By David Baughan

Forty years ago Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated after a long and bitter civil rights battle that ended racial segregation and won Black Americans the vote. Today we see the possibility of an African-American in the White House. But when we look at the urban ghettoes and the reaction to the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when the leaders of the richest country in the world abandoned their fellow citizens (mainly poor and Black), are we any further ahead in fighting racism now than forty years ago or even at the time of the Second World War when South Pacific was written?

South Pacific is based on stories from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. He wrote the book during World War II when he was assigned to the southern Pacific Ocean as a naval historian. His themes included the nerve-wracking waiting for action that tests the patience of the young soldiers and sailors and recurring references to racial intolerance.

The problem of racial and cultural relations between the indigenous peoples and Americans is a critical issue of the theme of the book.

For example: After falling in love with Emile, a middleaged French planter, and accepting his marriage proposal, Nellie learns that he has eight daughters (reduced to two in this production), each with a different Javanese, Tonkinese, or Polynesian mother. When introduced to the daughters Michener writes of her response: "Emile de Becque, not satisfied with Javanese and Tonkinese women, had also lived with a Polynesian. A nigger! To Nellie's tutored mind any person living or dead who was not white or yellow was a nigger. And beyond that no words could go! Her entire Arkansas upbringing made it impossible for her to deny the teachings of her youth. Emile de Becque had lived with the nigger. He had nigger children. If she married him, they would be her stepdaughters. She suffered a revulsion which her lover could never understand."

Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted these themes into the musical South Pacific, the first musical to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Musical theatre like other art forms incorporates the ideas and beliefs of the period and it was the only one set in paradise during a war.

Multiculturalism and racial conflict have been approached many times in musical theatre, and musical plays have often acted as showcases for the racial views of the time at which they were written. The most accomplished and long-lasting are those that pursue and question those social issues and make them universal. Musicals up until the early 1920s reflected the clearly racist views of Caucasian society towards the Black community as being inferior on a number of levels. But with the opening of Shuffle Along in 1921 musical theatre evolved. It was completely created and performed by African-Americans and yet the houses were filled with people of all races. This was followed by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's Show Boat which explored the bigotry facing a Mulatto woman and her White husband. For the first time in musical theatre African-American characters were portrayed as real people with real issues rather than racial stereotypes.

The role of Joe in Show Boat was written for Paul Robeson, who was highly critical of the conditions suffered by Black and Asian people in America. Robeson, at the height of his popularity, became a national symbol and cultural leader in the war against fascism abroad and racism at home. But during the 1940s his black nationalist and anti-colonialist activities brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy as he was singled out as a major threat to American democracy. His passport was revoked and his career was stifled. Labour unions in Canada and the United States organized several concerts at the Peace Arch Crossing during the early 1950s at which Robeson performed as he was restricted from crossing into Canada. To this day his many accomplishments remain obscured by the propaganda of those who dogged him throughout his life.

The House of Un-American Activities Committee also affected Oscar Hammerstein, who is still regarded as the "best book writer" on Broadway. His philosophy spilled over into his work, informing every piece with the same questions of community and individual responsibility. He was a socially-conscious artist who believed in love but not that it would always end happily. During the Second World War he was a member of the Writers' War Board (WWB), formed in January 1942 to promote the government of the United States and its war causes. It was never censored or controlled by the government and the writers were free to produce almost anything they wanted.

Hammerstein wrote the following for the WWB: The Board has also committed to concern itself ... with the rising tide of prejudice against racial, religious, and other groups here at home. We believe that our military success must not be jeopardized by sentimental illusions about our enemies or bigoted notions about our Allies and fellow-citizens... The Writers' War Board believes that the sense of superiority harboured by large sections of the American people toward smaller groups on the basis of skin color, religion, or national extraction is closely linked with native American fascism."

In South Pacific de Becque criticizes Nellie, and American society and its prejudices with words that attack the hypocrisy of bigotry in a society that prides itself on freedom and equality. And after South Pacific Rodgers and Hammerstein went on to produce The King and I which examined racial issues and promoted racial harmony.

Why is the production of South Pacific here and now relevant in those sorts of terms? After all Canada is considered to be a multicultural society. In 1988 the Canadian Multiculturalism Act was passed strengthening the 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act, and the 1982 Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

But underlying this legislation is a deep history of racism and probably even genocide. The history of the First Nations peoples is impinged by the history of the white civilization upon them. The residential school system whereby every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years was forced to attend these schools run mainly by the churches with the intent of assimilating them into white society. The attack on their own culture was in itself devastating but the abuse, emotional, psychological and physical, that was done still reverberates today. The former Grand Chief of the First Nations, Matthew Coon, has called this genocide. And the president of the Union of BC Chiefs, Stewart Phillip, said recently: "All of the aboriginal regions are talking about the necessity for an ongoing campaign akin to the civil-rights movement in the U.S. back in the sixties and seventies." Then there were the institutionalized racist policies towards the Chinese migrants who originally came to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1800s. Once the railway was completed the government began to restrict any more immigration by passing laws levying a head tax on all Chinese immigrants. In 1903 the amount was raised to $500 - the equivalent of $30,000 today. Although there are now discussions about a redress no government has ever apologized for these injustices.

One further example of legal racism in Canada was the law enacted to force the removal of 22,000 Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. (Twenty-four internment camps were set up during the First World War to hold "alien immigrants", and in 1940 711 Jews, refugees from the Holocaust, were interned at the request of Winston Churchill because he thought there might be spies in the group.)

The Japanese Canadians were forced into internment camps and their property and possessions were confiscated and sold. After the war many of those from British Columbia were given the "choice" of deportation to Japan or to move to areas east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1988 the government formally apologized and offered a compensation package.

Personally I became involved with the fight against racism when I spent some time in apartheid South Africa. I met and worked with playwright Athol Fugard on his movie Boesman and Lena and experienced firsthand the devastating effects of institutionalized racism.

Racism is often excused as being part of human nature. It is not; it is a learned behaviour perpetuated by those who believe they have axes to grind. We have to be vigilant to stop it and by producing shows such as South Pacific we keep the arguments against bigotry alive and current.

About David Baughan
David is the production stage manager for Saint Joan and South Pacific and is designing a commemorative labyrinth for the Japanese Garden Society on Salt Spring Island to provide a space for reconciliation and healing.