Re: Raisin in the Sun.
They're on the scene where the white guy is trying to buy out the family, to keep them out of the neighborhood.
I remember back in high school, when during our junior and senior years we were taught English as a series of electives, one quarter per subject. One of the electives was Black Literature, and one of the pieces taught in that elective was Raisin in the Sun. We actually staged some of the scenes in the class. We staged the scene where the white guy tried to buy out the family.
Guess who was cast to read the white guy part.
This was in Burbank, Ca. Where none of my classmates was black. Where there weren't any black people, that I knew of, in the entire city.
And the part scared the willies out of me.
Because I understood it.
I understood what the representative from the white community was trying to say. I understood where he was coming from.
And I loathed what he was saying.
It went totally against what I had learned from my parents, that it was totally necessary to look at every person I met as an individual, no matter how easy it might be to look at the surface, because that was the only way to defeat prejudice.
This, taught by parents who had no one who was prejudiced against them.
I've never really gotten over that disparity, to understand and loathe at the same time.
The scene seems, to me, to have played shorter is this film version than it did when I played/read the part back when.
Good.
