White Privilege in the Arts: the Tip of the Iceberg?

By: Justin Laing | November 25, 2020 | Antiracism, Critical Philanthropy, Diversity Inclusion Equity

White Privilege: The Tip of the Iceberg

Using Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” as a model, please see below 13 examples of how White Privilege shows up in larger budget, predominantly White arts organizations. I want to say at the outset that though I am not placing a lot of focus on this in this post, White Privilege is but a visible expression of the much deeper systemic issue that bell hooks has named “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”. In other words, these things named as “privileges”, which are international in nature, would not be possible without a set of intersecting systems to uphold them.

Antiracist Adaptive Leadership

Beyond sharing these 13 examples, my larger purpose is to further explore an idea of antiracist adaptive leadership or simply antiracist leadership. Adaptive Leadership, the framework I am basing this notion on, names “symptoms” as “Technical Problems” that then hide “Adaptive Challenges”. In Adaptive Challenges, there are not any easy answers or “technical fixes” and every solution begets new problems, we ourselves are “the problem” and it will take a collective effort, exerted over time, to solve or at least make significant progress on the Challenge. So, instead of quick fixes, there is a need for “experiments”, or what dialogue with people in the Minnesota Orchestra has led me to call “learning projects”. The idea is that we want to create an environment in which an organization or community adapts and makes progress on deep systemic issues and that those leading that work also live to tell the tale because, in an organizational setting, we are often scapegoated, isolated, and either fired or so marginalized that we are ineffective and just leave (which can also be good thing, actually). In a political setting or community setting people are assassinated, brutalized, and imprisoned. To be clear this often a reality people take on willingly seeing that oppressors have left no other acceptable option and this same reality can be felt in an organization. However, when surviving is a highly valued option, Adaptive Leadership has some good strategies.

Creating “Learning Projects” or “Experiments” 

So, even naming these privileges, and then sharing them first with an organization with which I am working and now in this post, is a part of my own “learning project”. Questions on my mind include:

• How do I better support people and organizations in naming and addressing the Challenge they are facing, more so than the more technical concerns of representation?
• How to then work with organizations and collectives to build actual projects that disrupt, and build alternatives to systemic racism in their organization? 

As a Black Studies graduate, I am interested in how to apply ideas from the Black Radical Tradition to the challenges in front of me and so I am particularly interested in how we bring frames like White Privilege, White Fragility, White Supremacy Culture, Critical Race Theory & racial capitalism from discussions, articles, and online conversations into the Monday meeting, board meetings, and policy-setting work of an arts organization. My hope is to offer an alternative or addition to the frame of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in which so much focus is on bringing in the “other”. This is too often a technical response to avoid addressing the more Adaptive Challenges that lie at the root of the overrepresentation of White people (although “overrepresentation” is obviously the other side of “underrepresentation”, even this is so rarely named). 

When we say the nonprofit arts sector is part of systemic racism, what do we mean and what exactly does that look like so that practical steps can be taken? Of course “representation” definitely matters, I’ve often been hired when “diversity” was a goal of the organization. However, this falls into the “necessary but not sufficient” category. Applied, the frames named above provide a greater likelihood of clearer answers as to what is preventing “inclusion” and what “equity” might look like.

Larger White Arts Organizations Are Also the Tip of the Iceberg

So, I share this list below as a tool that can be adapted to place focus and problem-solving attention on “Whiteness” rather than on “the other”, to get feedback, and to disrupt the reproduction of White privilege by naming and circulating it in print. In this list, by “larger budget”, I am thinking of organizations with annual budgets of $5M or more. I name larger budget organizations to infuse some kind of class analysis into arts antiracist work. I want to be clear that the larger budget, predominantly white arts organizations are themselves a technical focus compared to the deeper Adaptive Challenge of the incredibly disproportionate investment in the perpetuation of the Western Canon, i.e. works that have achieved the status of “classics”. I will say a bit about that at the end. The use of the first person is done with the intention to personify the institution, not to represent an individual. This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

Privileges of Larger Budget, Predominantly White Orchestras, Museums Operas, and Theaters

1. I can share my performances and exhibits and I can usually expect that people think of my art as high-quality. If they don’t like the art, they are supposed to think it is them and not the art.
2. If I am raising money from foundations, I can feel confident that my calls will be returned and that telling me “no” for major asks will be done carefully.
3. While working on engaging the community, I can speak or act in a way Black people or People of Color find insulting or diminishing and I am unlikely to hear about it. 
4. I can feel confident that my organization is more likely than most to be considered when a wealthy person is seeking to make a large financial gift to the arts. 
5. I know that my organization is more able than almost all organizations of color to afford the artists needed to fulfill its vision. 
6. My organization is typically able to perform, exhibit, and rehearse downtown where patrons can take advantage of other amenities like restaurants and parking.
7. Most White patrons who want to see our performances will feel physically safe coming to our venue.
8. I feel confident that the organization’s board of directors will make a sizeable financial contribution. 
9. When a performance/exhibition is completed, there are people paid or volunteering to break down the show. I don’t have to ask the artists, the conductor or the President/CEO to take on this kind of work.
10. I can trust that more so than other art forms, particularly those of people of color, the media will be familiar with and speak well of my art form.
11. I can trust that when the city or state is looking to showcase the arts of our region, the organization will be considered for such an honor.
12. I can trust that in the eye of the general public, the organization will be considered to be an art form of style, grace, and import.
13. I have a marketing budget and staff to help promote our season and a development department to raise money.

So, Now What?

I imagine from some there will be a push for quick technical fixes, “ok but what do we do???” and maybe this will be an effort to reduce the stress of not knowing by finding a technical solution. Again, there are no easy answers and technical responses will just lead to the Challenge’s reemergence, maybe with an even greater vengeance. However, I will say that from my work in philanthropy, which is one of several ways I, too, am in the mix of this problem, one source of white privileges described above is clearly foundations.

Intersecting Antiracism with a Class Lens

To intersect our antiracist work with some class analysis, I think it would clarify our lens to see foundations essentially as a representation of the capital class, i.e. those who don’t need to labor for a wage. I don’t mean the staff, of course, but the institution and its general direction. Questions on my mind include 

• If no system is broken, what has been the driver for such a deep investment in the Western Canon? What story have you wanted to tell, particularly in American cities that have such a high proportion of Black, Indigenous, and POC people, and why?
• What consequence has that had for the American nonprofit arts sector? 
• As their tax status is related to providing a public good, would they commit to addressing the damage this has caused Black, Indigenous, and POC arts organizations, artists, and communities? 
• What would it take for foundations to commit to an increase in annual spending so that it could fund Black, Indigenous and POC-led organizations at much higher levels, without dropping White arts organizations, so as to avoid setting up BIPOC arts organizations as the bringers down of White arts organizations?
• What would it take for predominantly White arts organizations to advocate for such a change and be in solidarity with BIPOC arts organizations?

There are also other issues that have been raised in local and national settings by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color arts organizations such as We See You White American Theater that clearly layout issues of racism. Clearly, this is a very serious example of White privilege reducing work in the way that it names racism in the arts sector and strips it of its “normalness” and so that option is always there for us as well. The way that the organizers mobilized (in the example provided in the “We See You White American Theater” link above) a large group to address the fundamental issues, rather than someone going at it on their own, is also a great example from which we can learn.

There are a number of Black people doing really good work intersecting antiracism or racial equity and Adaptive Leadership and one of those people is Kennetha Bigham-Tsai. Kennetha recently interviewed me for a podcast she and Eric Martin, author of Your Leadership Moment, are developing on this topic and so I’ll be sure to post that whole series as it comes out. I learned a lot working with Eric when I was able to engage for more than a year in an Adaptive Leadership project he was leading when I worked at The Heinz Endowments. A special thanks to my partner, Ebony Ross, for her really helpful feedback on the first draft of this post as well editing suggestions on this one and my brother, Alex Laing, for his really good suggestions. I’ll be returning to this topic and sharing tools as I continue to learn, so please be on the lookout and come back to this site to check out future pieces.

Tags: white privilege