Oriental, Black, and White The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater

• Main Author: Lee, Josephine (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 2022
• Subjects: Black & Asian studies; Theatre studies; History of the Americas; Cross-racial performance; blackface minstrelsy; yellowface; American orientalism; racial stereotypes; all-Black musical; nineteenth-century American theater; racial habit; Aladdin; Shuffle Along; Ira Aldridge; Japanese Tommy; Bert Williams; George Walker; In Dahomey; Abyssinia; Aida Overton Walker; Salome; Chinese laundry; representations of the Philippine-American War; Flower Drum Song; Juanita Long Hall; Princess Sotanki; Sissieretta Jones; Afro-Asian; chop suey
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

In this book, Josephine Lee looks at the intertwined racial representations of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American theater. In minstrelsy, melodrama, vaudeville, and musicals, both white and African American performers enacted blackface characterizations alongside oriental stereotypes of opulence and deception, comic servitude, and exotic sexuality. Lee shows how blackface types were often associated with working-class masculinity and the development of a nativist white racial identity for European immigrants, while the oriental marked what was culturally coded as foreign, feminized, and ornamental. These conflicting racial connotations were often intermingled in actual stage performance, as stage productions contrasted nostalgic characterizations of plantation slavery with the figures of the despotic sultan, the seductive dancing girl, and the comic Chinese laundryman. African American performers also performed common oriental themes and characterizations, repurposing them for their own commentary on Black racial progress and aspiration. The juxtaposition of orientalism and black figuration became standard fare for American theatergoers at a historical moment in which the color line was rigidly policed. These interlocking cross-racial impersonations offer fascinating insights into habits of racial representation both inside and outside the theater.