White Supremacy and the Broadway Musical

Warren Hoffman - Medium: With Black men and women being killed on a regular basis by police in this country, and massive nationwide protests calling for racial justice, this might be a strange time to talk about Broadway musicals. Seemingly frothy and purely escapist, musicals would appear to be the exact opposite of what is happening in our streets right now. But if we look more carefully, musicals offer a window into the deep societal problem of systemic racism, revealing how something even as mundane as musicals are both affected by and help shape the oppressive system of white supremacy.