Key Quote
“"It's a bit old-fashioned, isn't it? The colour bar"”
Jo · Act One
Focus: “old-fashioned”
Jo dismisses racism as 'old-fashioned' — treating Britain's deep-rooted racial prejudice as simply outdated, like a fashion that has passed. Her casual dismissal is both naive and revolutionary.
Technique 1 — RHETORICAL QUESTION / UNDERSTATEMENT
The tag question — 'isn't it?' — is rhetorically powerful because it assumes agreement: Jo presents her anti-racist position as so obvious that it barely needs stating. This assumed consensus transforms a radical position into common sense — OF COURSE racism is old-fashioned; who could disagree? The tag question shames potential racists by implying they are self-evidently behind the times.
The phrase 'a bit old-fashioned' is massive understatement: the 'colour bar' (racial segregation and discrimination) was not merely old-fashioned but profoundly unjust. By reducing centuries of racial oppression to 'a bit old-fashioned,' Jo simultaneously diminishes racism's importance (treating it as trivially outdated) and reveals her youth (she does not fully understand racism's depth and violence).
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RAD — PROGRESS
Jo represents generational progress on race: while Helen's generation holds casual racial prejudices, Jo dismisses racism as outdated. This generational shift — the young instinctively rejecting prejudices their parents accept — is presented as natural and unremarkable. Delaney's optimism about racial progress is itself historically specific to the hopeful late 1950s.
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Technique 2 — COLLOQUIAL CRITIQUE — CASUAL RADICALISM
Jo's anti-racism is expressed colloquially — in the language of everyday conversation, not political argument. She does not denounce racism intellectually but dismisses it casually, as if it were merely boring. This casual radicalism is more subversive than formal protest because it treats progressive values as unremarkable — not as positions to be defended but as obvious truths from which deviation is simply embarrassing.
The euphemism 'the colour bar' — a polite term for racial discrimination — itself performs a kind of linguistic softening that matches Jo's understatement. By using the established euphemism rather than blunter language, Jo works within polite discourse while subverting its assumptions. She uses polite language to deliver an impolite message: your prejudices are embarrassingly outdated.
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Context (AO3)
POST-WINDRUSH BRITAIN
The play was written a decade after the Empire Windrush (1948) brought Caribbean workers to Britain. By 1958, racial tension was rising — the Notting Hill race riots occurred the same year the play was performed. Jo's attitude is both idealistic and urgently needed.
THE COLOUR BAR
The 'colour bar' was the informal system of racial discrimination in British pubs, dance halls, lodging houses, and workplaces. Though not legally enforced (unlike American segregation), it was widespread and deeply damaging. Jo names it directly, refusing to pretend it doesn't exist.
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WOW — DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (Du Bois)
W.E.B. Du Bois's concept of double consciousness — the experience of seeing oneself through the eyes of a racist society, of being simultaneously inside and outside the dominant culture — provides a framework for understanding what Jo's boyfriend (the Boy) experiences in 1950s Britain. Du Bois argued that Black people must constantly navigate between their own self-perception and the hostile perception of the dominant culture, creating a divided, doubled awareness. Jo's casual dismissal of the colour bar — while liberating in intention — may itself demonstrate a kind of racial blindness: she treats racism as 'old-fashioned' because SHE does not experience it. Du Bois would note that for the Boy, racism is not 'old-fashioned' but constantly, painfully present. Jo's anti-racism, though genuine, operates from a position of white privilege — she can afford to dismiss prejudice because she does not bear its weight. The play leaves this tension unresolved: Jo's good intentions coexist with her limited comprehension of what racism actually feels like.
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