My mentee for the year, Alicia Akins, continues her thinking on diversity with this guest blog post. Don't miss her first post, and continue the conversation in the comments below.
While the furor over the need to diversify the arts
continues, it remains unclear exactly who we need to target, and how we will
know when we’ve gotten it right.
Even the question of how to go about it is shrouded in mystery and
approached with apprehension. Is the golden ticket the mere presence of more
people of color? If we can just
identify and recruit underrepresented people to join our institutions and
charge them with the task of increasing diversity will we have begun to find
our way? Unfortunately, it takes
more than a one-man diversity and inclusion department to build a culture of
true openness. It cannot be a
contrivance to win funding or increase numbers, where “others” get brain space
during work hours and then we return home to our monochromatic neighborhoods
and friend circles.
I recently came across the post “White, Low Affect, Respectful” and was shocked by the suggestion that
perhaps if the symphony ran on CP time, it might attract more
African-Americans. I was also
immediately put off by the "respect" label, because of the
implications for non-white groups—our mores are not less respectful, simply
different in a way that members of the majority may find disrespectful or
uncomfortable. There are dangers to changing the essence of the cultural experience
to draw a different demographic.
As a classically trained musician who loves attending the symphony,
making them as Ms. Lee suggests would dampen the experience for me as well.
But at the same time, I never know when to applaud or cheer at street battles,
in opera (which I've played in pit orchestras) its okay to have intermittent
applause. Education is critical. The education shouldn't merely be
focused on cultural connoisseurship, as one of the comments on my previous post
suggested, however. It should be based on early wide exposure and careful,
unbiased explanation of the proper conduct for different occasions.
Language is critical here though so we don't end up raising cultural
snobs who think elitism is ok (a point I will get back to). This is not simply
about being politically correct either. In describing classical music concert
requirements where one must come on time and not disturb others by talking, it
sets up the alternatives already as lesser. Those are experiences, by contrast,
where "lateness" (a negative) is ok as is “disruptive” (another
negative) behavior. But instead, if you are taught that at classical
concerts its important to show up at the beginning to get the full experience,
but at other kinds of events you can show up whenever you would like or that at
classical concerts outside sound competes with the music whereas at a jazz show
or a gospel concert participation enhances the experience and is not rude, but
expected, then you honor the traditions of each. I'm sure everyone has
had that concert experience where a person (usually white in my experience)
starts clapping between movements, or even worse before the end of the piece
and it comes from unfamiliarity and lack of education (which **gasp** afflicts
white people as well). But the solution is not just to teach young people
how to behave at the opera, but to present both the full range of behaviors
acceptable at varying events and to present the full range of artistic
complexity and expression found in many kinds of arts not just the elite
Western ones.
Javanese
music obeys laws of counterpoint that make Palestrina seem like child’s
play and if one listens to it without being prejudiced by
one’s European ears, one will find a percussive charm that forces one to
admit that our own music is not much more than a barbarous kind of
noise more fit for a traveling circus.
Claude Debussy
And how might something like
that happen? With great difficulty given that most music education and
arts education programs require only one non-Western course requirement.
If students are required to go to concerts (as I was) or exhibits, they
usually seek out what is familiar already, not something new and difficult to
understand. If future teachers shy away from learning about arts of different
cultures and classes then their students don't stand a chance. If teachers
don't know about gamelan or about jazz or about funk—or mixing beats—then how
will they teach it? Professional credit is given for attending courses and
conferences for teachers, but are they encouraged or even required and given
credit for learning about the full spectrum of arts represented within their
communities? Do most teachers feel that if there are no minorities in
their classes they can skip doing the whole diversity thing since they don't
have to worry about anyone feeling left out?
This comes back to a point I
made in my previous post: white people need their understanding of the arts to
be diversified as much as minorities or other underrepresented groups.
White people (and even black people as well) feel cultured enough if they can
parrot off a list of famous European artists or composers. There is much
greatness missing from that list, much of the human experience not found in
their canon, and many important voices silenced. Greatness unobserved does not
cease to be great. The Traditionalist commented on the need to recognize
and not dilute greatness and I couldn't agree more, but to imply that one must
simply look to the high arts to find it is both arrogant and egregious in my
opinion. High art in many cases is designated as such by those in a privileged
position. I agree fully with the second commenter that the arts are human
which is why they cannot possibly be restricted to the European works (and
others based on the European aesthetic) which a privileged minority have
declared exceptional. Greatness, in my opinion, lies in complexity and
inspiration, and I've been fortunate enough to find it in street battles, black
spirituals, and Bruckner. Education certainly is needed to those who would
argue that the Golden Gate of Kiev is more inspiring than an individual’s
search for eternity. In my own
experience, my appreciation for music from all times and places has not
diminished my appreciation of classical music only strengthened my appreciation
for music in general. And despite finding myself working in a museum now, I
have spent considerable time thinking about how an interest in one might feed
the other.
How might we go about making the changes, personal and
institutional, needed to orient ourselves to changing demographics and the
threat of irrelevance?
In many ways, learning to diversify is like learning a new
language. There’s dissonance, misunderstandings, and it's a process of minor continual
improvements with the understanding that you won’t ever really get it perfect
just better. You can express more and be better understood. Your words will
always be yours, you’ll just be able to direct them toward more people.
Trial and error: Everything is hard in the beginning.
Not everything will come out right. But with each attempt, you hopefully improve. For example, my roommate has been in
Laos for half as long as I have but is far more comfortable speaking with
people than I am. She arrived and
started using everything she knew, even if it wasn’t perfect. I, on the other hand, refrained from
speaking until I was certain that I had it right. She made far more mistakes
than I did, but also learned far more quickly. Diversity is likely to be an
issue we will stumble through, but one that my kids will have gotten a handle
on and my grandkids will take for granted. Change takes time and happens in
small steps.
Change of thinking: It
would be nice if in any language all I had to do was learn the new words and
plug them in to sentences in place of their English equivalents, but this isn’t
true. Its not just about getting the vocabulary right, there’s a system that
dictates what words go where and the correct timing and register of words. These systems have deep roots that you
may not understand, but can still adapt to. In Japanese, it kills me to put off talking action until the
end of a sentence, but Japanese grammar does not allow for anything else. What dynamics are at play—particularly
ones of power—that may work against the words you’re saying? Your message
doesn’t exist in a vacuum, think about systems at work, too.
Improves with quality
of relationships: People can tell when you’re being fake with them. I remember when I was living in China,
I had learned a few Chinese “oldies” that I could sing at karaoke with friends
and also took lessons on a traditional Chinese instrument. I had done both of those things simply
out of genuine curiosity but the fact that I had taken the time to go beyond
talking points in my knowledge of China earned me a lot of respect. Learning new cultures and forms of
expression is never easy. But the
same cultural dissonance you feel when you enter the worlds of people whose
education, opportunities, and culture have led them to a set of interests
different than your own is the same dissonance that you’re asking them to
overcome. If the cultural distance seems uncomfortably far for you, chances are
its uncomfortably far for them, too.
Immersion works best:
When I learned Chinese, from the second day of class on instruction was in
Chinese and as expected in the beginning I understood nothing. But I learned far more quickly than
those who tried to learn from the comfort of their own home environment. One of
my best friends is one of the most diverse people I know which incidentally has
made me more diverse. When I talk
to her about things from black culture, I’m often surprised that she knows even
more about them than I do even though she’s Asian American. She learned from having a diverse group
of friends she met during a summer spent living with other minorities as part
of a program for future diplomats.
Where does diversity come from?
Diversity isn’t icing on the cake, you can’t throw it on top
of a finished product. It must be worked in early in the process. You also don’t necessarily get a more
diverse organization just by diversifying the kinds of people working there or
visiting, but by having people with a diversity of experiences that can more
easily tease out latent connections between people, ideas, and cultures. Both the
personnel and the programming need to be intrinsically and inherently diverse.
What if museums looked to recruit staff who themselves were
diverse and had broad exposure to different cultures and ideas rather than just
those that would make their hallways a more colorful place but otherwise fit
the same profile as the rest of the staff? Because of personal experience, I
don’t assume that just because someone is a minority that they are diverse. I
look at their friends.
What does success look like?
I think the answer to how diverse is diverse enough depends
in part on the organization. How will we know when we have got it right? I offer a few suggestions on ways
organizations may be able to gauge if they moving in the right direction.
- Diversity should be organic. There should be less resistance and resentment over the
need to be more inclusive coming from within the organization and there should
be widespread buy-in. Initial changes should be internal, not just in the
recruiting of underrepresented staff or adding new programming. Ideas should
come from across the institution not just from diversity and inclusion
departments.
- When businesses want to be truly innovative they
have policies that support that.
There should be increasing institutional
support for diversity education for all staff. Whether that means sending them to different kinds of
conferences, giving all staff 10% of their work time to investigate a new
culture outside the mainstream, or forming strategic partnerships where
everyone must be involved, policies—not just staff and programming—should
support the goal of being more diverse.
- Do your research. If you have an event or program where you’re reaching out to
a certain group, be sure to talk to them about why they came, what they thought
and what connections they made.
Have dedicated evaluators get
rich feedback that can be used to improve future planning. Understanding the
real barriers is key to overcoming them.
- Think long term with partnerships. No high
culture hit and runs. Follow up and realize that engagement is a two way
street.
- Build advocates not just audience. Who is your target audience already
listening to and influenced by how can you build a relationship with them?
- Learn—not just about how to do the diversity
thing to stay afloat, but about being diverse.
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