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영어

This essay examines the ways in which racial segregation is spatially represented on stage by assessing its political significance in Alice Childress's early plays, Florence, Trouble in Mind, and Wedding Band. It analyzes how the ideology of white supremacy functions to construct black space both physically and imaginatively on the basis of the difference of color, thereby legitimatizing the spatial distinction between blacks and whites. Racial prejudice enforces segregation in spaces for blacks, while preventing them from exercising the rights of place taken for granted by their white counterparts. The settings for their everyday life are the confines mandated by Jim Crow Laws, exemplified in waiting rooms at railway stations, polling places, and places of residence. Upon examination of spatial distinctions as a fundamental cause of racial disparities, it becomes clear that Alice Childress attempted to use realism to describe black spaces discriminately constructed by whites in racial relations between them. Through this essay I argue that Childress's early plays paved the way for establishing the space of freedom for blacks with respect to the spatialization of race by causing the audience to acknowledge the necessity of change through the spatial visualization of racial segregation.