Playwright Cassandra Medley with director Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe

In the early 1970’s, an extensive study by geneticist Richard Lewontin revealed that almost all genetic human variations can be found within local populations. The genetic difference between two African-American girls living in Detroit could easily be greater than the difference between each of these girls and a white boy living in Holland. Since Lewontin’s discovery, scientists throughout the world have proven that there are no meaningful biological differences between the races. Last year, on the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix, geneticists completed the mapping of the human genome. Nobel Laureate James D. Watson, one of the scientists who discovered the double helix, called the culmination of the Human Genome Project “a truly momentous occasion for every human being around the globe.” Science — “pure, empirical, Western” science — could at last put an end to the assertions of superiority of one race over another.

Yet Lewontin’s genetic discoveries could not undo what had been perpetrated in the name of Western science to undermine, belittle, and control black people for centuries. The scientific discovery that all humans are “99.9 percent” identical could not erase degrading studies of “negro” skull size or an eugenics movement that had sought to create a white master race. For several prominent African-American scientists and scholars who had not only gained entry but thrived in the country’s top medical schools, it was not enough to establish genetic equivalence. They wanted to use their scientific gifts to strike at the heart of why racism had ever existed in the first place.

“It gives great comfort to many — a biological basis for the mistreatment of the darker people by the Others,” described director Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, “as opposed to the ‘just plain ole mean’ theory.” Some African-American scientists and leaders found their biological basis in one of the genetic differences no one could deny — the melanin in people’s skin. Melanin scholars use the same language and tools of “pure, empirical, Western” science they have been taught to support the theory that melanin not only controls skin color, but is actually the source of “emotional and psychological sensitivity.” Black people, because of their greater amount of melanin content, are in fact superior to white people.

“The idea of reverse-racist-superiority concepts evolving within socially oppressed, historically enslaved societies and cultures — black Americans in the case of Relativity — is fascinating to me,” said playwright Cassandra Medley in a recent interview. Medley wanted to explore “the question of how a melanin theorist might respond to the most recent genetic research on DNA and the mapping of the human genome, while sincerely maintaining his or her ideological position.”

Maintaining ideological and moral positions proves to be a constant struggle for the three black female scientists at the heart of Relativity, as they fight to assert their convictions on a battlefield that is dominated by the ideas of white men. Kalima, with her Harvard PhD and her highly coveted John Hopkins post-doc, represents the cutting edge of genetic ingenuity, but cannot rest on her laurels. She must define herself under the powerful aura of the two women she admires the most — two women who have no respect for the science the other is peddling. Kalima’s dilemma is not simply choosing the best science. No matter how much “pure, empirical, Western” science she has mastered, Kalima cannot deny the desire to discover scientific proof of “something to make all the terrible stuff we’ve suffered make sense.” She yearns to maintain her scientific integrity, yet senses a willingness to abandon in herself this integrity. Kalima’s idea of what Medley calls “legitimate science” is shaken to its core when she is forced to choose between a mother who does not believe in genetic equality and a mentor who has had to shun the spiritual side of her culture in order to be taken seriously in the Western science world.

Molly Rhodes
Bay Area Writer

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