Play crossed racial line

Fans can always anticipate hilarity at the expense of those Texans from Tuna, so I expected a pointed but lighthearted romp through many of the preconceived notions held about small-town whites when my wife and I attended a performance of “Tuna Does Vegas.” I tend to wince whenever entire groups of people are reduced to caricatures (rural Southerners, urban Northerners, Christians, atheists, conservatives, liberals, etc.), but I was ready to be entertained nonetheless.

What I was not ready for was the portrayal of African-American males as lazy, oversexed and absent from the lives of the family – even without the physical presence of a character on stage. Charlene Bumiller Pugh made her only appearance as a harried, pregnant mother with distinctly African-American infants/toddlers (doll props) in her arms and attached to other parts of her anatomy. The dialogue between Charlene and her mother Bertha revealed that Charlene’s husband fit perfectly some of the worst stereotypes of African-American males that whites have conjured over the past 400 years.

I am sure that no malicious meaning was intended, but intent does not negate effect, and the effect is deeply destructive.

We still have so far to go.

Arlin C. Migliazzo

Spokane