The White Card: A Play by Claudia Rankine

The White Card: A Play Reviews

• 
  leynes

  The moment I heard of this play I knew I had to read it: Claudia Rankine's The White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself.
  
  The play is composed of two scenes: it opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles's intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist’s studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what―and who―is actually on display.
  
  I was immediately hooked since the synopsis reminded me of Yasmina Reza's work, in particular Le Dieu du Carnage and Trois Versions de la Vie. I am a sucker for intimate theatre in which characters who consider themselves civilised all turn into savages, and everything turns to shit. I was even more interested since Claudia Rankine explored questions of racial divisions, in particular if American society can progress if whiteness remains invisible.
  
  The idea from The White Card sprung from a conversation that Claudia Rankine had with a white man at one of her public readings of Citizen. “What can I do for you? How can I help you?” These sound like kindhearted questions but what the questioner actually did was turning a systemic, structural scourge into Rankine’s personal problem. Presenting himself as a beneficent rescuer, he never considered how he came to regard himself in that role in the first place. When Rankine answered, “I think the question you should be asking is what you should do for you,” the man became incensed. “If that’s how you answer questions,” he replied, “then no one will ask you anything.” So, in The White Card, Rankine forces her white American audience to truly take a look at themselves, at their own whiteness and what it really means.
  
  The play is structurally very straight forward. There are next to no stage directions and the language in which the characters are speaking is very realistic and sounds like everyday speech, it is not poetically heightened. The play addresses timely questions of representation, appropriation, cultural ownership, and dirty money in the art world. It makes references—sometimes direct, sometimes oblique—to recent related controversies: the display of Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till in 2017’s Whitney Biennial; Kenneth Goldsmith’s delivery of Michael Brown’s autopsy report as a found poem; the funding of art museums by the likes of the opioid-peddling Sacklers or the manufacturer of the tear gas fired at migrant mothers and children at the San Diego–Tijuana border, among others.
  
  But albeit the clear language and timely references, it is not Rankine's goal for the readers/viewers to relate to the protagonists. The characters don't necessarily function as people, they function as mouth-pieces and representatives of the society they stand for. In the first act, Charlotte (a black female artist) is a dinner guest at the home of the Spencers: Charles (a well-intentioned exemplar of the “white-savior industrial complex”), his wife Virginia (long-suffering and preoccupied with propriety), and their son Alex (a more-woke-than-thou Showing Up for Racial Justice activist and college student, fresh from an anti-Trump protest), along with their calculating art dealer, Eric. Charles collects work that he deems supportive of the black cause—including a newly acquired piece he will unveil that evening. As the dinner wears on, the hosts’ clueless, hurtful remarks leak into the polite conversation like a toxic drip.
  
  Discussing tennis, Virginia comments that Serena Williams’s decision to return to Indian Wells (where she’d been subjected to racist vitriol earlier in her career) showed that she had “really matured”; when Charlotte moves to help clear the table, Virginia tells her, “Sit down. You’re not the maid.” Virginia refers to the black painters and sculptors whose work her husband purchases as his “stable” of artists; she also misremembers the name of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book as “The World Between Us,” while Eric mispronounces his name. Suggesting that Charles invite Charlotte onto the board of his foundation, Eric notes that adding her “will definitely solve the diversity issue.” And Charles makes self-righteous claims about the works he collects—one “critiques fascism,” another “gestures toward structural racism”—that he has no idea how to back up when Charlotte presses him to explain.
  
  The White Card shows hypocrisies, microagressions, and family squabbles in a very human and realistic manner. As shocking and funny some its lines are, it is believable that a dinner (similar to the one shown in the play) took place in the United States at some point in the past. However, I'm not sure if the play was wholly for me. A lot of the explorations of microagressions were definitely accurate but they didn't bring anything new to the table (for me). And overall, Rankine's message and intention was very on the nose. It doesn't take a genius to analyse and interpret this play. I didn't learn anything about racism and how racism is dealt with in the US by reading this play. I learned more about art and art history than about the racial chasm that seems to plague American society.
  
  So while this play definitely had its moments and was overall an entertaining read, I wouldn't deem it an essential one if you're already familiar with the discussed topics at hand.
• 
  Doug

  This is a very difficult work for me to review, since it tackles an important and rarely discussed issue (basically the blindness white people have to their own privilege, even when they believe they abhor racism), so it gets kudos for that alone. My problem is that Rankine, a well-respected poet, hasn't really written a play. She has written a debate, complete with bullet points, footnotes (people are constantly bringing up works of art or literature and then having to EXPLAIN what they are about) and Power Point illustrations (SHOWING the aforementioned art so that their points can be made/discussed), that bears little resemblance to how people actually talk and interact.
  
  The characters, such as they are, represent various points along a spectrum of enlightenment, but have little substance beyond such. And discussions don't flow ... there are many points when non-sequiturs arise, since Rankine has exhausted whatever the purported topic/talking point is, and someone just abruptly brings up an entirely separate subject. For example:
  
  Eric: Fantastic food while being surrounded by such beauty.
  
  Alex: How can you talk about beauty when we have Nazis in the White House? Didn't you see Sebastian Gorka in his Nazi uniform at the inauguration..."
  
  p. 46.
  
  Perhaps this plays a LOT better than it reads, but I suspect the praise it garnered was a result of that white guilt the play is in fact railing against. And the ending is just bizarre.
• 
  dc

  rankine has the answers. who will listen?
• 
  Charlie

  What happens when you combine two strawmen, a wine mom, an overly-online teenager and an obvious self-insert?
  
  A boring, tedious, unimaginative play with no discernable audience beyond self-flagellating white people who love guilt porn, New York and art references.
• 
  Raymond

  There is alot to unpack in this play. I may even need to reread it. The dialogue is sharp and rich. I would definitely like to see this on stage.
• 
  Niv

  This work was anything but subtle. In this short play, Claudia Rankine lays bare the ugly insidiousness that is American racism, and the shape that it takes in spaces that purport to be sympathetic and progressive. We are gathered at a posh dinner party in Tribeca where homeowners Charles and Virginia are entertaining their guest Charlotte, a Black artist whose work on racism has piqued their interest. There's also Eric, an art dealer, who acts as a liaison between Charlotte and the family. Charles and Virginia's son Alex also joins conversation later on. While the dinner party begins innocently enough, it slowly but surely devolves as the discussion around racism begins to hit a little too close to home for the family.
  
  I felt a lot of emotions reading this. Annoyance, frustration, maybe even a bit of anger, but also... boredom. Don't get me wrong, the work itself was compelling; I found myself very much drawn into the dialogue between the characters. But I found Charles, Virginia, and Eric to be quite banal. And maybe that was the point. I've been in Charlotte's shoes time and time again, dealing with the types of people Rankine is presenting here. People who can't see you as you, because they're so busy seeing you as whatever version of "Black" exists in their imagination. People who can't see you as you because they refuse to see themselves. There was a lot of power in the dialogue, but for those of us who have had lived experiences comparable to Charlotte, there was nothing new here at all. Claudia Rankine was very much so on the money, maybe a little too much so.
  
  The play itself was minimalist in style, which worked for the piece. There were only two scenes, the first of which is the dinner party where whiteness is quite literally on display. "Everything in the room is white except for the art." Though I have not had the pleasure of actually seeing this play, I imagine that the stark whiteness of the space really enhanced and reinforced Rankine's point that in the face of perpetual Black death, what really needs to be confronted is whiteness. The second scene was interesting, and I'm still figuring out how I'm feeling about the ending. Overall though, it was a solid piece of work for its size. While not much actually happens, there's a LOT to unpack as far as dialogue and subtext are concerned.
• 
  John Decker

  Unsurprisingly provocative, smart, intense. There is so much to absorb here
• 
  magali she|her

  lot to process, also didn't get the end
• 
  Autumn

  I wish I had gotten to see this when it was performed last year.
  
  The White Card was created in response to a question that a white man asked Rankine at an event. When he didn't like her answer, he became critical of her. This play deals with whiteness and how even people who believe their intentions to be good can become defensive when they are challenged. The cast of characters was intentionally produced to portray a range of white people believing that they're "helping" Charlotte, a black artist. When Charles, an art collector, wants to buy her pieces and she sees that he has a fetish for black suffering and death, she has to re-examine her work and what it does. Her next show is a brilliant response that leaves Charles feeling uncomfortable.
  
  One of the most poignant lines, for me, was "Your imagination, like mine, like everyone's, is a racial imagination, except you don't really think of yourself as having a race and being shaped by the beliefs of that race" (78).
• 
  Leah

  I am not white so none of this play was new to me.
  
  ...
  
  It's important and significant that someone with a loud of clout is giving voice to the opinions, judgments, and insights of this play. They really are quite obvious though, to anyone who has ever lived as a colored, or poor, or otherwise disenfranchised person in America. This play, Rankine, forces into clear focus on the issue of race -- on blackness vs whiteness in particular. I think I understand her choice in presenting race in this stark format (because it is easy to understand), but as with citizen, I worry that her texts perform some erasure of other marginalized identities, by its choice of focus.
  
  Anyway, but that might be an error in diagnosis. It may be up to others to write their respective versions of "The White Card".
• 
  Basma

  There’s a lot to unpack here and I wish it was longer. I love Claudia Rankine’s work.
• 
  Gabriel Avocado

  rarely do i feel this speechless after finishing a book. i dont read a lot of plays so im not sure what is considered mainstream in this genre. i didnt know how to really go about writing this review because its so hard for me to talk about books i love, but i took a look at the reviews to get some ideas on how i should tackle this. some of you missed the entire point of the play. i get not liking something but i think the way in which certain people missed the point is why works like the white card are so important.
  
  the play explores the ego of the white liberal in their demand for a performance and black death. i think thats the best way to explain the plot. its not about fighting the klan or some overtly bigoted trump supporter but forcing white people to feel uncomfortable. reminding them that its not about them. this is not about you. i saw a particularly fucking stupid review of a guy who said he wanted to see the black character argue with a conservative, not moderates, and like. yeah what a waste of fucking paper, i hope his copy went to someone whos going to actually understand the book.
  
  half of the reviews say rankine is too heavy handed. the other half say its too subtle. your mileage may vary i guess but i thought this was pretty masterfully written. if you felt some of the characters were too on the nose thats because you havent actually ever met people like this. youve never had to tiptoe around peoples egos in hopes that theyll still be friends with you while also slowly realizing they dont care about YOU as a person but only in YOU as a collectable to be added to a roster of diversity. youve never had this conversation, or you didnt realize it, or you were the one on the other side of this discussion. if youve ever had this conversation, this book is for you.
• 
  Iris

  impeccably written as always! I gasped aloud multiple times.
• 
  Kenny

  What and who was on display and what exactly were the pressure points? Those are two questions I find myself still grappling with that can help me further understand the play. I found multiple moments in the play where it seemed like the show and artifice were the main subject matter. The careful orchestration of seating and the white box/room (which are just the staging aspects), as well as the constant mention of different works of art (Between the World and Me, Philando Castille, projections on the wall, etc.), as well as the central figure of the artist made me wonder what was actually on display. It made me question how representations are just as powerful as what they depict. That reality is a construction that we constantly negotiate, and that we often have to fight for control of the narrative. That brings me to my second question which was what were the actual terms of the debate? I understood that there were several different characters coming together for a dinner party where the Black character was an artist whose work the family was interested in buying. That seems like enough of a powderkeg, and a power struggle, but the nuances of the arguments were difficult to entangle. What exactly created the conditions in which politeness erupted into policing? I’m also a librarian, and I’m interested in continuing the dialogue in that space as well.
• 
  Basia

  Is The White Card predictable? Well, yes. Mostly if you are familiar with the real-life versions of these "well-meaning" white liberals. Then, of course, the outcome of the play and its insufferable conversations aren't all that surprising. There were moments when I did want some element of the unexpected, but I backtracked by asking myself whether anything about anti-black racism should even be surprising anymore. I mean, who has the privilege of insulating themselves from the shock of it? Who witnesses this racism metastasize again and again, and still has the nerve to say, "I can't believe this is happening in 2016, 17, 18, 19" without realizing how they perpetuate it in their own lives? This play is more didactic than Rankine's other works, but maybe it's because of the way she has carried the tenor of Citizen into The White Card but turned up the volume to address whiteness in a more direct manner than before.
• 
  Candice

  Powerful look at the white savior complex
  
  This play really digs into when white people think the are being helpful and empathetic but are actually fetishizing Black violence and death. By only concentrating and paying attention to Black people when they are victims, we dehumanize them and turn their pain into our cause. I think this is something we need to talk about more, especially in white communities that are now, more than ever before, getting involved in the Black Lives Matter movement.
• 
  Sarah

  As a look at/discussion of systemic racism in America, this is powerful and a fascinating concept. There were parts where I felt that the examples of microagressions happening were way overstated to where it could be awkward and clunky on stage. Loved the art included.
• 
  Bogi Takács

  This is a short play that explores art in a traditional gallery setting, collecting art, and how contemporary American Black art and the artists who make it fit into that kind of explicitly normative and white discourse. It engages with several specific pieces of art, which are reproduced in the book, and which are shown to the audience during the play.
  
  I have seen people complain in the Goodreads reviews that the dialog is too formal; I felt that was part of the point. This is kind of the reverse of work focusing on lives of marginalized political activists (of which I've read more), where here the activists are not the ones providing the framing, but are straining against it. And people can speak in this very explicitly political and often quite formal way in both contexts - though I've honestly haven't experienced the world of white American art collectors myself, but I will believe Claudia Rankine; also, I've seen the edges of it and it fits.
  
  The book pairs well with Craig Laurance Gidney's A Spectral Hue, which discusses how Black outsider art and gallery art / academic art history interact, among many other things, from a very different vantage point - and which book I've also recently read. Somewhat unexpectedly, one of my other most immediate reference points was János Térey, who just passed away unexpectedly and quite young (A"H), and his work focusing on the lives of the Hungarian elite in the Buda hills.
  
  No spoilers, but I thought the ending was fascinating and memorable, both conceptually and re: the wordplay.
  
  _____
  Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
• 
  Jenna

  I read The White Card by Claudia Rankine yesterday, all in one sitting, for my #toreadinaday book of the weekend.
  
  This play depicts a dinner hosted by a white couple who want to buy the latest collection of art by a Black artist. I found it really powerful in that just by portraying a dinner party and the imagined conversations in the first act, I was left with so much to reflect on. I’m left thinking about white saviorism, appropriation, microaggressions, white people commodifying blackness, and more. There is so much to unpack in this slim work. I would have loved to see it live, but reading it is still so impactful. If you haven’t read Rankine yet, what are you waiting for?
• 
  Jonathan Maas

  Conflict of the similarly minded
  
  Decent play, but honestly the conflict is a bit difficult to read at times, due to the characters being in general on the same page -
  
  Its left leaning people trying to out left each other, walking on egg shells as they take turns taking offence, but -
  
  The play screamed for a conservative voice, or rather a moderately conservative voice. Someone to shake things up, someone Charlotte can really bounce against.
  
  She spends the play bouncing her thoughts off of people who are generally in agreement with her, and want to support her -
  
  Maybe for a sequel she goes head to head with someone who truly disagrees with her on things?
  
  Any case great play. I hope to see it one day, but for now I am happy it is in book form.
• 
  Marya

  This play makes explicit the notion that whites are as locked into a racist system and any other race, despite the constant assurance that "I'm not racist". It's not how the issue is usually framed, and as such, it makes a punch. Where the play looses its steam is in its dramatic presentation. The characters all breathe the rarified air of those whose lives revolve around Art, Intellectualism, and Wealth (and tennis), and it shows in their speech. This raises the issue to a Serious One, but perhaps not so for the average Joe.
• 
  Jennifer Chen

  A friend suggested I read this play. While it was fascinating to read, I think it would be amazing to see in the theater with the art work projected in the background. The dialogue, subject matter, and set up are all dynamic and interesting. Claudia Rankine's writing is packed with so many layers in this play.
• 
  Layna Thompson

  big Rankine fan! i really like how she incorporates art pieces/installations/media into her writing (citizen and don’t let me be lonely as well). this work is pretty straightforward & brings up some valid points
• 
  Amber

  A little heavy-handed, but okay.
• 
  G

  Very sharp and funny at times, as Rankine's work tend to be — though a bit didactic.
• 
  Markus

  Really liked the topic of act two, act one was a bit too placative imo. This should be a lot better acted out than read I guess.
  Yes I am the guy with the elaborative and structured reviews
• 
  Yasmin

  Every time I read a book by Claudia Rankine, I feel the insides of my body more deeply. Grateful for her work.
• 
  rosalind

  oh this Fucks