"Thoughts on Diversity and Democracy"
As I struggle to offer a sensible response to this rich day of talks and discussions, I begin by saying that I come to this day from a particular perspective. I am a professor in a program entitled "Performance as Public Practice." We don't look at performance as a product but as a process. And we are interested in how academic skill sets can have impact—help to shape change—in the public sphere. I am also a writer, interested in how we talk about diversity, about the arts, and about diversity in the arts. I am a white woman, too.
We are living in a new moment. It's no longer about "black faces in high places." It's no longer about "outreach."
Our moment is prompted by two major phenomena—the first a sea-change and the second a crisis. First, there are the major demographic shifts that we learned about this morning. Second, there is 9/11 and the war on Iraq.
Following from these two major cultural conditions are the two major discourses of our day: First, economics (money). Second, civics (democracy).
Ten years ago, I would have scorned the first and scoffed at the second as politically retrogressive. But today, we are experiencing the confluence of two seemingly dichotomous ways of approaching the world, including the arts.
I maintain a healthy skepticism about each approach. Making money off the backs of African-Americans, or Latino/as, or Asian Americans, or whoever is gaining in market power, is, some might say, a form of market-slavery. Invoking citizenship can be as exclusionary as inclusionary. After all, the "volk" was the great vision of Nazi Germany.
Those concerns aside, I see great power for the arts to see how we can synergize these discourses of economics and civics:
| push | pull |
| consumer | community member |
| product | process |
| selling | engagement |
| market | public |
| state subject | citizen |
These lines are blurring, and will continue to blur. Just as the lines between the commercial arts sector and the nonprofit arts sector are becoming a hybrid.
An aside: something I'll go away pondering is how to recover a relationship between "means" (as in economic means) and the desire for what is "meaningful."
Are the lines between culturally specific arts, artists, and communities similarly blurring? (I include all culturally specific arts, including ballet. I refer you to dance ethnologist JoAnn Kealiinohomoku's seminal article entitled "An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet As a Form of Ethnic Dance.")
I think those lines may be blurring, but in a different way than we might have expected.
The arts field is undergoing its own seismic shift. The old structure and its practices are being called into question by an explosion of research such as the Urban Institute's. That research is telling us that we are not serving arts, artists, and communities as effectively as possible in terms of funding and policy. We're in the midst of moving from a focus on organizations to individual artists, from annual project grants to multi-year operational support, and from butts-in-seats to engagement.
What I see as a hegemonic arts support structure in this country is breaking down. It is structure that, however unintentionally, supported whiteness as an underlying condition of the arts. As the structure breaks down, so does the infrastructure for whiteness.
It's here, I think, that the issue of "diversity" can shift to the issue of "democracy," as Sekou Sundiata so eloquently, so soulfully, so brilliantly, so convincingly described it this morning.
As the old support structure breaks down, and as we construct a new one, our focus can move from institutions to practices—to arts practices of all kinds in all communities for all purposes. And in that shattering of old policies and subsidies, the central tenet of democracy—dissent—might more fully emerge.
We might, as Sekou described, be able to imagine the other in her own right, and respect her, even when disagreeing with her.
Language matters, we've been reminded today. "Diversity" is a word from a former age, a brave age, but not our age. The new "D" word is "democracy."
But it's not a panacea. In democracy there resides a fundamental tension. It's a tension the drive toward diversity tried to negotiate. It's a tension that the arts help us to embrace and to question and to keep on the table. That tension is between the individual and the demos, the group.
This tension, this sometimes irreconcilable difference, is not a problem ever to be "solved." It's the condition of living together in the US. It's the process of life—of attempting to enter the morass between self and other.
Ideas matter in language, too. Yes, conservatives have seized the public discourse of art in part by talking about ideas and "values." I love that form and texture and history of art that Sekou described. I've spent my life looking at and loving and researching and writing about those things. But the world is different now. The arts sector as a whole must talk about its own ideas and values, too. We need to talk about art in a way that people outside the arts community can connect with.
I recall what Wanla Cheng reported her friend saying to her: "You may be speaking in English, but that doesn't mean I understand you."
I want to refresh my language of, about, and around art in terms not only of my own interest as part of the art world but in a way that is relevant to our moment. It's nice for a dance company, for example, to tell the world about the features of some new dance, but it is more important to tell the world how people will benefit from experiencing that dance. And perhaps more importantly I can listen to people tell me how they already do benefit from their own cultural expressions.
All for the purpose that Sekou invoked this morning: to imagine the other and imagine a better future together.