I am not black but I am a person of color. The platform that is available now for me to speak because of the spirit of now “white people listen” while “people of color speak,” is an opportunity that I will gladly take.
Let me take you back to when I started going to college way back in 2003. My auditor to get into college was a white woman. She did not accept me into the music program.
One day later I went back (we, POC usually have to work twice as hard or more to get equal treatment.) A woman with some Italian blood and skin, by the name of Laura Wallace (RIP) accepted me into the program and even offered me a partial scholarship due to my “great talent.”
Back then I was blind about race and privilege. My dad is a heterosexual white Jewish male and my mom is a heterosexual Christian Dominican woman (with not much melanin but plenty of African blood) so I’ve always been ambiguous about who I am in the racial continuum.
Ask my friend, Julianne B. Merrill what my original response to her calling me a “person of color” for the first time was. This was less than a year ago. When she called me a “person of color,” I laughed in disbelief. I even told my best friend (who is a brown Dominican woman) about this. She thought it was hilarious too. That is how unaware of my identity as a person of color I was. I am not anymore. I am no longer blind to my own color. Thanks Julianne for identifying me. It has helped me so much. I was so confused as to how to identify.
Anyway, back to the distant past... when 19 year old me got denied the first time he auditioned, 19 year old me thought that maybe he wasn’t talented or worthy enough to go to college for singing and acting. Today, 36 year old me sees that there had to be some sort of racial bias (conscious or unconscious) at play.
When my black friends would hint at any disappointment they had around being treated as less than because of the color of their skin, I wasn’t really sure what to think.
Though it was pretty obvious that my black friends were as talented and working as hard as my white friends and peers. What wasn’t so obvious, but now is very obvious is that all the theater faculty at this time was white.
In theater there’s this cliché, “the director hires himself.” The director of our musicals was a white man. He mostly hired white people. Early 20s me just knew to use the phrase “favoriticism.” 36 year old me is seeing that I was putting the incorrect prefix ahead of that ism. The word that really belonged there was the word RACE.
But young, naive, ethnically ambiguous early twenties me did not want to believe that people in the arts could be affected by something as primitive as racism. Thankfully, 36 year old me can now see things with a lot more clarity. Sadly, this was clear to my black friends the whole time. Luckily, my psyche must have been protecting me from the ugly reality that green and young me couldn’t bear. So my psyche kept me in a bubble.
I remember working so much harder than my white counterparts. I remember feeling relieved to see that there was the role for an Italian character (because role distribution in most musical theater material is disproportionately uneven in favor of white people.) I remember the auditions being open to the entire theater department and I remember many of my peers telling me “You rocked that audition, that part is yours.” And I remember getting my hopes up and going to sleep excited to read the casting list the day after. The role of ethnic Vittorio Vidal will be played by... you guessed it! A caucasian!
To this day, my biggest heartbreak in my theatrical career was not getting the role of The Prince/Wolf in my college’s production of Into The Woods... because... you guessed it, this role will be played by... Another caucasian! (As it’s “supposed to be” even though this is fantasy and fiction. Remember a POC playing Ariel?)
Just like they did to my closest friends La'Nette, Nieves, Aprilmarie and Kyle!
The only way we would get a role was if there were no other roles left to give us. Or, in my black friend’s cases, if they were the “token black person.”
And all these years my friends were clearer about and resigned to the racist reality they were living in. Meanwhile naive, ethnically ambiguous, “could pass for white” me (but ONLY IF I neutralize my “Spanish accent”) is here in a gaslight of confusion thinking that I’m just not talented enough. I’m buying new outfits for my auditions, going to the gym, crash dieting, buying accent reduction programs and lessons, taking voice lessons outside of college, etc.
To make matters even more cringey, when I went and auditioned and booked leading roles in community theaters outside of school, the director of the musical theater program at college called me out on it. He told me that I was “arrogant” and that I had a “star complex” and that I wasn’t going to “stop until I saw everybody applauding me while I was at the center of the stage.” Well, about that last part he was right. I won’t stop, not so much until I see everybody “applauding me at center stage,” but until I satiate the need in my soul to get treated with respect and dignity. Not like he did by being racist, making fun of my accent, my heritage, my background and my story. Not like he did by sexually harassing me. Not like he did by unconsciously trying to erase me out of the world of theater. I am not a usable toy for people to use and discard as they please. That is why I became self-employed and continue to hone my craft and pursue my dreams and create my own opportunities by setting goals and meeting them.
If I had left it up to the white woman who first auditioned me, I may not have had a college education. If I would have left it to the firstdirector of musical theater, my resume would have contained zero leading roles.*
(*To be honest, I did get two or three leading roles in college but usually because they had no one else to play these roles and/or because we had a change in staff and a professor that had graduated from a college in NYC replaced the professor that went to college in Illinois.)
As much as these things I’ve shared about have sucked, racism has made and continues to make me stronger. I don’t wish it on my worst enemy, but it can be framed as an ill that can make us stronger.
I am so sorry that I couldn’t see things this clearly before. Not for me, but for my black friends who would occasionally bring this up only to be shut down and gaslit by me to one degree or another. I am sorry.
One of my favorite things to see these days is to see my black actor friends thriving and growing in spite of all that is stacked against them. Sadly, many of the white alumni are now far removed from theater and the arts. Happily, the black and brown alumni, myself included, keep creating our art and awaiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. And we won’t stop. I know it. Because we are talented, we are skilled, we are passionate, we are resilient and we are worth it!
Love to all,
Gabriel Weiner Jáquez
