Letters: Time to do Better

As a member of the Theater Community, a graduate of Ithaca High School and a former cast member in plays in both Boynton Middle School and Ithaca High School, I read the letters “God Help the Outcasts” and “Conscience Casting” with great sorrow, and anger.

These past two years have seen the great heights of what the theater can be as a place for inclusion. Hamilton was an amazing example of what a show can be. A cast, primarily of color, telling kids of color “America is yours, too.” It also very clearly said “Theater is yours, too.” The music is amazing, the acting phenomenal – but what won me over was that message: America, and the Theater, are yours, TOO.

I realize that I am a 44-year-old, straight white man – but quite frankly I’m tired of hearing the subtle and not so subtle chorus of “you don’t belong” directed at people who do not look like me. This is not the America I served while enlisted in the Army. These are not the values I was taught in my years in the Ithaca City Schools.

It saddens and angers me to read the mentioned letters. I would like to give the benefit of the doubt. I would like to believe that those in charge at my alma mater were blissfully unaware of these issues, and did not know what they were doing to marginalize those who do not look like them. But the truth of it is that’s how institutionalized racism works. It gets pushed along by those who do not realize that they are part of the system keeping others down. The question is what do people do when they are made aware.

A good friend has a Maya Angelou quote on her wall that I love: “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” These letter writers have let the Ithaca City Schools, and the greater Ithaca Community know there is a problem. You have taught us to know better. It’s time to do better. We’ll be watching.

 

Alek J. Osinski
Ithaca