Coleen Herbert blog 9

Our community projects demonstrated that the “personal” is the public. We were supposed to teach on a community that we “personally” belong to, but not everyone interpreted this the same way. What I learned from the projects is that a lot people believe that a community extends beyond the traits of its members.

In my opinion, everything private is public in a community. In Clybourne Park, we noticed as a class that the discussions about race changed when characters were in front of different people. We observed the detriment of ignorance and silencing. “Privacy” is a term that is often used to describe the “personal”. Is racism personal? Is sexism personal? It’s a personal choice and system of beliefs, but it is also a public reflection. These beliefs are tied to a wider realm of collective, personal hegemonies. I’ve noticed that people often apologize in our class for using anecdotes that are too “personal”. The way I see it, the private informs the public and the public polices the private. Speaking about our personal lives and experiences is a way to enact a sort of grassroots dialogue in response to hegemonic oppression. What we are taught is to turn away from speaking about ourselves and to speak about others. But is this action not also “personal”? The nation is deeply invested in my "personal" life. I'm not speaking about only sexuality, but gender, race, and class as well. The ideologies used to police our freedoms pervert the distinction between what is public and what is private. There is no "private" in the United States nor anywhere else.

Clybourne Park challenges the distinction between public and private life, as does the article on white flight on Blackboard. Is white flight a private choice or a public one? It's really both. You get the sense that there was supposed to be a delicacy in the article, but that it was wiped out by inherent racism. Should we compare our progress to 1970 or should we re-evaluate our standards? As Jonno noted, the article tries to mask pain. This made me think of Russ’s pain and what should be kept private. I believe that the play is in a sense about public pain, about lingering dissent over an enormous lack of change. This lack is revisited in Bev's final words to Francine before  Kenneth's suicide: "I know it's been a hard couple of years for all of us, I know they have been, but I really believe things are about to change for the better" (Norris 84).