Viola Davis is starring in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which comes out December 4 on Netflix. Ma Rainey was also the last film Chadwick Boseman made before his death in August. It’s about Georgian blues singer, Gertrude “Ma Rainey” Pridgett, known as the “mother of blues.” Ma Rainey was arrested in 1925 for participating in an orgy at her home with her female chorus singers which was the subject of her 1928 song Prove It On Me.
Viola Davis is profiled in December’s Instyle magazine where she discusses her role as Ma Rainey. She says the women in her family taught her body acceptance which enabled her to fully embody Ma Rainey’s character. She also talks about being authentic and how her life has changed for the better since meeting her husband. Below are a few excerpts:
On playing Ma Rainey
Everything attracted me to Ma Rainey, especially the idea that I didn’t feel I could play her. But she also really reminds me of the women I grew up with, all my aunties and relatives, the people who were bigger in stature whom I saw as so beautiful. They never questioned their worth. They had the full makeup, the earrings, the Afros, the wide-leg pants. In white American culture, the idea of classic beauty and confidence has always been associated with extreme thinness, but not in my culture. In the African-American culture, we are in command of our bodies. There’s an unapologetic way that we approach clothing. Even in the way Ma Rainey’s breasts were hanging out. At first I was like, “Should I pull my dress up and be more modest?” But I had to channel Ma, and she wouldn’t do that. Neither did my relatives.On being authentic
Um, I don’t see the command. [laughs] Other people see it much more than I do. I will say that I think my greatest source of strength is my authenticity. If I try to channel some other being, I get lost. That’s when my anxiety level goes up. Growing up in Central Falls [R.I.] as the only kinky-haired chocolate-brown girl, I always was trying to channel the girls who had the Farrah Fawcett look. It had disastrous results. So the only thing I can do is channel my authenticity. That is really a powerful tool because we spend our entire lives trying to get there. If you are projecting that, that’s what people are attracted to.On American trauma
I think that [lawyer and politician] Barbara Jordan said it best. She said, “What people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise.” And the bottom line is that it is a system that’s been built on the dehumanization of Black and brown people. Everything from Jim Crow to the Black codes to incarceration to the millions and millions of lives lost in the Middle Passage. The trauma of that still reverberates to this day, and not just with the Black and brown people, but with the so-called oppressors, who are the white people. We all have been affected by the trauma. It’s almost as if we have to relearn how to interact with each other. How to love each other. How to meet each other as equals. That’s very difficult because our caste system is about one-upmanship. An American ideology and ethos that is based on whoever is on top gets the American Dream and whoever is on the bottom, who fails the test, does not. We have to dismantle that. If we are indeed woke and do not want another 2020 or 1965 or 1877 or 1865 to happen again, then we need to slowly begin dismantling this system. And then look into reparations.
Before I get into the meat of this interview I must acknowledge how Viola SERVED in the photos. I cannot believe this beautiful dark-skinned melanated goddess is 55. She just exudes vitality. There were a lot of nuggets Viola dropped in this interview. I agree with the interviewer that Viola COMMANDS. A few years ago when she cut all of her hair, went natural and colored her hair cinnamon, Viola owned the red carpet. Viola says she doesn’t see herself as commanding but that her greatest source of strength is being authentic and perhaps that’s what people are drawn to.
I also appreciate Viola’s thoughts on how 400 years of racism and the dehumanization of black and brown people have traumatized us all, including white people. She said the American caste system is all about one-upmanship and the American ideology is based on whomever is on top gets the American Dream. That really hit home for me. In order for America to have a true equitable society we will need to deprogram 400 years of dehumanization disguised as “capitalism” that permeates all aspects of life.
My favorite era of history is the roaring 20s and I look forward to Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. I don’t know much about Ma Rainey but I am sure Viola put on a heck of a performance. I love how Viola always pushes the envelope when it pertains to Black women’s narratives. Ma Rainey will also give us an opportunity to see Chadwick Boseman’s final curtain call. Perhaps then we will finally be able to let Chadwick go and let his legacy shine.
photos credit: Instyle via Instagram and David Lee for Netflix via Netflix press
Yes, reparations are probably a needed step in moving forward to a more just society. A lot of White Americans are horrified by the idea of paying out reparations and don’t acknowledge there is plenty of precedent for financial reparations for atrocities committed the world over.
I agree reparations are needed. But part of the problem is that they are always talked about in general terms.
That scares the heck out of people and makes it very hard to debate.
I would love for the conversati9n to become more specific. What reparations? Are we talking cash? Business grants? Free college education? Something else?
What kind of sums are we talking about?
If it’s not cash, for how long?
Once you get into specifics, it makes it easier for people to accept, plan, and make it happen.
Don’t get me wrong, there is precedent, and ample reason, but let’s start to make it specific.
Agreed 100%. Also, who qualifies to receive or pay reparations? If you’re 25% Black do you pay or receive? 50%? What about Native Americans; surely if Black Americans deserve reparations so do NA’s.
Until these questions are answered I don’t take any talk of reparations seriously, and frankly answering these questions is equally stratifying as any other form of capitalism. I don’t want to sow division between those who deserve reparations, nor would I want to erase anyone’s identity by claiming they aren’t X enough.
@Lwt00, native Americans have received a form of reparations in a college grant that pays up $40k for the bachelor’s degree.
@Lwt00
whether one is 25%, 30% 99% black etc.. is a form of blood quantum / classifications used by the establishment to try and renege on the reparation, treaty rights etc of Native Americans. this reeks of mulatto, octaroon, quadroon etc kind of classification which was used to divide.. which is reprehensible in it”s practice.. so I suggest you do away with that thought.
Cultural anthropologist here. The whole reparations thing is bound to fail.
So many thoughts but I’ll limit it. For reparations you’d have to determine what amount of slave-holding period of African ancestry a person had, meaning you’d need to confirm African slave ancestry in the United States before the Emancipation Proclamation. Those records largely don’t exist. Will we give reparations to an individual based on African ancestry so that someone who is 1/4 African and 3/4 Other but raised in an African-American society receives 1/4 of the full amount? At what percentage ancestry do we make no further claims of African ancestry? Is the American public ready to use genetic testing in this way?
We’d have to separate biological ancestry from social identification. Are we ready for that? It happens all the time with Native American tribal enrollment where similar complications occur.
The longer we wait, the bigger a mess.
I think it is pretty simple. Records don’t go back until slavery days, but they certainly go back to WW1/WW2 when slavery/disenfranchisement of Black people and minorities was still happening (it’s not ancient history).
From there, if your family has made it to a certain income bracket, maybe you get less reparations, but still aid in some form. If your family is still struggling, you are able to apply for more aid, like a basic guaranteed income and housing.
People want to go WAYYYY back to when it’s complicated, but I think it’s pretty easy to see in the present day who needs this and who doesn’t.
You’ll find a lot of rednecks trying to claim that their great-grandmother was Native or Black or Hispanic. No dice. Bootstraps and what not. /s but also don’t want to see any neo-Nazis benefiting from the system they perpetuated.
@Tom – have you even looked into the ADOS reparations movement? You being a “cultural anthropologist” means nothing if you aren’t acquainted with the specifics of this particular topic. I don’t know why you even tried to throw that out there like it gives your opinion added weight.
I studied anthropology and consequently, I know that the field is riddled with ideas and opinions on various topics that turned out to be inaccurate or flat out wrong because the context/culture/sex of the researchers kept them from accurately seeing and interpreting what was before them.
@Yup Exactly. All of this. He said it with his whole chest, too, and meanwhile the field was literally created as a tool to aid colonization.
*eyeroll* – They could also follow the Native Americans – have at least one parent or grand parent descended from enslaved people of African descent born in the United States
@ tom … There are the Gulla Geechee people who can trace their ancestry . there are people alive today who know which member of their family were enslaved people there are people alive today who felt the sting of not being equal in the United states( and that sting was generational). We can look at Polls and see who are the descendants of American Chattel Slavery etc.. and then go from there.
The 1/4 accounting of who is black – reeks of Blood quantum methods used to determine who wasn’t native enough by the establishment.. so they could get out of treaty obligations ( someone who is not native telling someone who is native that they aren’t native enough ??? THAT’s GROSS
the ones who should be determining who gets compensated are the people who were affected ,,.. not scholars, not people who did not feel the sting.
You need to understand something, reparations go beyond slavery; it includes jim crow, black codes, the war on drugs, the war on poverty; redlining; the “black tax”; medical experimentation; etc., etc. Capitalism has to have a bottom caste, which they have made Native Black Americans to be so that every other group benefits off of. In other words, in each generation there has been a re-enslavement in order to keep this bottom caste in tact. Everything i have stated can be found in written articles by reputable news magazines.
The 14th amendment was meant for the descendants of those Native Black Americans enslaved in the US; as well as, the original statue of liberty was meant for us as well before the meaning was changed to include immigrants.
The 1965 immigration act was created to neutralize the 1964 civil rights bill. There is a video of President Lyndon Johnson at Howard University who admitted that Affirmative Action law was created to “repair” the human rights, civil rights, etc. done to our ancestors. The only groups who actually benefitted was everybody else except white men & many Native Black Americans. The boomers benefited, but then so did most boomers of all ethnic groups benefited from the civil rights movement. My family had a house down in NC set up as a mini museum, which show cased our family genealogy, lineage, slavery, & all.
Western nation systems are coming to an end. Capitalism as we know it is ending, as it should be. The US is taped out. No more growth, unless there is a re-think, & re-design of society (i.e. co-operatives perhaps?).
Books to read: When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson; Working Toward Whiteness-How America’s Immigrants Became White by David R. Roediger; Immigration and The Remaking of Black America by Tod G. Hamilton; How The Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev; Slavery by Another Name-The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon; The Half Has Never Been Told-Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist; The Color of Law by Richard Rothenstein & The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran
The American Caste System – wow. Yes, is true. What has taken centuries to build and maintain will take time to chip away at and dismantle. But I believe we at least have started talking about it and that’s a GIANT leap. But how can we move forward when many won’t even wear a mask during a pandemic, let alone have the American public acknowledge an American Caste system. People have bought into the American Dream and they will shout: how can we have a caste system when our country is lauded for THE Dream?
I am optimistic, but I also know the demon we have to deal with.
Good question. I think education is the key. In recent years, especially, social media seems to have empowered people to embrace sheer ignorance as somehow a valid viewpoint. I know and love so many amazing teachers, I think they will be our way forward. Along with Black women activists and lawmakers like Stacey Abrams and LaTosha Brown. But it will take time, which is disheartening and discouraging to think about. The fight just never ends.
I also can’t believe Viola is 55! She looks amazing. The film sounds really good, too.
Political reform, too. This is where supporting Stacy Abrams’ work in Georgia can make a real difference. I don’t see any way to make real change to our electoral system without flipping the senate. The end of the electoral college ‘winner take all’, time and contribution limits to campaign reform, the end of “corporations are people too” . Political and educational reform. This is where we start, with a whole lot of truth telling.
I think the EC isn’t going anywhere Senate flip or not. People need to go for the statehouses. Too few states award their EC votes proportionally. This is how it should be done IMO.
I recently finished HTGAWM on Netflix and I just love this woman. She can act. She has such presence. She is just beautiful. If Ma Rainey’s is on Netflix in France, I’m watching it <3
And I still think we need three presidents lol. I want Republicans to take care of infrastructure and military. The left can focus on civil issues, education, etc. And the third president, and his team, can focus on our planet, the environment and compliance. Each president has their own mini congress providing voting stability and checks and balances. Basically everything continues to follow similar guidelines, rules, norms, customs, etc. We’re simply hobbling primary arguments and bipartisan stalemate by assigning each group to what’s most important to them. The bottom line is that it’s all important and the American people shouldn’t have issues rammed down throats forcing us to decide some arbitrary list of what’s most crucial. Yeah I know. I’m dreaming.
Interesting. The problem is that our military budget is absolutely ridiculous, though, and Republicans shouldn’t be in charge of that on their own. They’ve repeatedly proven they (and their judgment) can’t be trusted.
Conversations about reparations are happening more frequently and are breaking down what the potential issues are. Trillions of dollars in wealth were created during chattel slavery. TRILLIONS. Including an abundance of the same generational wealth many white Americans enjoy today. And ADOS (African Descendants of Slavery) were largely excluded from that wealth that their labor and lives generated. Reparations are needed.
Anyone saying it’s impossible is just being lazy. Anything we commit to figuring out is f*cking possible. We are all just numb to how the American Caste system continues to harm Black folks. Now it’s time to change that.
In addition to some financial sum, Reparations should include free education, low interest rate home loans, free medical care, training on starting a business and access to business loans and also healing and therapy with culturally competent therapists. And it should last the same number of generations that American chattel slavery did.
Many people conveniently forget that white folks in America have been granted all kinds of handouts in the last several hundred years. It’s long past time the ADOS folks in the US receive restorative repair.
YES!!! I agree!!!
It has always galled me that slave owners were compensated and received reparations after the Civil War for their “lost property.”
Yes! And if we’re talking disenfranchisement and deliberate destruction of Black people’s hard-earned progress in the face of the most extreme imposed limitations, look at Black Wall Street, look at Oklahoma, look at Chicago’s housing discrimination, red lining, all of it. The facts are there. And even with the 2008 recession, I heard reports that Wells Fargo and other predatory banks bilked the Black community in Chicago alone out of *billions* of dollars in a matter of a few years–and this is recent history, the last 6-8 years.
It will be good for African Americans to finally receive reparations for the last 400 years. If that happens, I sincerely hope that reparations for the First Nations tribes will be brought up for consideration as well. It has to be remembered that not only did European people steal their land away, they sentenced them to lives on reservations where jobs, water, and food are scarce. The govt has never really honored any treaty it made with the tribes and sacred land is still being exploited.
A black voice can probably speak to this better. But I do want to offer that in my industry, we are seeing a version of reparations wherein black and brown people are given preferential hiring over white people. Like affirmitive action I guess. I had a couple discussions with people in hiring positions where they were only interviewing POC. So I hope this helps long-term to create more opportunities
Yes, but there are constant attacks and reversals to affirmative action, as if leveling a completely imbalanced playing field–always geared toward white people–is somehow wrong. California even did away with it in their educational admissions system, and just last week voted against reinstating it. There is this erroneous idea that it creates an advantage when in fact it is simply an attempt to (somewhat) equalize the playing field. Any little achievement by Black folks and white people lose their minds. Look at Reconstruction, Jim Crow, all of it. Right now, higher ed has positions hiring for BIPOC focus but if you don’t specifically bring in BIPOC candidates, then what you get–which we already have–is top academic positions (and job security) going to white people who study Black people and Black subjects. Blackness always seems to be more palatable to the status quo if it’s coming through the lens of a white person.
It’s like the Rooney Rule in football years ago. People squawked over the new requirement to interview at least one ( ooooh scary) minority for a coaching job. Since then there’ve bern dozens hired and several have won one or more (like Mike Tomlin) Super Bowls. Can’t win without being able to get your foot in the door.
The single biggest thing you could do to help resolve the race issue in America is address the economic disparity. When I was involved in union and civil justice organization in my twenties, one of the biggest things they hammered into us is that economic justice is racial justice in America. It’s the weapon by which racial divides are created and maintained in this country, and it’s fundamentally how white supremacy is maintained even at the cost of a healthier and better America. I mean, look around us right now at what’s going down. Do we really want to kid ourselves that Donald Trump and the movement he brought wasn’t hugely a backlash to the audacity of a black man being president for eight years? These people would rather let us burn than rebuild.
While we were watching the election being called this weekend, my mother made the observation that while we’ve had a black male president and now a black/Asian female vice president, both of them attained their black heritage from later immigrants than black slave descendants. Her point wasn’t that this made their blackness lesser or protected them from racism but that it spoke to the legacy of economic deprivation of black Americans who were descended from freed slaves. The economic bludgeon has been so effective that these people, even in a country they’ve spent hundreds of years help building, are still denied access to the higher levels of economy and policy-making that would help improve their position in society. The sign then that the rift is healing is perhaps not when somebody like Barack Obama is president but when somebody like Stacey Abrams can make their way to the highest position of power in a country.
So yes, reparations. Because you can’t start healing a wound until you recognize that it exists. This country can never fully repay the travesty of what was done to the African peoples who were trafficked here or the indigenous cultures who have spent the last few hundred years living in an apocalyptic ruin of their societies, but we can start taking steps forward now and with time approach something closer to equality.
@ vernica good points,. but Kamala’s father also has the legacy of having enslaved people as a descendant.
If there are black people in the western hemisphere.. that have generations behind them
they are ADOS.. the largest population of black people in the western hemisphere outside of Africa is in Brazil. .. Kamala is a product of Imperialism , British Colonial tyranny and Slavery… Her story is just different .
That is a very good point, and to clarify, my intent was not to downplay imperialism elsewhere in the world, merely focus on the specific way white supremacist and economic suppression have been tied together to keep American ethnic groups down. I don’t think Kamala’s win should be considered less meaningful for it, nor did my mother, but I understand what she was trying to say about her evolving views on social programs and how they are explicitly tied to improving life for people who have been purposefully kept out of the socioeconomic power structure in America.
It’s something that I think America education on historical slavery and post-Civil War race relations really falls short on – and with intention, since racism breeds in ignorance as much as it does hate – when it comes to illuminating how white supremacy is built into the economic, legal, and justice systems of this country. America creates the propaganda of a country of profound economic and global political success based on a people who “pulled themselves up by their boostraps,” while leaving out the part where the boot isn’t so much being pulled up but lifted by the people it’s stepping on.
@ Veronica I hear you on that one.. I always here they came here for a better life and worked hard.. but there’s no mention of the people who were ground into the dust for these” hard working pull myself out… to have a better life” Kind of people. I see this in my own country where they came from Eastern Europe to escape and have a better life and why cant the natives do that … but then you look deeper and realise the Indigenous Canadians weren’t permitted to access hat was being offered to would be homesteaders from Europe. They too wanted to farm and were blocked at every angle. Black Canadians were also cut out of it. Canada also has its own slavery story.. I hear you on that loud and clear!
@Veronica S. Agree with you on this and have been thinking about that, too. I also think that those on the cusp of American-ness (if that makes sense), someone with the immigrant, multiracial, and biracial aspects all coalesce into a candidate that is more palatable to the broader voting public, white people in particular. Both Obama and Harris come by their Blackness from an international parent, not an African-American parent. White folks are scared of Black American people with the legacy of slavery in positions of power. Not in any way to downplay the incredible achievement of Obama and Harris, but I agree that we’ll know things have really started to shift when someone like Stacey Abrams is elected in a top governing position.
Yes to dismantling and reparations. however this cannot happen unless there is truth and reconciliation. Canada and South Africa have had their truth and reconciliation commissions, and it’s time the US did too. However it would mean admitting to its racist past behaviours which we know is hard for many, I would imagine for at least 73 million. But this is important and necessary as it is the first step in repairing any broken relationship.
I would like to see a South African style truth and reconciliations commission in the US. I don’t think we can discuss the logistics of reparations until we as a society in the US reckon with our own past. Most of us were taught an “Americans are the bestest people in the world” history growing up at school, and there is a lot of push-back against discussing what truly happened. I never learned about the Trail of Tears, and I didn’t learn about Japanese internment until 12th grade (I went to all-white schools in suburban Denver-black woman here). Most white people don’t know about the GI Bill and the FHA administration, and how those 2 programs helped millions of Americans in the 1940s-60s attend college and get home loans. Most white people also don’t realize that black people were excluded (by mandate with FHA home loans). Most white people don’t know about redlining, or “mandatory sentencing” rules that disproportiately affected black people.
Right now, reparations are a nonstarter because white people (still the majority of people in the US but not for long) have no idea how much nonwhites were impeded from getting the benefits they had access to. Black people couldn’t get business loans. And when black people did create thriving communities, those communities were subject to pogroms, not “race riots.” Tulsa, Rosewood, Wilmington, vibrant black communities razed to the ground by white people. Not “race riots”. There’s a huge pushback in even talking about these things because it makes white people feel bad. But without education, the reparations movement reads as “lazy black people want to take money from industrious white people.” One of the most awkward experiences I ever had was teaching the book “Race Matters” by Cornell West at the University of Iowa in my English class full of white farm kids. They just completely shut down. I read so many papers with the thesis “if we stop talking about race then the problems will go away.”
I really don’t know how we can, as a society, get the conversation started. My guess is that it’s going to require leadership from a team of white, black, east asian, south asian, and latinx public figures. Its going to be difficult and painful, and there will be a lot of resistance and hostility. But it’s important, necessary work.
Absolutely agree 100% @lanne Thank you for this.
Very important and necessary. And this conversation is either going to come from the ground up, as a movement, or from the top down, by a visionary.
black voices should be listened to most of all in this .. it doesn’t matter if they are full, 1/2/ 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 they are the voices that should be heard. any non black person supposing and wondering and determining who is ” black” enough should be quiet and sit down and listen.
One group of people within the USA , African Americans who are Descendants of America Chattel Slavery, this is quite a specific group of people, then it should branch out from there… it could be in the form of education , money as well as changing the incorrect narratives taught in school. So in terms of the USA making a valid reparations.. they need to look at their descendants of chattel slavery first and foremost and this is your entire of born and raised black Americans that have generations within the country. Then They will have to look at their impact on a world wide scale. For starters they can put some form of injunctions to save the lands that the Gulla Geeche people earned via sharecropping… maybe stop all the rich folks forcing them out and turning this land into golf courses. Then look at all the descendants who suffered from lynching , senseless murder etc.. We know specifically some of the families who benefited off the blood, sweat and lives of these people. the sheer amount of wealth amassed.. For this to go un-addressed for so long just speaks of how Black and brown people’s humanity have been disregarded and are still not being considered or held to the same standard as others. It is time to flip this caste system on its head
( speaking as a black woman who is a descendant of enslaved people of the America and the Caribbean)
I absolutely support reparations and think they can come in many forms. First we need a way to allow people to declare their land the property of the local indigenous group in their area — let people rematriate land back to indigenous folks, show them how that can be done, make it easy to do. That’s a form of voluntary reparations. Then the government should also rematriate lots of publicly owned land back to indigenous groups, too. Then we need to abolish the prison system as it exists and set up loads of programs to help formerly incarcerated individuals find housing and work, many of whom are African American. Then we need to transition from having police departments to having community monitoring and service networks, that put most of their funds behind mental health and addiction treatment and streets-to-jobs education and support programs. Then we need to at least triple the amount of low-cost housing people can apply for in every midsize to large population area. Then we need to institute free public education from Pre-K through college. Then we need to institute free health care for all. Then we need to give straight-up cash gifts to Black and Indigenous Americans, and cancel their debt. In my view, what go by the name “reparations” would actually be constituted by reform in many areas of American society, much of which would benefit everyone, and some of which would specifically benefit Indigenous and Black people.
I think reparations are due, bit whites will never agree to them. They like to consider themselves “woke” but will stop short of putting their money where their mouth is.
It will probably have to wait until whites are no longer a majority in this country (2050, at least?). A lot of the increase in minority population is hispanic, which is why whites LOVE it when minority groups turn on each other rather than focusing on the real problem (white people). If all minority races come together, their impact would be stronger.
In the meantime, minorities need to support each other economically. Only buy clothes from a minority-owned shop. Only go to a minority-owned auto mechanic. Only use minority carpenters, accountants, dentists, etc. If you’re fortunate enough to own a business, only hire minority employees. This is what white people have always done, and as the percentage of “minority” people increase, their economic decisions, while individually small, will add up collectively. Reparations are great, but I say don’t wait for them, let everyone’s money start talking now.
@Mrs.Krabapple I really like your idea of patronizing minority-owned businesses, #BLM has emphasized that since the summer and you make very good points about why it is a necessary and useful strategy.