there’s no doubt what you’re supposed to leave the theater thinking. You know which characters are the good guys and which are the bad ones. My plays are more open-ended. It’s really up to the audience to decide the morality of the play. A History of Black Conservatism By Tanya Palmer in Thomas Bradshaw’s new play, the title character, Carlyle Meyers, reveals the question that the performance will set out to answer: How it is that a black person could end up becoming a Republican? He elaborates: CARLYLE: There’s no simple answer to the question of how a black person ends up a Republican. And I think the question is problematic in the first place. The question assumes that all black people think alike, talk alike and vote alike. As if black people are some homogenous group. A lawyer for the Republican Party, Carlyle is living proof that not all black people vote alike–but it’s indisputable that Carlyle, along with a number of high profile black Republicans like former presidential hopeful Ben Carson, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is in the minority in the African American community. A Pew Center study showed that in 2012, 76% of African American voters were registered as Democrats, with only 16% registered as Republicans, and a whopping 93% of African American voters cast a vote for Democrat Barack Obama for president. While that number was higher than previous election cycles, it was not an anomaly: since the 1930s, African Americans have voted Democratic in large majorities ranging from 60% to 95%. true that most blacks vote Democratic,” admits Carlyle, lots vote “It’s “but Republican too–they just won’t tell you they know that a lynch mob will ‘cause come burn down their house if they admit that.” While this sentiment may seem over the top, this line reveals an uncomfortable truth: over the course of the 20th century the term Republican” has come to seem like a “black
there’s no doubt what you’re supposed to leave the theater thinking. You know which characters are the good guys and which are the bad ones. My plays are more open-ended. It’s really up to the audience to decide the morality of the play. A History of Black Conservatism By Tanya Palmer in Thomas Bradshaw’s new play, the title character, Carlyle Meyers, reveals the question that the performance will set out to answer: How it is that a black person could end up becoming a Republican? He elaborates: CARLYLE: There’s no simple answer to the question of how a black person ends up a Republican. And I think the question is problematic in the first place. The question assumes that all black people think alike, talk alike and vote alike. As if black people are some homogenous group. A lawyer for the Republican Party, Carlyle is living proof that not all black people vote alike–but it’s indisputable that Carlyle, along with a number of high profile black Republicans like former presidential hopeful Ben Carson, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is in the minority in the African American community. A Pew Center study showed that in 2012, 76% of African American voters were registered as Democrats, with only 16% registered as Republicans, and a whopping 93% of African American voters cast a vote for Democrat Barack Obama for president. While that number was higher than previous election cycles, it was not an anomaly: since the 1930s, African Americans have voted Democratic in large majorities ranging from 60% to 95%. “It’s true that most blacks vote Democratic,” admits Carlyle, “but lots vote Republican too–they just won’t tell you ‘cause they know that a lynch mob will come burn down their house if they admit that.” While this sentiment may seem over the top, this line reveals an uncomfortable truth: over the course of the 20th century the term “black Republican” has come to seem like a
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