'You and me, we sweat and strain': blacks in America and the musical Show Boat

Relevance

So what is the relevance of the show today? In the 1951 version of the musical it's sad to observe the disappearance of many of the blacks who had featured in earlier versions. Studio executives felt Americans would not like Lena Horne as a heroine- she was too dark. But the movie is still powerful. The USA is in many ways a prisoner to its history. In the minds of many influential Americans, the US is still a country of backwoodsmen who need to carry guns and protect themselves against their many enemies. This seems to include Northerners and blacks. A Civil Rights Act gave citizenship to black people in 1866. But success for the North and the subjugation of the South began a long period of difficult times for people of colour. For many years after the end of the war, the Ku Klux Klan was merely one of many instruments to empower whites and punish people of colour. White governors and police stood by idly, as lynch mobs shot blacks with impunity. Lynch mobs strung up black men on the excuse that they had attacked white women. There is a US website listing the lynching of people over the years; it includes blacks, Latins and Native Americans. Even in 2015, the Guardian found that young black men were nine times more likely than others to be killed by police. Outsiders ask themselves- why? When will it all stop?

It's important that the musical is located where it is. The Civil War started out among the Gulf States (notably Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina); other States joined in more reluctantly. One Mississippi leader wanted to export its system of slavery to the Caribbean, even though there had already been a long history of slaves being sold to many parts of the Americas, including the West Indies and Brazil. Mississippi had long been outspoken in its support for slavery and many might have bitterly resented its defeat in the Civil War. Well into the 1930s, it led the country in the number of lynchings. To this day, Mississippi retains the Confederate flag. It is the only US state to do so, despite some protests. Some argue that many Southerners want to deny any responsibility for black suffering. They imagine that the South could have continued its dual-race inequality and deny that slavery was evil. They proudly uphold the Confederate flag and all it represents. This might be a commonly held view; a sensible person would suspect that there might well be others in the South who have a different view. But I wonder how Southerners – or any Americans- might view the many jarring notes in the movie pointing out the harsh reality of institutionalised racism and the suffering of the oppressed.

And so we come back to where we started. The numerous revisions of the show indicate some of the common difficulties of representing our past, whether we are North Americans, Australians or Chinese. Issues about what is appropriate, complaints about 'political correctness', and gripes about having to say things acceptably show us that history lives. Not in dusty books, but in our daily lives. How should we reflect on our past? What language should we use, and how do we describe injustice? Show Boat seems silly at times: who is now called Gaylord, for heaven's sake? What's with all the tedious dancing and frothy tunes? But beneath the surface, and not far beneath, there is a finger pointing at white America. And it says: Don't forget your past, and the misery whites inflicted on people of colour. And is that only in the past? You have to wonder.