The Color Purple

I just saw the musical The Color Purple last weekend. It had wonderful music and an even better story. The great thing about this story (originally written as a book by Alice Walker in 1982, adapted to film in 1985, and now a musical) is how it approaches race in its storytelling and I think there’s a lesson about how disability is currently treated in society today.

The Color Purple is a powerful story because of the sweeping picture it paints of a human life in which love and struggle are recurring themes. Anyone can relate to these themes. That’s what all our lives are about. What is not emphasized but is overwhelmingly present are issues of race and sexuality. These are treated as secondary issues in the story and this is what makes it such an important work.

Race and sexuality should always be considered as secondary to humanity, as should disability. In the Color Purple, the issues of racial segregation and discrimination (something that I can’t really relate too from personal experience) were strikingly subtle. However, by marginalizing those issues, the story allowed me to become closer to the characters by relating to their purely human characteristics: fear, love, joy, and pride.

Yet at the same time, race is respected and not ignored. A somewhat secondary character, Sophia, confronts racial issues directly when she is poorly judged and mistreated because of her race. But because this fate does not befall the main character, we are somewhat emotionally shielded from the weight of her situation.

The Color Purple beautifully made me understand through is delicate subtlety how humanity is so much more important than race. I got to sit through a whole performance where I thought of the characters as complex beautiful people who I connected with. Sure they were all black, but I didn’t see it. The relationship I was able to form with the characters, allowed me to completely break through social baggage of race, even if only for a few hours.

The disability movement could use a Color Purple. It’s time to demonstrate a new subtle kind of acceptance for peoples with disabilities.