Good Morning Baltimore

Good night New York.

I went and saw Hairspray last night. For an hour and a half I was beside myself during the movie, laughing, giggling, singing along at little snatches. The Broadway music is definitely infectious, and the characters sparkled with that overly brushed, white-toothed cleanliness.

Very basic plot summary for those who don't know: Tracy Turnblad is a plump teengaer who loves to dance and wants to appear on the Corny Collins Show (A kind of American Bandstand). But, of course, she's fat, so she can't. After getting kicked off the show she runs into some of the dancers from theshow's Negro Day -- the one day a month that black dancers are featured on the show. She takes up the cause of integration and fights for integrated tv.

Overall the movie is bubbly cute, a little low on content, but worth it for the flying zingers, the bright colors, the dancing, and, as already said, the infectious, guilty pleasure charm of the young stars. The pain and shot to the heart (You give love a bad name!) comes at hte end, when the goal is achieved and there is integration.

Everybody cheers for it. The black people cheer. THe white people cheer. I'm sure that the conspicuously missing Hispanics, Asians, and Indians are also cheering. And as I was watching this triumphant homage to integration I suddenly wanted to stand up and walk out. Because there isn't any triumph yet.

I wanted to yell--have you actually BEEN to Baltimore? Or, even more, have you been to New York? I went into Manhattan yesterday and was literally shocked by how many white people there were. The subway down is a shifting prism of color, beginning with blacks, followed by the ligter tones of the HIspanics, and by the time you've reached Wall Street only the palest of white skin remains.

Ours is not an integrated country. We live in a system of classes that every day is widening more and more. And, as every year passes, as every group of suburban children graduates with the idea that racism is a thing of the past and that we are all equal, it becomes even more pronounced. The middle class is disappearing, the one arena in which races could mingle comfortably. And it's disappearing.

Is it race? Is it merely socio-economic circumstances? Why do the two so often go hand in hand? It's difficult to watch a show like Hairspray with the cheering for integration and then to go to a school that is 60% black, 40% HIspanic. Then to return home to a better funded school (almost $2000 more dollars per child) that is 95% white. You can't justify that to me. It's impossible.

So I still recommend the movie, I still love the movie, I still fully plan on buying the movie when it comes out on DVD. I just may not ever be able to watch the entire thing. Because it's a lie, an the fact that it's bright, bubbly, well-packaged and shiny makes it worse. The fact that it's taken for granted makes it worse.