We always run away from honest discussion around questions of race and racial identity, and by doing so we really run further into them. There are "racialists" in local and national media, but will all the talking nothing much is said. We don't want to offend anyone. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. The problem with our city's conversations around neighborhood identity and race are that, often, opinions masquerade as facts infused with searing and ambiguous connotations of who does and who does not have the right and authority to make declarative statements of facts.

A friend of mine, an educated native Washingtonian women in her early 50's, said last week, while discussing neighborhood change in Anacostia, "New white folks are going to discover Anacostia and start to take it back from us. But the new white folks will be educated, that's very different from when Anacostia was where the working class whites were. (in a matter-of-fact tone) Anacostia was for redneck whites. The whites in other parts of the town looked down on them." She said this to me, because she was being honest and we have known each other for nearly ten years. She knew I wouldn't be offended. I doubt she would have said this to someone (white) she didn't know. It's funny I told her, because my uncle, who worked in Anacostia in the 70's, was telling me the same thing just a couple weeks before when he found out I was covering Anacostia for a community paper. When we are honest, I think we learn from each other or at least we hear something we might not have if we just keep on lying and fronting.

Watching the show I laughed once or twice along with the audience but for some of the jokes my jaw got tight while the rest of the crowd roared. Taking the red line home I wasn't stuck by the play's thoughtfulness or even it's witticism. It really bothered me that this play has been received the way it has been - a Pulitzer, really? At one point I was in the "theatre world" and one of my life changing events was serving as assistant stage manager at Silver Spring Stage's 2003 showing of Fires in the Mirror. When TopDog/UnderDog was at Studio in 2004, I saw it three times by volunteer ushering. A couple years later I went on to produce my own plays about the city with a theatre company I co-founded with my best friend (who in his words is "the son of field slaves). I am not a theater expert, but I know a little something. This play is the embodiment of white guilt. With the exception of the twist of the solider with PTSD (another favorite zing of the left) this play is painfully predictable.

In the second act, the two white characters buying the house are very disturbing. I guess that is the point, but it's their deliberate shallowness and that of the play that is worrisome. I feel the play has received the acclaim it has, because white liberals can see it and say, "Well, at least I am not that biased and outright condescending." The fact that Woolly Mammoth has embraced it the way they have further justifies my belief that both black folks and white folks have their own disparate fall-back methods of promoting and maintaining a system of cultural fascism. This play is an embarrassment for "white folk" just like Tyler Perry's work is a joke for black folks.

And the after-show discussions WM is holding, I don't even know what to say about that. I am just getting really tired of all the romanticizing of these caricatures of 21st century neighborhood conflict created by folks/institutions who are shining up pseudo analysis manure and calling it gold. This play was garbage and after researching the playwright my worst fears were confirmed.

This is a powerful lesson in protecting your work and legacy. Thanks for calling out Bruce Norris.