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Race and Racism
Race and racism have been around since mankind made its first steps on the planet and it has brought upon violence, submissiveness, cruelty, and sexism into the world. A great representation of these themes and issues was brought by LeRoi Jones, who wrote “The Dutchman”. The play itself is a great representation of the relationships of races in America during the 60s and can even been connected to todays society. The Dutchman mainly focuses on the black-white relationship but can also be drawn to other cultures and races. I, myself, can also relate to what LeRoi Jones wrote in one way or another. Being a different culture and not being accepted was the first faÐ*ade of America that I got to experience and even though things have changed for me, I do have resentful feelings because some things just do not seem to change. LeRoi Jones made that clear because he wrote a play that can be related to events that are still happening today.
The Dutchman is a fast paced play that makes an amazing transition from scene one to scene two. After doing some reading online, it has been said that the play actually resembles the version of the Adam and Eve story, where a white, insane, smart, and seducing woman prepares to kill a naпve black man. Clay and Lula are the main characters on the train and they engage in an intriguing and mind twisting display of word play. The play wants to steer the audience into a revolutionary thought process by proposing the idea of not being afraid, oppressed, and fighting back. The audience or readers feel stupid through the first act because Lula plays mind games and tries to bait Clay. LeRoi Jones did this on purpose because he wanted the audience to feel suspicious and stupid. He succeeds in this because Lula throws so much at the reader in act one that its almost impossible to even comprehend what she is saying.
Clay is a twenty-year-old black man. Clay is a typical bourgeois black male and he seems to be very predictable that Lola is actually able to tell his history just by the way he acts and dresses. Clay is at first attracted to Lula who begins to flirt with him and invites herself to the party. But Clay is rather shocked by Lula because she is violent and racist. Even as she is behaving like that, he tries to keep his composure and maintain a certain level of class but ends up humiliating himself. Clay is a member of the black bourgeoisie, which would be a more like an affluent black man at that time, but Lola tells him that he is “just a dirty white man,” a white wannabe.
Clay actually does recognize what has happened to him and even tells her that he could kill her and the rest of the white people on the train. Clay makes it clear to Lola that the white oppression will eventually backfire on the white race because blacks will not take it anymore. Lula then decides that the only way she can silence him is by murdering him and that is exactly what she does.
The white Lula is a thirty year old femme female who alternately seduces and insults Clay as she engages in a variety of conversations with him on the train. Lula is the representation of the Western Civilization and she seems to be trapped by her own cultural identity. Lula is able to provide a curtain because no one is supposed to sense her real intentions and her eagerness to move on to her next victim. She is simply made to destroy. She cant abide the brutal honesty of Clays final speech, in which he is finally truthful about his fate and his will to change it.
Clay represents the everyday black man and can be compared to Adam. Lula personifies white dominance and the resent for the lack of black assimilation to the white culture. You can draw a connection to Adam and Eve because Lula seduces Clay sexually with an Apple. LeRoi Jones made a great point because white society seems to be very afraid to lose its dominance especially here in the United States. Lola is shown as the white society that is actually afraid of the black culture because its becoming stronger. The only way for Lula to deal with that when she can not break Clay and when she is met with anger, which she was not accustomed to from an African- American at that time period, is with violence. Lula makes fun of Clay because of the way he looks and she tries to put him down by telling him that he can not function as a person and he does not belong in this society based on his looks. Clay has a sophisticated look and he is educated. To make things worse he is on a train and he has the right to be on it. In Lolas eyes, this was not acceptable and she tried breaking him by playing mind games. A connection that someone might be able to draw to this is a persons status. I have heard a lot of people talk about affirmative action and if someone of a different race has a good job, they do not seem to want to give credit to that person education. Something that has always bothered me is that when you see someone who is not white but happens to be driving a nice car, comments like “he has to be dealing drugs” or “that government support is really paying off for him”, its very sad to hear that and its also very realistic. My dad has experienced that too. My dad is an engineer and had to go back to school in order to prove that his degree is actually worth something in the United States. Once he finished his degree he was able to attain a higher position at the company he works for, he was also met with resentment from co-workers.
Clay tries to keep his composure when Lulas violent language and degrading reminders of his low status in the society. The readers start to question Clay and how much of Lulas criticism he will take before he fights back. Its very shocking and ironic that when Clay finally decided to stand up for himself he gets stabbed because it was Lolas purpose all along to murder him. The tragic ending of the play is symbolic of the white oppression and the violence that goes along with that because African Americans were killed in the literal sense but also verbally.
In 1964 the Tension over racism was at its peak, with numerous protests occurring in major urban centers. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was being ignored by many southern