In the Fall of 2004, I was teaching a course at Rutgers University in Newark called “From Page to Stage” where the idea — as I was teaching the course — was to take original scripts written in class and present them in live performance to learn how the process of active creation worked.

The final project was a series of group presentations where students shared their lives as they were living it — and the alarming result of one racially diverse group was: “Newark in Black and Blue.”  That group’s bruising presentation was tough and blunt and dramatic and I decided we had to record that performance in audio so we could preserve the truth of the moment.

Little did I know that what we preserved a decade ago was so much more than just a moment — we recorded a raw pendulum of fiery, Racial, anger that has yet to find its final momentum, or internal, progressive, decay.

Today, you can better understand Ferguson, Missouri and other Racial conditionings, by listening to the echo of my Rutgers-Newark students from December 9, 2004.

Here is the preserved audio performance.  I warn you, this recording is blunt and hard and vicious — and words like “High Yellow Bitch” and “Nigger” and “Cracker” and “‘Rican” and “Fuck” and “Uncle Tom” and “Spic” and others, are all a colloquial part of the dialogue — so don’t listen at work, and don’t listen if you can’t take the hard truth in your ear.

Oh, how far we have not yet come as a nation coming apart together.

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