Waiting in the Wings

Dear Mother,

I am just writing to say hello and tell you about my job working at the April Follies  on Broadway. Of course, I’m not actually in the show (can you imagine an actual black person being included in the performance?), but I help out as a maid backstage.

They have a new jazz singer performing named Jack Robin. I heard him in rehearsals and he actually has quite a pleasant voice and performs ragtime songs entertainingly. I had my clues, with him singing “My Mammy” in previous rehearsals, that he would be performing in blackface but my suspicions were confirmed at the dress rehearsal this afternoon. Perhaps I should be used to this by now. This isn’t my first go around working in a white theater or around minstrelsy shows. But for some reason my skin just began to crawl as soon as I saw him in his make up. His voice is just fine when he sings in his natural state, so why add the make up that so degrades my race?

I think the blackface might make Jack feel powerful, somehow. He comes from a Jewish family (I only know this because a gentleman named Yudelson came searching for him the other day and requested he come to their synagogue). I know well that the Jews are also frequently discriminated against in this country and around the world. But Jack seems to have left this identity behind to pursue his career. He still has access to the white American world, and he exploits blackness to make his voice even louder. "Black holes in space fragment, stand in for, and render invisible the broken-up absent black body...Jack Robin rises through blackface, as vaudeville entertainer, lover, and Jewish son,” (129). Blackface allows Jack to find his voice and perform to an adoring audience.

Even though people don’t pay much attention to me around here, anyway, I feel especially invisible when Jack Robin is onstage in his full make up. People pay much more attention to the caricature of blackness than they do to the people around them. I’m not sure how this man in blackface both brings black people into the room and nullifies our existence entirely.

I’ve included a photograph of the man in question so you’ll know what I mean.

All my love,

Lucille