On Being White: A Series (2)

A crowd of white persons

It was a summer evening in Central Park in New York. I was attending a Metropolitan Opera performance with a group of friends. The event was free, and since early morning the Sheep Meadow, to the west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, people had been dropping by to reserve choice spots with blankets and folding chairs. By 6 p.m., two hours before Alan Gilbert hopped up the steps to the platform and lifted his baton, before gratitude had been expressed for the sponsorship of eminent organizations (Bloomberg, Bank of America the crowd stretched all the way back to the Delacorte Theater at the south end of the meadow. By then everyone was chowing down, some plunging into baskets fit for a Downton Abbey picnic. The mood was mellow: even for those who did not experience Manhattan in the bad old days but know the city only in it revived family-friendly incarnation, the mood was one of universal good will. As often happens on such cultural occasions, I surveyed the crowd of several thousand people in order to note what I was certain was missing: black people. Later in the year at a performance of the award-winning musical Hamilton on Broadway, written and performed by the Puerto Rican composer and rapper Lin-Manuel Miranda, the same thing struck me, the absence of blacks (except among the actors).

Where are the blacks at such events, I ask myself?

Picture credit: An Eventful World