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   thirdgraderocks Teacher
   Elementary / Primary

   One theme discussed over and over again is race and racisism. Racial oppression and racial hatred lie at the heart of Dutchman. Yet this play is not a simplistic denunciation of racism but rather one long invective against one (in Baraka’s view ineffective) solution to racism: assimilation. Clay is a representative of the form of assimilation practiced by many of the black middle class, a pursuit of white values and culture through “white” education. Clay carries a stack of books, and he wears the garb of the well-educated. Lula seems to hate Clay on sight, explaining that he is a “type” she has seen often. She infers that he has a black friend with a “phony English accent.” Clay, she tells him, looks like he is trying to grow a beard and has “been reading Chinese poetry and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea.” These are the trappings of the Bohemian intellectual, such as Baraka was himself at the time he wrote this play.

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   Posted by thirdgraderocks on Sunday November 23, 2008 at 12:05 PM