On different stages of Chicago's prestigious Goodman Theater this summer, two playwrights -- one a white woman, the other a black man -- have explored the American drama of race in two gripping and thoughtful productions. The first, "Spinning Into Butter," is a controversial play by the highly praised newcomer Rebecca Gilman. Opening in New York next season after its Chicago premiere, "Spinning into Butter" tells the story of a white, well-intentioned college dean whose deeply conflicted and befuddled feelings about race erupt in the midst of a crisis at her small, nearly all-white liberal arts school. The second, "Jitney," is a newly revised work by one of the nation's leading playwrights, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson, an African-American who has stirred debate over his call for better funding for theaters controlled by black artists. Part of his decade-by-decade saga of African-American life in the 20th century, "Jitney" lays out the tragedy of a hard-working man whose hopes for his son -- and for his own life -- are dashed, not so much by an overt act of racism as by the slowly grinding wheels of a prejudiced social machine.

In both plays, the dilemmas in confronting racism's legacy lead to personal as well as social tragedy. The juxtaposition of the two reveals how the master/slave dynamic has persisted long after slavery's end. Gilman's characters struggle with race from a largely white perspective: How should they talk -- and how do they really feel -- about blacks and other minorities? Is anything correct about "political correctness"? What can they do to assuage their guilt or help minorities? Wilson's characters -- all of them black -- face the flip side of those issues: How can blacks maintain their dignity in a society that denigrates them and would prefer to ignore them, except when actively blocking their attempts to make meaningful lives for themselves? What kinds of compromises are acceptable, or necessary, with whites and the power elite? Is it possible to maintain an African-American identity and community without resources under African-American control? The common theme is that blacks and whites alike are trapped by history -- no confrontation with the legacy of racism has a chance of success without addressing the continuing imbalance of power.

"Spinning Into Butter" takes place in the office of Dean Sarah Daniels, who is in her first year at a small Vermont college. It's clear from the start that Daniels means well. She wants to provide a special minority scholarship to a deserving student. But when the chosen recipient edgily insists on being identified as "Nuyorican," Daniels tries to cajole him into being Puerto Rican for the sake of the forms she must fill out. Later, when it's reported that two racist notes had been attached to the door of black student Simon Brick's room, the white administrators, faculty and students all rush to advance their various self-serving agendas: They keep it quiet (to avoid bad public relations); call a campus-wide meeting (and write a lengthy paper analyzing and condemning racism); and form Students for Tolerance (to bolster chances of getting into law school). Nobody bothers to consult the minority students -- and only Daniels suggests talking to Simon first.

As the campus crisis deepens, the other administrators demand that Daniels come up with a concise, 10-point plan for battling racism on campus -- one that won't require much money, but promises to have "great impact." In a long night at the office, Daniels begins making a list, in parts cynical, whimsical and painfully ambivalent. "Stop being stupid," is the first step on the not-terribly helpful agenda. "Admit defeat," it concludes.

Daniels unleashes her tirade of confusion and despair to a horrified colleague. She wants to help minorities -- she even studied African-American literature! Maybe nothing works, she fears. Maybe she can't transcend racism. Then the tone shifts ominously: Maybe blacks can't either. She reflects on her experience at a black college, and living in Chicago. "In the abstract" blacks were fine, she said, "but in reality they were so rude." Although the people who irritated her may have been a minority within a minority, "the ones who were awful seemed exceptionally awful, loud and belligerent and abusive ... I know blacks have agency," she acknowledges, but thinks maybe they don't succeed just because they're "lazy and stupid."

After the FBI determines that Simon sent the notes to himself, he is expelled by the other administrators, without so much as a phone call to his parents. Daniels falls victim to the crisis as well. There is as little effort to understand Simon's actions as there was to support him as a lonely and isolated student, but the cop who drives him home observes afterwards to Daniels, "He wouldn't have done that to himself if somebody hadn't done something to him." Daniels notes that Simon was like the storybook character of Little Black Sambo, getting all the menacing tigers to chase each other around the tree, ultimately "spinning into butter."

Gilman argues that whites objectify blacks as the "other," thus failing to treat them as equals who might be worthy of respect. This seems equally true whether her white characters have few encounters with blacks (as with most of the Vermont academics) or many encounters (as Daniels does). At one level, the play is a gibe at "political correctness," which is presented as often being a fraudulent cover for deeper, unexamined racial prejudice, ignorance or distrust. The anguished and self-important academics are easy comic targets, especially with the campus cop playing salt-of-the-earth foil. Daniels is portrayed as warm-hearted but pathetic as she apologetically navigates the terrain of her own guilt, but despite her impolitic outburst she has more compassion than her colleagues. The problem with "political correctness," however, seems less in the aspiration to confront racism and more in the failure to take individuals seriously in a world driven by bureaucratic categories and sociological abstractions. In the end, the white administrators had the power not only to define those categories and award aid, but also to summarily expel Simon because he violated their terms for dealing with racism.

It is hard to argue with Daniels' plea for frank, person-to-person communication. Daniels' long lament about "lazy and stupid" blacks is a shocker on stage, coming from the middle-class academic. "Can't people admit they feel this way?" the dean asks. But to what end? If such bluntness led to any meaningful dialogue on race, it might be worthwhile, but it is more likely simply to legitimize the expression of bigoted statements that have been thankfully dampened out of guilt, shame or "political correctness." These sentiments may mask real feelings, but sometimes frankness or honesty can simply be an excuse for sloppy thinking or crude prejudice.

The key issue is not so much objectification, political correctness or some aspect of identity politics as it is who has power to define social identities and relationships -- white-controlled corporations, media empires, universities and political organizations. Facing up to objectification ultimately necessitates contending with powerlessness, either submitting to it or struggling against it. That struggle with powerlessness may lead as readily to personal pathologies, such as Simon's notes, as political movements, whether it's Students for Tolerance or the minority student organization. On the other hand, although whites in "Spinning Into Butter" may agonize over how to deal with blacks in their midst and what is the appropriate terminology and conduct, they do not confront the fact that they still have disproportionate power in the college and society, even with their ambiguous power to "do good."

The world of Wilson's jitney drivers -- operators of illegal but crucial taxis in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where Wilson grew up -- is surrounded by whites, at times penetrated by whites and always heavily influenced by whites, but there are no white characters to the drama. Indeed, for all the deleterious effects of the white-dominated power structure on the lives of these men, one of them suggests that most whites don't even know they exist -- just as the whites in "Spinning Into Butter" barely know any black people.

Wilson, whose work ranks in the pantheon of American playwrights like Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, once again brilliantly sketches memorable characters and provides a realistic slice of black American life. As in other Wilson plays, the drama of the African-American community is nearly self-contained here, but this world exists within a society that can -- and does -- reach out and destroy both black individuals and communities. Whatever the complications that the white administrators in Gilman's Vermont college have in dealing with blacks, they pale by comparison with the dilemmas faced by blacks dealing with the whites who hold so much power over their lives.

Becker, a retired steel-mill worker, runs a jitney station, serving the unofficial taxi needs of the black community. The jitney drivers themselves are a rich collection of troubled but hard-working men who transcend their easy identifications -- an angry young man who is frustrated, but trying to be a successful husband and father; an amiable drunk with memories of being a tailor to black stars; a gruff gossip; a player with a sentimental streak; a philosopher of self-improvement. Life at the jitney station is a series of constant hustles, negotiations over small change, limited opportunities and bigger, often faded dreams. The "car service" offers the men a living and a sense of independence that is threatened by the city's plans to tear down everything on the street in the name of urban renewal.

Yet Becker, who provides the initiative and order for the jitney station, faces a more personal crisis. His son, Booster, is about to leave prison after serving 20 years for murdering his well-to-do white girlfriend.

Booster's act ultimately kills his mother and his relationship with his father as well. Becker is bitter that his son, a good student who had started college, threw away a promising career, but Booster had seen his father's lifetime of hard work and submissiveness to white landlords and bosses as making him "small."

Betrayed by his girlfriend, and caught in the web of her father's deeply hypocritical views of sex and race, Booster had thought that by seeking revenge he could redeem his father and make the Becker family name "big" again -- as his father appeared to the young boy within the confines of the black community.

Father and son never reconcile, but they indirectly attempt to redeem themselves to each other. Becker decides to organize the jitney drivers and fight urban renewal. "We can keep playing by their rules as we have been," Becker says. "But they change the rules. We've got to do something else." Yet Becker never gets to try his new strategy, falling victim to his rigorously responsible work ethic. As the dispirited drivers praise his father, Booster reflects that all he ever knew about his father was how hard he worked, and for the first time contemplates stepping into his empty shoes.

One of the beauties of Wilson's plays is the economical way in which he presents complex characters as believable but imperfect human beings. They are characters as universally human as those in any great drama, yet deeply rooted in African-American culture and history -- as much black Americans as Ibsen's characters are Scandinavian or Moliere's French. They are trying to live out their dreams -- of family, happiness, livelihood, sexual fulfillment and personal pride -- but within a context that limits and intrudes upon their actions. The city's elite can condemn their neighborhood and destroy their business. Landlords threaten the roof over their heads and the stature of parents in the eyes of their children. Whites control access to good jobs. Even when blacks succeed in school, when they reach out and make personal connections to whites, they face betrayal. But while "Jitney" does offer some understanding of Booster's rage, the play is clearly unsympathetic to his actions, which destroyed him and his family and did nothing to right any wrongs. Implicitly, it argues that the solution is rather for blacks to work together politically and to create their own base of economic and cultural power.

Quite rightly, neither "Spinning Into Butter" nor "Jitney" attempts to provide full-blown political analysis, let alone a 10-bullet program of action for eliminating racism. Both Wilson and Gilman have made serious efforts to provide realistic portrayals of how the conundrum of race plays out in American life. In their hands, the tragic flaw in American life becomes the stuff of great drama.