name” http://sites.duke.edu/ragtime/2012/03/11/what-a-name/. In it I tried to decipher and give some background to all the racial slurs that are thrown around in Ragtime’s baseball game. One thing that struck me as I wrote that post was the lack of discussion we had as a cast about how it felt to hear/use that language. Except for a couple of staging moments around the firehouse scene (when Willie Conklin first uses the n-word) when the creative team debated on how pointed or how casual Conklin could/would be about the insult.
The n-word is *the* one (among the many other epithets s(l)ung in Ragtime) that prompts the most visceral response in most audience members. The reclaiming of the term among some in the African-American community is somewhat analogous to the reclaiming of “queer” and “fag” in the LGBT community with the same conflicted reaction to that reclaiming within those communities. Can we ever remove the historical sting of a slur especially when the slur-ness (I know that’s not a word) is not the thing we’re recontextualizing? In other/better words, if I, as a gay person, call a gay friend a “fag” but the only thing that’s different is that we’re both gay, I’m still using it as an insult/epithet. Even if I argue it’s meant affectionately, have I really transformed the word? I’d argue no. I’m not saying being able to wield language as a weapon isn’t empowering. But, from my experience, it’s a slippery slope and one that’s difficult for gay and non-gay people to hear as anything more than the same kind of homophobic language.
This deconstruction reminds me of a very early post http://sites.duke.edu/ragtime/2012/02/03/the-wb-frog/ I made in conversation with Dr. Kelley’s lecture about minstrelsy. In it I remembered Dave Chapelle’s stated difficulty with reappropriating racist material. How he felt the shift in who was saying the n-word or performing in blackface wasn’t enough to dislodge those performative acts from their racist context.
Certainly on-stage in Ragtime, it’s not about undercutting the racist context. All that research you and I did on The Progressive Era shows that 1900-1912 is actually a time of less racial tension, especially compared to the mid-teens rise of Jim Crow laws and the KKK in America. But as most historical plays, Ragtime both exists on-stage and in our present time. This overlap becomes particularly glaring in the racial conflict storyline. So while we might be able to think “that was then” and “this is now,” in moments like the use of the n-word to describe or directed at Coalhouse we know all to well that what’s happening is both then *and* now. Maybe not happening in public spaces but even if the n-word isn’t being said, are its perceptions being acted upon? I agree with your conclusion that its this particular fusion of past/present that makes Ragtime both effective and problematic.
It’s been really great to work on this with you.