White Chocolate: Black Identity in Small Town White America

By Sam Kelley

Life in small town white America turns out to be anything but idyllic for Professor Walt Williams and wife Ruby. Walts preoccupation with achieving tenure in the publish or perish academic world alienates him from his family. If thats not enough, his college-dropout son, who hangs out on the ski slopes, and daughter Lily, a high school honor student smitten with the white kid next door, are assuming provincial identities that threaten to derail Walts ambitious goal of seeing them achieve success as high-powered black professionals.

White Chocolate is a hot issue. It is, in part, about interracial relationships and the impact of that on both the individual and their respective communities. Although other dynamics are involved in the play, the interracial issue prompted much fury and fiery honest discussion in the class [Syracuse University Workshop in Black Theatre].
Jackie Warren-Moore, columnist
The Post-Standard, Syracuse, New York

White Chocolate is a successful political play because it makes the political personal and particular . . . Kelleys play is also a warmhearted domestic drama. While Walt is fighting for his professional life, he is losing the affection of his teenage daughter, Lily, and his college dropout son, Victor . . .
David Reilly, Contributing writer
The Syracuse Newspapers/Weekend

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479796816

Sam Kelley

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Book preview

White Chocolate is © 2013 by Samuel L. Kelley

Foreword is copyright © 2013 by Daniel Axelrod

Back cover photo by Julio F. Torres Santana

White Chocolate is published by Samuel L. Kelley

P. O. Box 5336, Cortland, N Y 13045

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All Rights Reserved. Except for publicity, promotion, reviews and related notices, no parts of this book may be reproduced without permission in writing from the author or his representative.

Rev. date: 03/20/2013

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Contents

FOREWORD

DANIEL AXELROD

AKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHITE CHOCOLATE

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Additional plays available

by Sam Kelley

Pill Hill

The Blue Vein Society

Thruway Diaries

Faith, Hope And Charity: The Mary McLeod Bethune Story

For the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company and the magnificent cast and production staff who first brought White Chocolate to life on the stage.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

W. E. B. Dubois

From The Souls of Black Folk

FOREWORD

I was the white chocolate in White Chocolate. I played Rich, the grocery store-stocking white teenager whose principal ambition was to spend every moment with his black girlfriend, Lily. She was the honor society president, groomed to ace her SATs, attend an elite college, and climb the corporate ladder, shattering glass ceilings no black woman has ever cracked. Rich was more concerned with chocolate chip cookies, beer, and Lily. He was even willing to enroll in community college if it meant he could be close to his girlfriend. During the play’s first run, Vanessa Bronfman, the actress who played Lily, and I were teenagers, and we shared our characters’ rebellious streaks. In some ways, we had identity issues of our own, with one of mine being the Long Island Jewish kid in his first semester in college in rural Upstate New York. And Vanessa was multiracial, the daughter of a black mother and a billionaire Jewish father.

To say the least, Vanessa and I engaged in our own minor acts of rebellion, which we enjoyed, at least once to the chagrin of her real-life father. One evening, Vanessa’s father, Edgar Bronfman Jr., came to see the show in Syracuse. I’ll never forget the limo that delivered Mr. Bronfman. His driver parked on the lawn, avoiding the tiny pothole-filled parking lot at the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company’s theater. Then life imitated art. The crowd always loved the scene in which Walt, a professor and father to Lily, walked in on his daughter and Rich making out on the living room couch. As Walt entered the room, I would leap up in fear. But for that show, I was jittery as Vanessa kissed me more passionately than ever and Mr. Bronfman watched from the front row. While Vanessa’s real dad seethed, her fictional father burst onto the set and exploded with anger. I jumped like a cat getting its tail crushed, and the crowd howled with laughter. While the director, Sam Kelley, had carefully blocked the typical stage kiss, Vanessa and I sucked face, as they say in the Urban Dictionary.

Just as our kisses were real, real is the best word to describe the characters in White Chocolate. Lily’s failure-to-launch brother, Victor, is experiencing his own mid-twenties crisis. He’s a college dropout and ski instructor with his own white belle. Lily is preoccupied, pushing back against the pressures of the college admissions process, while Victor strives to maintain his dignity in the face of discrimination up at the ski lodge. Both children must contend with Walt’s expectations for their success and whom they should marry, but their white lovers only complicate matters. Meanwhile, the closer Walt gets to tenure at the local college, the more distant he becomes from his children. His wife, Ruby, is left to bridge the familial divide and help Walt publish, lest he perish, and lose his last opportunity to gain tenure.

Like so many moms and dads, Walt and Ruby wonder when their cherubs will fly from home. But unlike most families, Walt, Ruby, and the kids also confront the tension between being racially authentic and assimilating, and they fight the forces aligned against their upward mobility. Relationships become troublesome and complicated with white colleagues with whom one must connect, even depend upon for survival in the academic jungle. Take Walt’s colleague and friend, Phil, for instance. Phil chairs the History Department Personnel Committee, the department deciding on Walt’s tenure. But Phil has his own problems as he is gripped by fear of losing his family when his wife begins divorce proceedings, not to mention his worry that male menopause now threatens his once track-fit body. His marriage may disintegrate. The dubious manner in which he is forced to deal with the tenure proceedings has called into question his integrity, and, subsequently, his friendship with Walt is in jeopardy. Even today, White Chocolate’s characters and themes resonate with great power and emotional honesty. While President Obama’s election wins were historic, they hardly signified the creation of a post-racial society. Consider findings from a think tank called the Economic Policy Institute.

More than half of all the black children raised in American families among the bottom fifth of wage earners stayed in that income bracket as adults. And last summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that more than half of the nation’s homicide victims were black, though African Americans make up just 13 percent of the population. But America’s priorities are elsewhere. The United Sates will spend four trillion dollars fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Brown University’s researchers. Meanwhile, our nation’s colleges perennially beg for government funding. Will Walt’s college