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FREEDOMWAYS     FOURTH QUARTER 1971

African liberal, and a white American journalist, became radicals. All these men are led to a new understanding by having to fight against intolerable circumstances in their lives.

Criticism has been leveled at Lorraine Hansberry for having written a play about a white, middle-class Jewish man, on the grounds that this subject represents a denial of interest in racial themes. But if we look below the surface of both plays we see that, far from denying an interest in the themes of A Raisin in the Sun, the dramatist has expanded them, and Sidney Brustein is a piece with her other work in this respect as well. To her mind, as different as the nature of black and white life is in America, it appeared to be the same kinds of social and economic forces that kept Walter Lee Younger in degrading poverty and that caused Sidney Brustein's life to collapse around him. It was Power and Profit that kept Walter down, just as Power and Profit ultimately are responsible for Gloria's death. The difference between Walter Lee and Sidney is not that they were living in different worlds, but that Sidney might have escaped some of his pain (if he had lobotomized himself, accepted conventional values and ignored social evils), whereas Walter, being black and poor, had no escape. They are the same problem, seen from different perspectives. 

In all of Lorraine Hansberry's work we find a similar thrust toward discovering the truths that can change society: we find the probing of a situation to see what moral problem lies at its center; the concern for how historical and social circumstances shape men's lives; and the examination of what forces can make men change. Being black, aware, and thoughtful, Lorraine Hansberry saw very deeply, and from a radical perspective, into the American society of which Sidney Brustein's world is a part. Her work can serve as an example for others who are striving, through art, to understand and to change this country.

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