{"id":10610,"date":"2010-07-03T23:28:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-04T06:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/?p=10610"},"modified":"2010-07-03T23:28:23","modified_gmt":"2010-07-04T06:28:23","slug":"fishburne-racism-is-a-family-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/2010\/07\/fishburne-racism-is-a-family-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Fishburne: Racism Is A Family Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>CSI: Crime Scene Investigation<\/i>&#8216;s leading man <b>Laurence Fishburne<\/b> (Dr Ray Langston) brings <i>Thurgood<\/i> to the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, California.<\/p>\n<p>\n<!--more-->As CSI Files previously <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/2010\/06\/fishburne-hes-a-really-marvelous-character\/\">reported<\/a>, Fishburne performed <i>Thurgood<\/i> in Washington, DC before returning to Los Angeles. The one-man play centers around the first African-American individual to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice <b>Thurgood Marshall<\/b>. Marshall was well-known before joining the Supreme Court due to his role in the historic desegregation case <i>Brown vs Board of Education<\/i> in 1954.<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;This cat, he was too important not to play,&#8221; Fishburne told the <i>Los Angeles Times<\/i>. The actor added that it was &#8220;quite a gift&#8221; to take the stage and talk about the <i>Brown<\/i> decision. &#8220;It deals with a law which, whether we recognize it or not, plays a very, very important role in our lives,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe <i>Brown<\/i> ruling was crucial to the legal dismantling of segregation in America, but Fishburne was not aware of Marshall&#8217;s role in the decision until he read <i>Thurgood<\/i>. The actor also cited another historical civil rights leader for his equally-important role in tearing down racial segregation: <b>Dr Martin Luther King, Jr<\/b>. &#8220;King was about the spiritual dismantling of it [racism] in our hearts,&#8221; Fishburne explained. &#8220;He opened a place in our hearts where we had to look at it and go, &#8216;This is wrong, morally wrong.&#8217; He made us ask those questions of ourselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nFishburne hopes to step back into Marshall&#8217;s shoes every few years because he enjoys the role. He also wants to continue touring with <i>Thurgood<\/i> because its subject matter is &#8220;part of our history that is not going to be unimportant or lose its real value any time soon.&#8221; Understanding Marshall&#8217;s life and accomplishments is one way for people to continue to tear down racism in their hearts and minds, Fishburne said, in order to keep healing &#8220;our wonderful, dysfunctional family: the United States of America.&#8221; He added that &#8220;racism is a family disease.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CSI: Crime Scene Investigation&#8216;s leading man Laurence Fishburne (Dr Ray Langston) brings Thurgood to the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2906],"tags":[2938],"class_list":["post-10610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-csi-lv","tag-fishburne"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"Rachel","author_link":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/author\/rachel\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/categories\/csi-lv\/\" rel=\"category tag\">CSI<\/a>","tag_info":"CSI","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10610"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10618,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions\/10618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}