The Daily Indignities of Racism

Chicago is not like New York, at least when it comes to how people socialize. In Chicago, white people live on the near North Side (mostly), black people on the South Side (mostly) and Latinos on the West Side and far North Side (again, more or less). 

But people from all over the city come to work in the Loop, Chicago's downtown. So, very unlike New York, where people of different races are your neighbors as well as your colleagues, in Chicago your neighbors are like you — and your colleagues are the Other. That's true even though Chicago likes to think of itself as a diverse city where everyone gets along.

That's why it's so interesting — and important — that the new, Off-Broadway play "Rasheeda Speaking" is set in a doctor's office in a Chicago hospital. 

Joel Drake Johnson's play is a stunning example of how racism can thrive as an undercurrent in everyday interactions, even if leaders have tried to eliminate it in policy and corporate practice. 

Darren Goldstein is a smarmy doctor who wants his "angry" — and African American — secretary Jaclyn (Tony Pinkins) replaced with someone who has less "attitude." He manipulates his white secretary Ileen (Dianne Wiest) into taking notes on Jaclyn's behavior and work habits, because he knows human resources won't let him just remove her.

Formerly, the two secretaries had been somewhat friendly, if not quite friends. But when her job is threatened, Jaclyn lashes back. 

What makes Johnson's play so fascinating is that there's no sugarcoating and no sentimentality. Jaclyn is prickly and sometimes downright rude with patients and colleagues. But she's also good at her job. Ileen, on the other hand, is disorganized, but sweet to those around her. (And continues to be lovely to Jaclyn even as she continues to gather evidence against her.) The doctor is racist. Ileen? It's not so clear. And Jaclyn has her own ways of getting vengeance. These complexities, and Cynthia Nixon's taut and balanced direction, make it hard to know whom to root for. 

There's no big bang here — this is not Ferguson-level racial strife — but the dramatization of the small, relatable indignities and the thousand papercuts of living as a black woman in the world makes this work provocative. Playwright Johnson, a Chicagoan himself, has really captured the kind of micro-aggressions that are generally invisible to white people, especially when they don't count black people among their friends. 

As the face-off between the secretaries becomes more manipulative, our loyalties ping pong back and forth. No one is right, really — because they're stuck in a system that's very wrong.