OMA tackles personal biases through interactive play

A week after celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) hosted Defamation, an interactive courtroom drama that has been performed over 300 times in schools and theaters across the U.S. The performance took place in the Levering Arellano Theater on Thursday, Oct. 12.

As a theatrical performance with professional actors, Defamation differs from OMA’s typical diversity education programming, which often features guest speakers.

Assistant Director for Diversity Education Carla Hopkins said that she brought the play to Homewood in order to offer students a more interactive experience.

She explained that Defamation grapples with various social issues and intersects race, class, gender and religion.

“I thought it would be a different way of having the conversation,” Carla Hopkins said. “We’re watching a drama unfold that depicts what many people go through in terms of their perceptions and biases.”

Defamation, which is produced by Canamac Productions and has drawn over 60,000 viewers nationwide, is set in Chicago. In the play, Regina Wade, an African-American woman from a working class neighborhood, sues her former employer for defamation after he accuses her of stealing his watch. The employer is a wealthy Jewish real estate developer named Arthur Golden.

The audience members, who were mostly students, acted as jurors and voted in full view of the actors and one another. Wade won the lawsuit by an overwhelming majority.

The jury’s verdict was followed by a discussion session, in which audience members shared how their past experiences and biases factored into their decisions.

One student noted that some audience members were indecisive and stood up slowly to vote after looking around at other jurors. Another student added that some participants might have been too self-conscious to vote according to their real opinions.

However, playwright Todd Logan said that this was intentional and that he wanted to make self-consciousness  part of the experience.

Carla Hopkins commented on what DEFAMATION demanded from students who may be more reserved about sharing their opinions on controversial issues.

“We talk about diversity and inclusion, but sometimes we don’t talk about what keeps us from having a conversation,” she said. “Sometimes what keeps us from having a conversation is that we fear being judged for having an opinion.”

She said that the interactive nature of the event may have been a surprise to students.

“I believe people just thought we were just going to vote,” she said. “The conversation that ensued was thought provoking and it really made me happy that our student population are such great critical thinkers... they were bringing up things I don’t think even the actors thought about.”

Sophomore Divya Baron, who attended the event, said that as an initiative by OMA, it was unprecedented.

“There hasn’t been anything like this,” she said. “I think it put the idea of social justice in a very pragmatic light.”

She reflected on what factors led to the jury’s decision. For example, she described Hopkins as a liberal institution that tends to focus on issues of social justice. Baron also felt it was possible that peer pressure played a part.

While noting that people of color might have found it easier to empathize with Wade due to shared experiences of racial and ethnic discrimination, Baron emphasized that racial identity was not the sole determinant of jurors’ decisions.

“You can’t just define someone by their race and say they’re going to vote a certain way because they can identify with the ethnicity of the person,” Baron said. “That’s a discredit to the people who are voting, boiling it down to the color of your skin or how you identify.”

Sophomore Sean Stielow was drawn to the event’s theatrical nature and its pertinence to today’s politics. He was not surprised by the jury’s decision.

“The audience that came out feel a certain way already,” Stielow said. “I’m glad certain people [voted for Golden] because it shows Hopkins isn’t completely skewed one way.”

He also felt that, as a play, the event allowed people to voice opinions without getting confrontational.

“It was nice to see it not on a debate level but how it played out into a form of entertainment, so people weren’t being as combative as far as talking about it.” he said.

Carla Hopkins was pleased with the turnout and felt that the audience was very diverse. However, she feels the event would have benefited with administrators, faculty and staff in the audience.

“That would make for a different type of discussion, a richer discussion if we had different generations,” she said.

Increasing engagement from faculty and staff with OMA events is one of Carla Hopkins’ broader goals. She also wants to introduce more educational events to get students more involved.

She said that positive student feedback she received following DEFAMATION has encouraged her to pursue creating similar programs.

“They want more of that type of thing. They’ve put me to work,” she said. “I’ve now got to put my head around how do I create more of that.”

One method she is considering involves partnering with professors and having them incorporate OMA events in their classes. However, she added that she also enjoyed observing what sorts of students came on their own accord.

“This is our first time out with a program like that and I wanted to see what kinds of students would be interested in showing up,” she said.

Other diversity education initiatives OMA may hold include a two-hour poverty simulation in which participants are assigned an identity, attributed a certain amount of money and given a real-life scenario.

Carla Hopkins wants to encourage greater student participation in the community and help them apply diversity education to everyday life.

“Where we have turned the page is we are not so much wanting to pump out programs, but we’re wanting to provide experiences,” she said. “An experience is something that is longer lasting, sustainable.”

Baron felt the event made racism and discrimination more visible to students.

“We live in a bubble where Johns Hopkins students are less likely to be facing the kind of difficulties that other people of color outside of this very liberal and elite institution,” she said. “It made it quite relatable to people and reminded them there is racism and it does exist in every aspect of your life.”