Our Approach
The MCRC Project gives special attention to the stories of families, friendships and of ancestors-descendants broken apart into unequally valued categories. The stories tell of laws that restricted who could claim membership in the White category, that relieved fathers of their responsibility to be part of their children’s lives, and that tied the fate of babies to their mother’s, grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s race. MCRC tells stories about people who, to live as White or be perceived as “like White”, left behind family, communities and cultures. The leaving behind ranges from the most sorrowful separation to the most callous abandonment.
The MCRC Project began with the Black and White categories because it is the most dominant of the racial divides. Currently, MCRC is engaged in telling stories of how people not deemed Black or White were forced to negotiate a space between Black and White while lured toward the opportunities bestowed on the White label.
MCRC’s unique contribution to the national conversation on race is this focus on breaking apart—how it was done—and its use of the arts, including dance, music, theater, poetry and visual arts, to reenact stories that connect us with the past so that we might understand the present. The MCRC Project gives us a way to communicate the unimaginable amount of work it took to divide us and the resulting emotional toll. For example, MCRC personifies Race and the White category so we can hear from the “source” how the dividing took place.
In “That Time I Talked to Race”, we meet Race personified. We learn from Race how people were broken into racial categories and the effects felt today.
This excerpt from the film “I am White Like You, Right Mom?”, we meet the White Category personified discussing the divide he put in place that allows us to perceive a mother and daughter as different races.
What We Do
Through artistic collaborations, workshops, discussions, films and virtual exhibitions, we explore the roots of our unprocessed emotions surrounding race, which have entangled us for over 400 years, and still weigh us down.
