Powerful show at the Orlando Fringe Festival

The thought of a white woman presenting a spoken-word performance on African-American history at the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival has all the ingredients of white privilege run amok, ending in a cultural train wreck.

Turns out writer and performer Amy Selikoff is right on point. She is more #woke than some black people, such as HUD Secretary Ben Carson and Diamond and Silk, Trump’s minstrel show performers.

The core message of “Somebody’s History: A White Woman’s Journey to Understand Race in America” is America is a fundamentally racist country. Black people have been playing against a stacked deck of systematic, legal racism since the first Africans arrived here in chains nearly 400 years ago.

In a press release for the press preview performance I attended on Saturday (May 12) Ms. Selikoff, a local school teacher, is described as “totally white.” She grew up in St. Paul, Minn.

“After the murder of Philando Castile a half-mile from my childhood home ‘Somebody’s History: A White Woman’s Journey to Understand Race in America’ became Philando’s history for me and I kept finding places where our lives intersected. It was a real through-the-looking-glass moment,” Ms. Selikoff said.

Mr. Castile was shot and killed by a cop making a racial profile traffic stop. Of course, the cop beat the rap. Ms. Selikoff and Mr. Castile attended the same junior high school together, but they were in different classes.

Ms. Selikoff’s interest in African-American history began when she was a little girl writing a school report on Rondo, a black neighborhood in St. Paul that was demolished to make way for interstate-highway construction and urban renewal – sounds like Parramore and many other historically black neighborhoods throughout the country.

Ms. Selikoff looks normal, not a wild-eyed white do-gooder. At no time during the performance did Ms. Selikoff put herself on a pedestal of white supremacy or knowledge.

After the show, Ms. Selikoff told me she produced the performance for other white people to learn the truth about racism that black people endure every day. During the performance, Ms. Selikoff noted that at no time has America – or white people – apologized for slavery or racism. In fact, Ms. Selikoff said many white people refuse to acknowledge that the American Civil War was fought over slavery.

She said some whites have an attitude that after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, black people don’t have a right to expect anything else.

I entered the show as a skeptic. Within the first 5 minutes, I found myself nodding in agreement with the insights Ms. Selikoff shared with the mostly white audience.

Even though I considered myself well informed, Ms. Selikoff taught me a few things. For example, did you know that until 1926 the Oregon state constitution banned black people from living there? Seriously! (1926 is NOT a typo!)

My advice: Check “Somebody’s History: A White Woman’s Journey to Understand Race in America”.

In case you’re not familiar with Fringe, it’s an annual theater festival held at Loch Haven Park cultural venues, near the main campus of Florida Hospital. “Somebody’s History: A White Woman’s Journey to Understand Race in America” is being held inside the Orlando Shakespeare Theater building.

The show will be performed this Thursday, May 17, 5:30 p.m.; next Sunday, May 20, 3 p.m.; Wednesday, May 23, 9 p.m.; Saturday, May 26, 1 p.m.; Sunday, May 27, 4 p.m.

To buy tickets, click here.

This review was written by David D. Porter, producer of www.32805OrlNews.com – a news site covering west Orlando neighborhoods.

Head shot: JP Soto