Oklahoma! & Whiteness
Race & the Broadway Musical
Presentation by: Warren Hoffman about Oklahoma!
The Great White Way, pg. 64-65
“The white chorus may believe that they belong to the land, but their chanting of the word Oklahoma, which means “Red People,” is an unconscious nod to the land’s original but now forcibly displaced inhabitants. Were we to substitute “Red People” for “Oklahoma” into the show’s refrain, the chorus would end up ironically singing, “Red People! Red People! Red People! Red People! We know we belong to the land, / And the land we belong is grand.”
As the lyric stands, the white chorus/community unintentionally acknowledges the former Indian presence while claiming that they are the true landowners….
Oklahoma! serves as a perfect example of the ways in which white identity shapes the musical as a whole while often appearing invisible to the casual audience member.
Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. "Oscar Hammerstein II, Agnes De Mille, Armina Marshall, Richard Rodgers, Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner (Theatre Guild and creative team), celebrating the 4th anniversary of Oklahoma! on Broadway" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1947. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/7db93a3d-5f3f-a69a-e040-e00a18061fef
If Rodgers & Hammerstein had included the Native American experience, how do you believe that the story or story-telling would be different in Oklahoma!?
Read these two articles…
Frank Rich on Oklahoma! - Vulture
You’d never guess from Oklahoma! that its setting, outside the town of Claremore, is just 60 miles from Tahlequah, the capital of the transplanted and decimated Cherokee Nation. Nor would you know that white settlers like Curly were able to grab Indian territory because Congress abolished tribal land ownership in 1887, less than 20 years before we find him singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” There is an itinerant immigrant peddler, Ali Hakim, in Oklahoma!, but not a single Indian.
The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!
Though it hasn’t always been acknowledged, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! has always been a musical about whiteness.