Critique+of+the+Description+of+the+Neighborhood

It is clear that before Russ and Bev sold their house that the neighborhood was an affluent, white community, but what happened after they moved out? It is suggested in the second scene that Karl was right all along – the neighborhood became less affluent and more mixed.This provides credibility to Karl’s fears in the first act, however the question still remains: to what extent was Karl right? The audience never gets a clear idea of what the neighborhood’s racial and socio-economic makeup is in the second act. We know that Steve and Lindsey want to build a huge, upper-class house on the property and that this project has troubled the community who fear gentrification. The play could have used this to prompt (and potentially answer) stimulating questions to the audience such as: If Karl was right, does that partially justify his views?

Moreover, are the concerns of the black couple similar to that of Karl in the first act (trying to keep out certain racial/socio-economic groups from the community)? Would the couple have protested the building of a larger house if it had been a black couple who was moving in? There is also the issue of timeframe. The black couple says that they are trying to protect the history of the community, however the long-term history of the neighborhood was a community of segregation. So claims to keep the “history” of the community only dates a few decades. Does this delegitimize the argument against building a bigger house? Where does one draw which “history” they are trying to protect? These are just a few questions that I believe the play could have raised but they instead solely focused on pushing a social agenda.

Clearly the purpose of the play was to make us think about how modern-day racism exists, and how it connects to past racism. However, by being ambiguous about the current status of the neighborhood, the play does not allow us to address critical questions and concerns. I believe the play could have posed and answered these questions while still sticking to its core idea. Overall the play did a good job of tying together these two time periods, however the ambiguous nature of the state of the community proved to me to be quite problematic.