“Racism is like Hydra in Marvel Comics.  It’s this massive and insidious web that really touches on everything.” Yesterday we shared a call with the profound and joyous Thaddaeus Edwards. It was an honor to hear his insight on racism and whiteness. Check it out below! 

How long have you worked with Theater Delta?  

Haha, I… don’t remember – that’s a really good question! Ben actually recruited me sometime between 2012-2014. There was a specific role for a gig he wanted to fill – and my name came to him, he reached out to me and I immediately jumped on board. 

 

What kinds of roles have you played with us? 

I feel like there’s a fair amount of variety in roles in which I’m cast – I usually play some sort of medical professional/healthcare provider OR the patient/family member at the center of the experience within a healthcare setting. I think the first role was playing a nurse in a scene about pediatric palliative care – it showed the dynamic between nurse and parents, but also an element of personal conversations within the healthcare space – showed the hurt that can be caused by medical professionals cutting up and talking about silly things like YouTube videos within earshot of the patient’s room.

 

Has anything from your work with Theater Delta come to play out in your real life? 

One of my other performing gigs is I work for Duke’s Med School as a standardized patient actor – and a lot of the things I have experienced in playing these different roles with both TD and Duke have taught me more about communicating around healthcare providers, and how and when to better advocate for myself and my family members. 

 

Taking a bit of a turn here, in what ways have you been personally affected by racism?

Wooooooosh, how much time do you have? Racism is like Hydra in the Marvel Comics.  It’s this massive and insidious web that really touches on everything. I could describe the random encounters I have had as a kid and as an adult, but the waters of racism run so deep that it literally affects everything. What it means to be a Black American is to be subjected to racism.  

 

What is your take on the last few months? 

It’s been challenging in a number of ways. Personally, I cannot separate my experience and perception of our most recent wave of unrest and protest without putting it in the context of living during the pandemic. I’ve heard it put before and I love this phrasing – we are living in two pandemics – Covid-19 is just the one that recently started. We’ve already been living in the pandemic of racism. 

Experiencing the isolation of Covid in and of itself was already a stressful, strange experience. So with the stage set on something that was already disorienting, the extrajudicial police killing and the massive social responses that have happened are both depressing and encouraging. 

I have been encouraged by the massive movement of people reconnecting in the ways that we have concurrent to Covid –  being creative, inventive about protesting while also social distancing. I won’t lie and say I’m completely hopeful, I have become more pragmatic as I age. It comes from having a sense of history and knowing the trajectory this country has been on for these last few hundred years, it’s going to take a lot for lasting change. As much as I want to believe in this change, I kind of have to see it before I allow myself to emotionally invest in it. I am hopeful, just not optimistic — and I’m fine in that, but absolutely hope to be proven wrong. 

 

What do you wish white people could understand about race in America?

To adequately answer this question, I’m gonna get some help from James Baldwin’s essay On Being White and Other Lies. The one thing that I want white people to think about is the ways in which white supremacy harms people “who believe they are white.” 

 

Okay, you’re going to have to explain what that one means! 

There is a lot of very necessary focus on the ways in which Black indigenous and People of Color are harmed by white supremacy. We are aware of the ways that are blatant, subtle, all of that, what gets missed, I feel, is where White people have to grapple with what white supremacy has done to them as well. 

Looking at the various groups of European immigrants that have come to America over the last 200 years, each of these groups originate in specific places. They are connected to legacies, food ways, languages and traditions of these communities and when they come to the United States they give that up to increase their proximity to whiteness. What it means to be German is very different from what it means to be Italian, Polish, etc. There is this cultural meme that White people in America don’t have any culture. It was surrendered. It was given away in order to become white. The invitation is to reconnect with whatever those roots are for you. For White Americans, your roots are not in whiteness, your roots are in something else. It can be found, it can be reconnected, and it moves anyone away from centering around white supremacy. 

 

Anything you would encourage others to read? 

The works of Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin. They are visionaries in the Sci Fi realm. 

– Ta-Nihisi Coates –  Between the World and Me

– Anything by James Baldwin – he shared a lot to us and his words ring as true today as they always have.