Posts Tagged ‘Jim Crow’

“In a Conventional Dither”: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Camouflaged Critique of Race Relations at Mid-Century

During the three-year stretch in which Richard Rodgers’ and Oscar Hammerstein II’s South Pacific and The King and I reached the Broadway stage, theatrical expressions of support for the equality of black and white were a dicey proposition, courting charges of Communist sympathies. And yet in these two musicals, lyricist and librettist Hammerstein found a way to voice that support. However, in keeping with the times as well as his temperament, he did so by indirection, and also with what might be called camouflage: presenting the “destabilizing” message about race relations in a matrix that included remarkably conventional and reassuring, even retrograde, messages concerning the relations of the sexes and colonialism.

The Case of the Missing Monuments, or None Dare Call It Treason

Cruising US-1 through the South (aka the Jefferson Davis Highway in places), way too much Confederate commemoration, way too fuzzy on actual history, and virtually no offsetting commemoration of slavery and its aftermath.

Peccant Judges

Peccant judges have that effect on us; unless we demand inhuman judicial perfection on the one hand or endorse total judicial anarchy on the other, they force us to think in uncomfortable shades of gray. They pose big headachey problems. Which I guess is why in general we want our judges to be squeaky clean. Not because this is an assurance of great judging, but because peccant judges raise such unsettling issues, and we have enough on our plate.

Unforgivable Laws

Laws that give law a bad name. They do not and cannot bind the conscience. The only problem: Everyone has his/her own list of unforgivable laws.