Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the film “Wicked.”
Having never seen the play or read the book, I went into the theater to see “Wicked” with virtually no expectations aside from the buzz that it’s a great show and hoping to enjoy a Friday afternoon date with my spouse. I left the theater with tears welling in my eyes, saying to my husband: “She never stood a chance of winning that election.”
I can’t tell whether the original author of “Wicked” intended to create such an inescapable critique of the strained relations on the road to solidarity between Black and White women. I can’t even tell how the musical ends, as this is only “Part 1,” leaving us hanging for what will no doubt be an extended intermission.
I can say that the timeliness of this story of broken promises of solidarity is piercing.
Instead of defying the gravity that pulls all women down, women racialized as White have so often chosen to side with what little scraps of power the heteropatriarchy throws our way. So, when it became painfully clear that Glenda was not going to hop on the broom with Elphaba, all I could think about was how, for a third time, the majority of White women cast their votes for Donald Trump–an undeniable misogynist and convicted sexual predator.
I found myself thinking about all the Black women who have worked so hard for so many years to save all of us from ourselves: Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Angela Davis, Stacey Abrams. Not to mention the countless mothers, aunties and organizers who’ve worked throughout the decades for freedom – yes, freedom for Black people, but with the understanding that “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
And I thought about all my White sisters who continue to cling to a false hope that the systems that oppress Black, Brown and Indigenous women will somehow be convinced to repent and “do good” if there are just enough of the right (read: White) kind of women to help them see the light.
But, as Elphaba astutely assesses in her first encounter with Galinda (as she’s known before changing her name in a superficial show of solidarity): “You’re offering to help someone you don’t know with skills you don’t have.”
I think of the excitement of the “White Women for Kamala” Zoom call, where over 164,000 pledged to do their part to elect our first female President. This call followed the Black Women for Kamala call just a few days after Biden stepped down and Kamala announced her candidacy.
There was so much buzz and excitement that even prompted “White Dudes for Harris” and “Republicans for Harris” calls.
For a moment, just like the students from Shiz University, it looked like everyone was on board to support the potential first female President–who just happened to be bi-racial, Black, and Asian-American–as she boarded the train toward leading the free world.
But then the powers and principalities stepped in and did what they do, convincing people that scarcity is cause for division and small thinking, rather than encouraging community dreaming and building.
Like the Wizard’s quick turn on Elphaba once he could see her authentic power, a majority of our voting electorate united against a common enemy.
And I don’t know that they believed the enemy was Kamala herself, but what she represented: the Other, the Woman, the Rising Minority, the Daughter of Immigrants.
Surely, all that power wrapped up in one package could not be “good” for the (White) masses, right?
As a White woman viewing this film, there were moments when I wanted to crawl under my theater seat and hide from the truth of my racialized identity that was glaring down from the big screen. At other times, all I could do was laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
At one point, I leaned over to my husband and said, “I hope Kamala has had a chance to see this.”
But the truth is, she’s done more than see it. She’s experienced it firsthand.
White women could’ve been the votes that tipped the scales for our first female President, but instead, they threw cold water on Black women’s efforts to forge a better, freer future for all. They then stood there watching those efforts melt into oblivion.
Womanist theologian Chanequa Walker-Barnes has written that “racial reconciliation is ultimately part of the mission of God to restore a broken world…It is our responsiveness to God’s offer of new life in Christ. We cannot opt out of it. We are either working toward justice and reconciliation, or we are not Christian – period.”
For Christian women racialized as White, her words beg the question of how our votes reflect our values when it comes to standing in solidarity with women of color.
If art imitates life, this new onscreen version of Wicked could not have been released at a more apropos time.
And if art is a critique that can hold a mirror up and warn us of the dangers in which we so easily become ensnared, then perhaps Wicked can serve as a much-needed catalyst to defy the powers and principalities that have separated and segregated women for far too long.
So I ask my female siblings who have been racialized as White: In these coming months, weeks, and years that are sure to sow more division between Black and white, male and female, trans and cis-het, citizen and immigrant–will we get on the broom and choose the path toward solidarity?
Or will we cling to our own ambition in a system that doesn’t want us to defy gravity either?
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Dr. Rebecca M. David Hensley holds a PhD in religious studies, with an emphasis in theological and social ethics. She is a member of the adjunct faculty for Iliff School of Theology and an ordained Deacon in the United Methodist Church.
