Racism in Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman

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Name of the student
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Name and Number of the Course
Date: 11/04/2020
Racism in Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman
The fight against racism merged in the interwar years and was the result of the denial
in the acknowledgement of equality that was granted to them by the constitution. However,
there was two most prominent division in the movement of the time, depending on the
approach of the two most imminent leaders of the time, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
Jr. The play Dutchman was the production of an African American author Amiri Baraka, who
wrote under the name of LeRoi Jones till the year 1964 and this was the last play to be
published under his original name (Naghavi Moghaddam). The paper will analyze Lula’s
character under the scope of the White supremacy which is challenged and upto a certain
point silenced by Clay’s abrupt eruption on her vulgarity showing the perception of the white
society towards Blacks who were finally equipped to have a voice of their own. It depicts the
condition of the society and the stereotype as a new form of slavery that they were subjected
to even after being freed from it physically. The stance of Clay represents adherence to the
thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. in terms of taking a non-violence approach towards
handling the issue of racism but when seen through the eyes of the reader’s one can see the
influence of Malcolm X on Baraka. The thesis statement stands for the analysis of the stance
of Cay in terms of depicting the response one can expect from the society when they wait for
the change to occur rather than putting an effort to bring one.

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Racism and Baraka
The play starts in a subway with the lone character who is also the protagonist of the play;
Clay represents a coming of age African American who represents the class of African
American who had the opportunity of a college education. He sat at the window seat, reading
from his pile of papers and looking outside the window with a strange look. Lula stands in the
way a hunter stands until the appropriate hunt comes in the view (Tyner). Lula looks at Clay
looking at her and returns the gesture. The significant part of the play is the manipulation
game of Lula and the way she extracts information from him, and she shows her amiable side
to him until he gets manipulated and dance to her tune.
The first scene of the play shows the side of Amiri that was influenced by Martin
Luther King Jr., which shows Clay being in a trance phase. Lula shows the reaction of a
person who has been intrigued, and she excites him sexually to make him respond to her
questions. The goal of the Civil Rights Movement reflects here when Lula tries to depict the
fact that she knows him or his type. She reads him under the stereotype where delegates his
existence into set rules of the thumb and declares that as he cannot be Jackson or Johnson, he
must be William. She gave the reason behind her choice being, “You are too pretentious to be
a Jackson or a Johnson.” (Baraka). It can be seen as an attack on the movement and the
ideology where Jackson and Johnson were both a front activist of the movement. The
movement called for a non-violence, and civil disobedience approach based on the Christian
beliefs and was largely due to the influence of the Indian Freedom Movement leader
Mahatma Gandhi. She calls them pretentious due to their demand for being equally treatment
removing the biases of race and color of their skin. She mocks him on his choice of poetry
when he tells her about his obsession with Baudelaire by calling him ‘Black Baudelaire’
(Baraka).

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The Civil Rights Movement. The play was first published in the year 1964, and Malcolm X
was assassinated just a year later. The movement was seen under two macroscopic categories
in the year the 1950s and 1960s due to the division of the approach in which the movement
was divided. Malcolm X was a convert who took to the religion of Islam and its teaching
under the guidance of Elijah Muhammad of the organization, ‘The Nation of Islam’ where he
became the representative speaker for it (Tyner). Their ideology was in stark contrast to that
of the Martin Luther King Jr., who led the movement with the non-violent approach and the
method of civil disobedience.
In contrast, Malcolm X was a huge supporter of the Islamic fundamental of being
allowed retaliation under defense. This ideology is reflected in turmoil present in the play
within the protagonist. He stays calm and tolerate the promiscuous advances of Lula towards
himself but was forced to defend himself when she calls him Uncle Tom and Thomas Woolly
Head in his incompetence to maintain his own identity. She calls out in front of all the people
in the train and insults him by calling him ‘an escaped nigger’ and points the various ways in
which he has accepted and mimicked the ways of the White people in his dressing as well as
in the manner he speaks including his language (Baraka).
The derogatory terms and the list of elicit words thrown at him show the
condemnation by Baraka of the non-violent ideology. Her use of the term, “You would-be
Christian.” shows the direct condemnation from him of how the ideology does stand in the
way of fighting the discriminating actions meted out to them (Baraka). Again, the thematic
reading reveals the inclination of Baraka towards Malcolm X’s ideology of considering
Christianity as the religion of the whites which has been re-written by them to make the
blacks the slave of their customs. They believed that the non-violence teachings of
Christianity were meant to keep the god-fearing African-American community under their
control (Baker). The nation of Islam exerted on the understanding that there was an urgent