can we do a mashup of cultures so we can dress in pretty things at some point 

my god I’ve never wanted a role so badly in my life.

When we have roles in television in Hollywood and the media, that have to do with terrorists, that have to do with villians, that have to do with people that want to destroy us, we have absolutely no problem finding brown actors to play those roles. We’re talking about making a movie about Rumi in Hollywood. Now this is an iconic poet who is from modern day Afghanistan. The name of the actor that was suggested for the role was Leoonardo Dicaprio - a blond, blue eyed white man. 

As I’m wont to do in traditionally white spaces, I started counting the black faces around me as we queued outside the theatre and didn’t stop until the lights dimmed. There were only about 30 black faces in the entirety of the 860-seat Music Box Theatre, where we’d come to see a sold-out show in which, aside from one white man who plays multiple white parts, the entire cast—including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, and Joshua Henry—is black or brown.

I wasn’t surprised that—while black audience members continued to watch the show without visibly registering emotion—white members of the Shuffle Along audience gasped, clutching their metaphorical pearls, when the characters on stage were told that no one would pay to see “nigger shows.”

Odom has earned career-making reviews as Aaron Burr, the villain of Hamilton. But he was moved to comment: “If a white actor was having a similar situation as I’m having right now in this show, the kind of success of this show, there might be three or four offers a week for the next shows you’re going to do. There are no shows for me to do. There’s just no roles.”

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This does not seem to be an exaggeration. The prospects for the next season don’t look especially bright from the perspective of diversity. Of course, announcements of new projects will continue to roll in throughout the summer and fall, but as it stands, the season is once again focused on revivals and film adaptations – Les Liaisons dangereuses, Falsettos, The Price, Groundhog Day, Hello, Dolly!, The Glass Menagerie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

Round one was the “I’m a woman, so I’m a feminist!” stage.

Round two was my “But I’m a Black woman, so am I a feminist?” stage.

Then came round three, the “I’m a Black feminist, and it’s complicated” stage.

I found out where the Black feminist writings had been “hiding” – in my creative writing classes. And when I followed poetry’s leads to read the work of writers like Audre Lorde and Cheryl Clarke, I realized they hadn’t been hiding at all.

Instead, they were silenced by the dominant narrative of what feminism was all about and completely shut out of my Women’s Studies courses.