Wanda's Picks July 4, 2012

Today I had the highest number of listeners to date: 98! Thanks so much for tuning in at 6 AM PT. Next week we'll be back to our later summer hours 12-2 PM PT (smile).

What to the American Slave is the 4th of July? Frederick Douglass asked over 100 years ago, a question still pertinent today.

With this said we play Malcolm X: Afro-American Lesson Part 1; followed by Rene Marie, singing from Voices of a New America "Lift Ev'ry Voice/Star Spangled Banner. Tim Wise follows speaking about his latest book, Dear White America (3/21/2012).

We then replay an interview with Susan Heyward, who speaks about her role in the David Mamet's play RACE at ACT-SF last season, 2011. There are echoes of Scottsboro Boys in Mamet's RACE, as well as jurist, Anita Hill. In this case, it is a black woman who accuses a rich white man of rape, he then goes to a prominent firm to see if its attorneys can make the charges and case disappear.

It is actress, Susan Heyward's character, a new attorney at this firm and its first woman, a woman who doesn't play by the rules, which makes it very clear that justice, often based on the client and victim's race, will not be a factor on her watch (to her career's detriment, at least at that firm).

A black woman attorney and a black woman victim. RACE looks at the artificial separation between justice and race and juxtaposes these two phenomena with differing outcomes. Can or should, or how does an attorney keep herself from empathizing with a victim who reminds her of herself? Is justice ever compromised by empathy?

Black women are never the victim in popular lore; however, RACE raises this issue as does ACT's current play The Scottsboro Boys.

Music: Slavemasters from Africa with Fury: Africa Rise.

Our closing piece is a clip of an interview with Robert King with Dr. Terry Kupers re: Slavery in US Prisons. I think I found this on the angola3.org blog.

Music: "Drum Solo" from Voices of a New America. Music: UMOJA "Our Problem to Solve" and Novalima: "Liberta."