Last Tuesday, the Justice published a review of “The Wiz” which deeply hurt and upset many in our Brandeis community, and those reactions were expressed in comments online, through social media and through personal discourse. It is important to state that the responses to the article are not attacks on the writer of the review but rather attacks on racist and oppressive systems in which Black folk must operate. I am aware that many students were angry with the writer, but we must all understand that the anger is rooted in a system that continually erases and oppresses Black bodies on this campus. We are sure the writer had no intentions to inflict harm. However, that does not — and will never — negate the fact that harm has been done.

Not everyone can see why many students were furious over the review written for “The Wiz” — especially when corrections to the article itself are infused into the original article thereby leaving the reader with no sense of how the original article left our students both deeply hurt and enraged. However, the first edition was what circulated like wildfire and is the version about which many communities were in uproar. 

Here is some context for the uproar: It is all too common that the labor of Black folk goes uncredited — and even actively erased.  In the article, some of those Black folk included Asia Hollinger ’18 and Keturah Danielle Walker ’18, who personified the twister scene; Queen White ’16, Amanda Anderson ’17, Consuelo Pereira-Lazo ’19, Deborah V. Fataki ’19, Carmen Landaverde ’19 and Justus Davis ’19, who conducted the costume design; and Chinyere Brown ’17, Brandon Ferrier ’18 and — again — Davis, who designed the set with the aid of the entire cast. Most of the people who did the labor in “The Wiz” were Black folk, and yet again, specifically in a prominent campus publication — a publication that easily crafts the narrative around the things it reviews or reports on — the labor these Black folk had tirelessly put into the show was erased. This is unacceptable and speaks to the larger issue in our society. By erasing one’s work, you erase their narrative and therefore further erase their existence. Black folk are already trying to piece together our existence and our right to live in a nation that does not want us — a nation that wants us to salute to the American flag, which will not salute to us; a nation that will not value us and will not even be invested in keeping us alive like it does others. Black folk are living as ghosts in this nation where death and erasure haunts us every single day. We are clinging onto humanity, and this nation is cutting the ties. This article was another cut at that tie, another brush across the page erasing the very folk that built that page. 

We can all see that there is a stark racial divide on this campus in many facets. We try to forge connections by bringing groups together with programs like Brandeis Bridges,  which is a great first step. However, there are still lines that separate us. As Viola Davis — the first African-American to win an Emmy in her category — put in her 2015 acceptance speech, citing abolitionist, former slave and revolutionary Harriet Tubman, “In my mind I see a line, and over that line I see green fields, and lovely flowers, and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.” This line does not exist only for Viola Davis in the Emmys. It exists everywhere — and especially here at Brandeis. This is why Black folk carving out a space for Black theater is so vital. This is why “The Wiz” was so vital. “The Wiz” carved out a space where Blackness could not exist before, especially at a Predominantly White Institution. It carved out a safe space where Blackness did not have to be explained, tokenized, romanticized, marginalized or oppressed. “The Wiz” was necessary for our mental health and healing, especially after fighting for racial justice in Ford Hall 2015. 

To live as a Black person is to constantly have violence inflicted upon your body, mind and soul. In the words of James Baldwin, “to be a Negro and to be relatively conscious in America is to be in a rage almost all of the time.” I am not saying writing a negative review is not okay. Negative reviews are always accepted. But how does one contend with a negative review that uses language to demean Black theater and Black bodies in a way that is only perceptible to Black folk? Some of the language used in the article included stating that the actors mumbled their lines and did not enunciate their words.“Why can’t you enunciate your words?” they say. To which we reply, “This is how I speak; I don’t know what you want from me!” To enunciate is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “to pronounce words or parts of words clearly.” However, clear speech to one group is not necessarily clear speech to another. And this nuance is key! We have to understand that “not enunciating” or “mumbling” is often associated with the Black vernacular in general — or specifically how Black folk from the South speak. Therefore, critiquing a Black person’s ability to enunciate adds to the historical devaluing of the Black vernacular, which results in the further oppression, exclusion and problematic correcting of our speech. This is just one example. 

Not everyone is going to understand why this was a hit to the Black community, because they do not exist at our particular intersection, so violence enacted against us is not necessarily tangible for those who do not live with it. And that is okay. 

However, sometimes we must take a step back and understand that we will not all understand everything. So whose job is it to teach? Well, I am attempting to do it now, but this is not a labor that I should have to do constantly. Having to “explain” Blackness is tiring work. It should not be up to those who are oppressed to speak up against said oppression. So what do we as a larger community do?

Everyone has good intentions, but good intentions are never enough. As a university, and even as a student body, we focus more on the intentions of the person in a role of power than the harm done by their actions and words. Ford Hall 2015 and the Brandeis Asian American Task Force were pressing our administration — filled with folks with good intentions who still committed microaggressions, made racist comments against Black and brown folk and created systems that privilege the privileged and oppressed the marginalized — to realize the harm they had caused even with their good intentions. Good intentions are not enough. We must come together, put our bodies on the line and be open to critiquing ourselves and our places in society so that we can be honest about the ways in which we consciously — or more often unconsciously — harm each other. 

The uproar we saw from the Brandeis community online was a number of students fed up with systems that perpetuate injustice. Rather than simply defend the system, how about we critique ourselves? Why are they angry? Why am I angry? Is there something I do not understand about the entire situation? How can we be in better communication with different groups on campus? This article could have been strengthened had the Justice sat with the directors or members of the cast and interviewed them before publishing the first edition of the article. Then the facts would have been correct. There also would have been a better understanding of the significance of this particular piece of theater — and Black theater on this campus in general. Further, an interview would have produced a review that did not seem like it was bashing the production and the folks involved but instead constructively critiqued the production in a way that did not have this racialized component to it as well. 

Change is slow. Freedom work is hard work. Let us all be invested in becoming more free. But becoming more free means listening before we speak. It means opening up spaces for conversation before we can even try to listen. It means being invested in making those spaces inclusive before they are open. It means critiquing yourself and understanding your place and your privilege in an effort to decenter yourself and your narrative — allowing others to be the center, which helps your space become more inclusive. 

Let’s do the work.

—Nyah Macklin ’16 is the president of the undergraduate Student Union.