Dear Al,
Which one of us is the real Al Jolson? I know that biologically you’re the true Al, but perhaps I’m some hidden part of your identity that you channel through my performance. Perhaps you perform your whiteness in the same way that I perform this blackness. In some ways you blur the line between what is a real identity and what is purely performed.
Yet maybe you have some sadistic desire to control me, posses my blackness. Maybe your power of being able to embody the mysterious virility of a black man through me gives you a rush, a sick pleasure. You “sing through my mouth,” giving me words and music that I do not want to project to the world.
Who are you, Al Jolson? Are you white? Black? Both? Neither?
Sincerely,
Al
Questions:
Why is performing another gender more or less acceptable, while performing another race is not?
2) Race is a metalanguage, but can sexuality be one, too? It seems that sexuality (ex. interracial sex, miscegentation) provides the foundation for white society’s historical fear of black men and the black Other…Why is sexuality so salient/significant (even when it isn’t explicitly discussed)?
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