Ebony and Ivory (Eshelman)

As a result of the self-isolation, I started making films. I am a playwright and professor, so my efforts were learning exercises for me so that I would be better able to help my student film-makers in the future. My movies, shared over social media, show me at the piano and singing; or using puppets, toys, and pets to tell stories. The films are, for the most part, short and silly.

I stopped making these videos when George Floyd was murdered. My short and silly movies were no longer appropriate. Well . . . except for one.

Several weeks before Floyd’s death, my brother Christian and I decided to sing a duet, “Ebony and Ivory.” You see, my brother was adopted before I was born and is Black. Growing up alongside him was a daily lesson in race in America. In the same way that I knew my brother before I could talk, I understood white privilege before I could put it into words. I knew that, though we lived in the same house, my life was undeniably easier. I also knew that, when it came to race, his voice---and not mine---was often less likely to be listened to, yet more needed. My past then has taught me that my place in racial matters is to watch my place and to quiet down. That is why I stopped posting movies; and that is why I was unsure what to post instead.

We perform “Ebony and Ivory” with him as Stevie Wonder and me as Paul McCartney. As we sing, old pictures of us flash across the screen: on bikes, in Halloween costumes, at the playground, at the beach. 

Even before the George Floyd protests, Christian and I felt that this song struck a false chord with its optimism about the ease of racial togetherness. I think that the song is trite, pleasing the white audience yet costing them little, while asking that Black people grit their teeth and go along with an illusion. In other words, the song is like America. So Christian and I complicated it. At first, the film shows pictures of just the two of us; but, as it goes on, it features more and more pictures of Christian as the lone black face in a sea of white. The viewer may think at first that the film is extolling black and white unity, but then the white just keeps gaining. “So much ivory,” Christian interrupts. Yet the photos keep coming---fifth grade, family get-togethers, the high school choir, all with him as the only Black person. Ivory, it appears, has strict requirements for its “perfect harmony”: just like on a piano keyboard, Ivory likes Ebony surrounded, outnumbered, and played less. In the video, Christian and I stop singing. He looks mad. Characteristically, I don’t know what to say. 

Of course, the film’s tensions were scripted. Its contents were not a revelation to us. And, as I remember it, I had a good childhood. And, from what Christian has said, so did he. But that is not the point. The point is how different one life experience can be from another, even lived side by side. The point is how desperate white people are to feel good, so much so that they will turn any narrative into a means to comfort themselves. The point is how far we as a society have to go before we have achieved the perfect harmony that white people so eagerly and frequently claim.

David J. Eshelman is Professor of Communication at Arkansas Tech University, where he runs the theatre program (link: www.atu.edu/cj/theatre.php). He is also founder and artistic director of the Arkansas Radio Theatre (link: blogs.atu.edu/radiotheatre).