From the Archives: 'West Side Racist?'

In a recent commentary on controversies surrounding sports team names, Winston Jones wrote in the Douglas County (Ga.) Sentinel:

Our society has gotten too picky and thin-skinned so that too many people are offended by too many things. And too many people are running circles around themselves to try to be politically correct on everything. Don't take life so seriously.

That's the point I tried to make in an opinion piece I wrote 14 years ago in reaction to complaints about a New England high school's production of West Side Story. The article appeared on November 21, 1999, in the Daily News of Bowling Green, Kentucky, under the headline, "West Side racist? - Objections to classic play is a sad commentary on our times." The only other place it is available on the Web is here.

This text, however, is more accessible.

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Word comes from Amherst, Massachusetts, that some students and parents object to a planned production of the classic 1957 musical play, West Side Story, at the local high school. They are insisting that it be canceled.

The local newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette noted in its Nov. 11 edition that a petition presented to the school board with over 150 signatures states: "The play continues to generate negative stereotypes of Puerto Ricans in society and perpetuates the racism that we as students have been working so hard to eliminate in our school and community." Other complaints cited the play's use of violence as a way to solve problems.

This is yet another case of ill-informed cultural critics failing to see the forest for the trees. Anyone who has seen West Side Story - or performed in it - cannot help but be touched by its message against prejudice and violence. The message is not subtle. It is not hidden. It is not difficult to grasp.

Like a previous protests against such literary works as Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the complainers seem not to understand that in order to present a theme that condemns racial prejudice and stereotyping, it is necessary also to present unsavory characters and dialogue that express the ideas and conditions to author wishes to condemn. Because these types of protests are successful, students are denied an opportunity for fruitful exploration of some of the complex and sad problems faced by our society.


West Side Story is itself based upon an earlier classic, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In its original concept, it was called East Side Story and its focus was to be on a conflicted Catholic-Jewish relationship. As creators Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Arthur Laurents (and later Stephen Sondheim) moved forward on the project, they became aware of the tensions in Los Angeles between Americans and Mexican immigrants and in New York's West Side between native English speakers and recent migrants from Puerto Rico. They decided to reset their play in this environment.

But does it "perpetuate stereotypes"? Does it inflame racial or ethnic tensions? Hardly. As Ethan Mordden notes in the chapter on West Side Story in his history of the Broadway musical in the 1950's, Coming Up Roses, "West Side Story is about real people: real life, real love and something is possible, for all the despair."

In Amherst, one alumna said the possibility of her high school presenting West Side Story is "humiliating." A parent, Elizabeth Capifali (a doctoral candidate in the multicultural education at the University of Massachusetts), called it "a very racist play" that is "replete with racial discrimination, creating negative images of Puerto Ricans and poor European immigrants."

Which European immigrants? The characters in the play are all "Americans" - but the ones who speak English and originally lived in New York come off looking much worse, morally speaking, than the Americans who speak Spanish and come from Puerto Rico. It is the "Anglos" who are unwelcoming, disrespectful and hostile toward their new neighbors. It is the "natives" who would rather fight the Puerto Ricans than work and play alongside them. The "natives" are blustery Archie-Bunkers-in-training, with a violent, gangster-like bent. The Puerto Rican characters - also Americans, as they don't hesitate to remind us, and their adversaries - simply want to make a better life for themselves. What kind of negative stereotype is that?

Bowling Green Daily News, November 21, 1999

Aside from the play's message, which can only be missed by someone wearing blinders and earplugs, it is a landmark of the American stage that deserves to be seen and performed by young people who wish to be culturally literate.

West Side Story was cutting-edge in 1957, yet seems somewhat old-fashioned today. (This was my reaction to a London revival earlier this year [1999] that recreated the original production, including the sets and costumes.) Still, students of the theatre recognize its innovations: in music and lyrics, in its focus on young people to the exclusion of adults, in its daring realism in a medium that relies on fantasy. Its progeny include Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Sweeney Todd, and Ragtime. To deny members of the Amherst Regional High School community an opportunity to participate in, observe and learn from West Side Story is petty and barbarous.

We can only hope that the level-headed faculty, students, and school board members stand up to these philistines. The show must go on.

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For more discussion about West Side Story, check out these videos of a post-screening discussion about the movie from the 2008 Virginia Film Festival.

Part I:


Part II:

From the Archives: 'Don't Let the Feds Be Thought Police'

This article was originally published in the Roanoke Times & World News on April 9, 1991, under the all-caps headline "DON'T LET THE FEDS BE THOUGHT POLICE." It was written in response to legislation that had been introduced by long-time Congressman Henry Hyde, who died in 2007 after 32 years representing Illinois's sixth congressional district.

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I AM AS close to a free-speech absolutist as anyone can imagine. I believe that the survival of a liberal, democratic society depends on broad application of First Amendment protections for speech, assembly, religion and the press.

But I disagree with a bill introduced by Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, the Collegiate Speech Protection Act of 1991. The act would prohibit any private college or university that accepts federal money from making or enforcing "any rule subjecting any student to disciplinary action solely on the basis of speech or other communication" that the First Amendment normally protects from government restrictions.

One impetus for Hyde's bill was Brown University's expulsion of a student for shouting anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-black epithets in a college courtyard in the middle of the night. This incident has been widely misinterpreted as punishment for the student's speech or ideas, rather than his rude and uncivil behavior. On other campuses, sanctions have been used against students and faculty for the expression of "politically incorrect" ideas.

Hyde relates his bill to the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, which says the federal government can regulate any and all aspects of a college's operations if it accepts federal funds directly (in the form of research grants, for instance) or indirectly (by accepting tuition payments from students receiving federal scholarship aid).

Under these criteria, only Grove City College in Pennsylvania and Hillsdale College in Michigan would be exempt from the new law; they alone refuse, as a matter of principle, to take financial aid from the U.S. government.

The First Amendment does not prohibit private individuals or entities -- parents, corporations, churches, fraternal associations, colleges or newspaper publishers -- from restricting speech or expression of those in their employ or under their contol. It only applies to government.

Speech-suppression codes, now all the rage on U.S. campuses, are generally a bad idea. They are broadly and vaguely written, poorly administered, and serve to undermine the very cause they seek to advance -- deterring speech and behavior offensive to minorities defined by race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Moreover, the codes inhibit robust discussion of controversial and discomforting thoughts in the environment best suited for free-wheeling discourse.

Far worse than well-intentioned but nebulous standards of "political correctness," however, is the idea of extending the reach of the federal government to regulate the content of speech at private educational institutions.

Non-public colleges and universities are private, voluntary associations that should be able to set their own standards of civility and demarcate their own boundaries of acceptable behavior. Their members -- students, faculty and staff -- are free to leave if they disagree with those standards.

A "religious exemption" in Hyde's bill for denominational colleges acknowledges this, but too narrowly. Why should a church-related college be allowed, say, to prohibit a public lecture on the theory of evolution while a non-sectarian institution, no doubt animated by an integrated educational philosophy all its own, be barred by law from prohibiting a lecture on creationism?

We should not expand the realm of government interference in the private lives of citizens and their freely formed associations. The only thing more fearsome than self-anointed campus leaders taking on the raiments of thought police is federal bureaucrats doing the same.

AUTHOR NOTE: Richard E. Sincere Jr. is an Arlington writer and member of the Libertarian Party of Virginia.

OK, Perhaps the Anti-Christmas Attitude Has Gone Too Far

From my friend Chuck Muth's daily e-newsletter, Chuck Muth's News and Views, comes this story:

SEPARATION OF BRAIN & PRINCIPAL

From SeaCoastOnline.com: “A parent of a Hampton Academy Junior High School (Hampton, NH) student says the principal of the school told his son to leave the school’s holiday dance on Friday night because the boy was dressed in a Santa Claus costume, which was politically incorrect. . . . Principal Fred Muscara said he told the boy he couldn’t get into the dance because he was wearing the costume. ‘It was a holiday party,’ said Muscara. ‘It was not a Christmas party. There is a separation of church and state. We have a lot of students that go to Hampton Academy Junior High that have different religions. We have to be sensitive to that.’"

Hmmm. This appears to be a public school. Who’d a thunk it?

Chuck's report seems to be true. You can read the original newspaper article at "Boy in a Santa suit asked to quit dance" (Hampton Union Local News). The article features a photograph of the young man in a totally inoffensive Santa suit.

Chuck also posted the telephone number and email address of Principal Muscara, but I won't be responsible for any annoying phone calls to Hampton Academy Junior High. (If you're really interested, check out Chuck Muth's News and Views.)