Essay - Analyzing a racist actor

Very recently I had an unpleasant surprise that forced me to adjust my thinking. I have to say this time it threw me. In our information age, where anyone can research any topic, a curious person such as myself is always gathering more information which often makes me happily adjust my thinking. The dog food I researched and feed my own dogs is now number one for healthy pet foods? Great! That charity I like and gave money to is fake? Bad news, but glad I know that now!

My life is the Theatre and not much in our industry surprises me. I tend to think of us in the performing arts as people cut from the same cloth. We are liberal minded, story tellers, night owls, history and language oriented, and very few of us can do math. Any sort of math. I hesitate to confirm that part of the performing artist stereotype, but it does seem to be true. I wish I could share the statistics with you, but that, of course, as you know....would be math.

I travel quite a bit as a director and playwright and I was happily working in the San Francisco Bay Area, close to where I grew up. Being in a more liberal area was a relief since some of the places I end up are a bit "conservative". A great script, good designers, talented, amazing performers, and all of us happy to be there, all prepared to work hard, and enjoy the experience together. But then my pleasant experience was shattered when one of the actors revealed he was a racist.

 I showed an actor a photo of a friend. Immediately the man's response was: 
" Ew, your boyfriend is black?" It was said with such disgust, the whole table of people we were with went quiet. " No, just a friend." I explained and then I promptly asked "Are you racist ? " He thought a moment and said " No. I mean, I have slept with a bunch of them." The word "them" was emphasized in an odd way. Before I could ask anything else, he turned to an actress he was close with and said with a laugh, " Besides, black people smell, right?" She declined to answer. People quickly changed the subject, but there was a look of familiarity on the faces of the Mexican, Asian and Jewish members of our group. 

Trying to analyze people is part of my life. Discovering a character's reasons for their words and actions is the director's job.  This young man was well educated, smart, talented and gay. I am always surprised when gay people turn out racist. The concept of a minority against another minority is foreign to me. Over the next few days, the people who were present at this incident found me privately and versions of their thoughts were all very similar; they had to remain professional, ignore the comments and find a way to work with this man. I believe many of us are in a similar position in our work lives. 

What I realized I was experiencing was privilege. Racism, yes, but deeper than that was his illusion of his own privileged life. This man was from a wealthy, white and privileged family. Lack of money is never an issue. Repercussions for bad behavior are not part of his lifestyle. This kind of illusion usually means any type of empathy is a foreign concept. One won't get very far in life or the entertainment industry without that quality. Not to be confused with sympathy, empathy is the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. Think of the talented Meryl Streep as the expert of this quality. If you don't have empathy, you affect others negatively. It's that simple. 

We, artist's especially, are all interested in other people,  It's the basis of story telling, and stories are essential to us. Drama in stories frequently has to do with mistakes. The story in drama is resolving the mistake. I made a mistake assuming all theatre people had the same values. This man made a mistake that he can never take back. It was not an accident, it was a series of declarative sentence that he could not joke his way out of, or ever fully apologize for, because this doesn't go away. It remains in people's minds. As for me, as a director always gathering the best, most talented actors I can find for a project, the resolution in this drama is clear. I can never cast this man, never hire him. Though that sounds easy, the fact is that my industry seems large, it is in fact small. You always run into and work with the same people. There will be a casting agent, or head of a Theatre somewhere that will try and force me to cast this actor. When that time comes, he might claim to have changed. I can never take that chance and people must be held responsible for their actions. I cannot change him, I can only change me. Racism makes no sense, we all know that, even deep down the worst of us knows that. It's like math to me, it just doesn't add up.