Black Romeo

Čt 05 ledna 2006

I was watching yesterday on WGBH on a documentary about black poor kids from London playing “Romeo and Juliet”. It was really deep experience for me. I was quite surprised by the fact that black kids (mostly guys, but of course Juliet and her friend were ladies) could play Shakespeare and that issues which are hard to understand for me, are very same (and much more understandable) for them. Suddenly I saw how much I am still in the grips of seeing folks from Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan as different from us normal people and how much I see them primarily as potential criminals.

It seems to me that actually this could be one of the most important issues of whole Boston Miracle—how “them, making trouble” became “us, needing help”. And then how all the petty issues of money etc. were just less important tools empowering a long-term process of this change, not direct tools to decrease crime.

And of course, I see no way how to prove this. On the other hand it shows how much more than just bloody news (literally, news about blood) I need stories describing normal life in the Black community of Boston. Which unfortunately makes my news articles reports totally unmanageable, because I would need much more than what I already have. :-(

Category: research Tagged: race BostonMiracle