Blues for Mister Charlie Themes

Blues for Mister Charlie represents people with racist attitudes as unable to see other human beings’ individuality: instead, it shows how racism causes people to perceive others through stereotyped, racialized fantasies of their own. Thus, people with racist attitudes are on a fundamental level alienated both from other people and from the truth. This representation of racism and individuality is clearest in the play’s depiction of Lyle Britten, a poor white store owner living…

In Blues for Mister Charlie, “being a man” has two different and conflicting meanings: it can mean acting in a way that respects one’s own and others’ individual human dignity—or it can mean violently asserting power over others. The former way, the play suggests, is redemptive, while the latter destroys lives. The play illustrates these two versions of masculinity in the final conversation between Richard Henry, a young Black man who has returned…

Blues for Mister Charlie represents sexuality as a flashpoint for violence in an anti-Black white supremacist society, as in order to reinforce racial hierarchy, white supremacists must deny certain forms of interracial attraction while infecting others with violence. In this context, love—truly knowing and caring for another person as an individual—is represented as an extraordinarily difficult achievement. This dynamic is clear in the sexual and emotional lives of Jo Britten, a conformist white woman…

 Blues for Mister Charlie implies that white supremacy is driven, in part, by white economic anxiety—a fear of competing on a level playing field against Black people for money and job opportunities. The white character with the most progressive racial attitudes, Parnell James, is independently wealthy; by implication, it is easier for him to espouse ethical attitudes about racial justice because he need not worry about money—and thus does not worry about whether, in…