The White Card: A Play

This first published play from acclaimed poet Rankine (Citizen: An American Lyric) opens three months after the 2016 presidential election. Charlotte, a black artist, joins the Spencer family and their art dealer friend for a tense dinner that touches on issues of white supremacy and white guilt, white savior syndrome, black lives, black bodies, and the beliefs in which progressive white Americans take comfort. Act 2 opens one year later, when Charlotte invites Charles Hamilton Spencer to her studio. Charles is convinced this is their first meeting since the dinner, but Charlotte soon apprises him of the subject of her latest work: a record of her public encounters with the Spencer family, challenging Spencer's idea of whiteness and the power of skin color in relation to Charlotte's experience of race. Each act in this fast-paced, thought-provoking play reads like a swift conversation, inviting readers to experience the power of whiteness from Charlotte's perspective; this reviewer can only imagine what it must feel like to see it performed.