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\nAustralia\u2019s Immigration Minister has vowed<\/a> to ship off asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, to Malaysia. This was meant to be Australia\u2019s \u201csolution\u201d to a \u201ccrisis\u201d of asylum seekers. Simple detention simply wasn\u2019t enough<\/a>. The State announced its intention late this week<\/a>, and now seems somewhat surprised<\/a> at the outcry<\/a>. The government never thought that the fate of children of color, call them Black children, could matter quite so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This aspirational project of turning children of color, Black children, into distant and dimly remembered specters comes at a poignantly timely moment.<\/p>\n
Today, June 5, 2011, is the last day of \u201cGlenn Ligon: America<\/a>\u201d, a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Ligon is famous for works that turn words into paintings, stencils that conjure histories of slavery, of racism, of homophobia, of violence. Some of these pieces have been described as \u201cstenciled sentences pulled from different sources<\/a>.\u201d The sentences aren\u2019t pulled nor are they transcribed.<\/p>\n They are, instead, translations, as they are invocations.<\/p>\n Consider, for example, \u201cUntitled (I’m Turning Into a Specter before Your Very Eyes and I’m Going to Haunt You)<\/a>\u201d. This has been described<\/a> as having been pulled from a play by Jean Genet, The Blacks: A Clown Show<\/em>.<\/p>\n But the line in Genet\u2019s play is actually, \u201cYou\u2019re becoming a specter before their very eyes and you\u2019re going to haunt them<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n And it has a particular New York history.<\/p>\n On May 4th<\/sup>, 1961, almost fifty years ago to the day, Jean Genet\u2019s The Blacks: A Clown Show<\/em> opened in New York, at the St. Marks Playhouse, and it was immediately hailed as a transformative event<\/a>. When it opened, the play, a meditation on Blackness, Black rage and Black liberation, was described as \u201cbrilliantly sardonic<\/a>\u201d, \u201ca lyrical tone poem<\/a>\u201d, a play of \u201cfuries<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n The original cast included<\/a> Roscoe Lee Browne, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Jr., Ethel Ayler, Cicely Tyson, Godfrey Cambridge, Maya Angelou, and Charles Gordone. The Blacks<\/em> was the longest running Off-Broadway non-musical of the entire 1960s.<\/p>\n In an epigraph to the play, Genet claimed \u201cOne evening an actor asked me to write a play for an all-black cast. But what exactly is a black? First of all, what\u2019s his color?\u201d<\/p>\n Fifty years later, we watch the Australian government plan to ship unaccompanied Black children to Malaysia, and we ask, \u201cBut what exactly is a Black child? First of all, how old is she?\u201d<\/p>\n The children Australia plans to send to Malaysia are children seeking asylum. Not failed asylum seekers, but rather children in the process of seeking asylum. Australia\u2019s Minister of Immigration believes that turning children into specters will deter \u201cpeople smugglers<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Today it was announced that the \u201cdeal\u201d is being altered. Girl refugees might not be sent to Malaysia<\/a>. The girls \u201cspared\u201d from deportation will still be unaccompanied and still be behind bars. They will not thank the State for this \u201cgift<\/a>\u201d, no more than the boys will. These children designated as specters-to-come will haunt the State for decades. Fifty years ago, the specters will haunt them. Today, the specters will haunt you. Fifty years from now \u2026 the specters will haunt \u2026 us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n