My name is Johna playwright living and working in Somerville, Massachusetts.  Most of my work deals with social issues like poverty, addiction, domestic violence and racism.  One of my plays, “The Hill,” recounts the opening day of school in Boston they year forced busing was put into place in Charlestown.  It deals with the residents of a white neighborhood venting their anger and frustration.  Not having claim to much, they feel as if the little they do have is being taken away.   The play ends in violence as anger, bigotry and fear take the place of logic and reason.  Recent events, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, very near to where I live, namely, the arrest of prominent Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., brought to mind another play I wrote a few years back, called, “The Painter.”  In that play, an Irish immigrant painter works for an older, African-American gentleman, who is a scholar and Pulitzer Prize winning author of a book on race.  The play takes place in Lexington, Massachusetts.  There is contention between the two and the play ends in murder, the painter killing the man.  In his head, the painter sees the man, who asks the painter that if he, the man, was white, would the painter still have killed him.  A question the painter does not answer.  The painter asks the man that if he, the painter, was black, would the man still have treated him so harshly and unfairly, a question the man cannot answer.  Two racists?  Not on the surface, but under their clean, tidy, professional appearances, lies the ugliness of humanity.  In the case of Gates, he asked the officer if he, Gates, was being arrested because the officer was white.  Isn’t this racist?  I do not want to hear anything about reverse racism…IT DOES NOT EXIST.  Racism is racism, whether it be a police officer arresting a man because of his skin color or a man accusing the officer of “white” behavior.  In an earlier draft of “The Painter,” was a discussion about who would win a Presidential election, a white woman or a black man.  This was written long before Clinton and Obama decided to run.  My answer then was a white woman.  I did not think a black man could be elected.  I was happily, ecstatically, proven wrong.  But the arrest of Gates and the ensuing debate makes me realize that, despite the last election, ”The Painter,” is as timely and true today as is the “The Hill,” which is set in 1974.  Sad, really, especially since the events occurred in liberal (some say, “bleeding heart,”) Cambridge, and also involved Harvard.  The land of acceptance and tolerance.   (I have heard a lot of grumbling from some about the superiority of Harvard faculty, which adds a layer of classism to the whole unfortunate event.)  This event never should have happened and it did, and it makes it clear to me, and to many others, that racism is alive and well and thriving.  Keep the conversation alive, we obviously still have a LONG way to go.  John can be reached at www.johnsheaplays.com