And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.
Tim WiseHardly any aspect of my life, from where I had lived to my education to my employment history to my friendships, had been free from the taint of racial inequity, from racism, from whiteness. My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasnโt just race that was a social construct. So was I.
Tim WiseStuff Happens.โ Thatโs the G-rated version. Thatโs a bumper sticker that only a straight white upper middle class male could have made. Because anyone who isnโt straight, anyone who isnโt male, anyone who isnโt white, anyone who isnโt upper middle class knows that stuff doesnโt just happen. Stuff gets done by people to people. Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing is random. This isnโt osmosis. And so we act as if itโs this passive thing, but yet thatโs not the case.
Tim WiseThe power of resistance is to set an example: not necessarily to change the person with whom you disagree, but to empower the one who is watching and whose growth is not yet completed, whose path is not at all clear, whose direction is still very much up in the proverbial air.
Tim WiseSo, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe was the old," in one stroke eradicating the narratives of indigenous persons for whom America was hardly new, and any nonwhite kids whose old worlds had been in Africa or Asia, not Europe.
Tim Wise