Commentary: After All the DEI Manifestos in the Arts, Is This Still Your Audience?

I don’t usually write in the first person, but this is different. Forgive me, but I have to say, I’m both disgusted and without a solution to this problem. Nor do I know if one is even possible.

I recently spent a few minutes and read Oscar Schwartz’s column, “What Was the TED Talk?” from The Drift. (Thanks to Doug McLennan and ArtsJournal for finding it.) I have been a big fan of TED (Technology | Education | Design) for as long as I’ve known about the program. There are almost 4,000 TED talks online, and I’ve been introduced to some wonderful influences by such writers/talkers as Simon Sinek, Dan Pallotta, and Sir Ken Robinson. I’ve even learned how to use a paper towel. Turns out I’ve been wasting paper for years – we all have. Who knew?

Joe Smith (yes, that's his real name) gives a funny, thoughtful lesson. It's only 4 minutes. Watch.

I am the audience for TED. I’m a dreamer of sorts. After 6 decades of inhabiting this body of an intellectually curious white man with an artistic bent, I’ve been privileged enough to be able to deal with information in a “superior” fashion; that is, due to nothing I’ve actually done, I have been able to self-accommodate just because I have whitish-pink freckled skin and male genitalia. White male privilege is a fluke – and for much of my life, I was blind to it.

Your humble writer at age 2, exerting white privilege.

I am the audience for TED. As a reader, you probably are, too, even if you’re not a white male, because you’ve chosen to be curious about life. You read. This article, for example. And TED offers you new ideas, new ways to consider problems, and perspectives on subjects you’ve never considered and likely never would have considered.

Oscar Schwartz sees TED differently, however.

“I recently watched some of the talks from this conference on my laptop. They hit like parodies of a bygone era, so ridiculous that it made me almost nostalgic for a time when TED talks captivated me. Back then, around a decade ago, I watched those articulate, audacious, composed people talk about how they were building robots that would eat trash and turn it into oxygen, or whatever, and I felt hopeful about the future. But the trash-eating robots never arrived.”

Oscar may be jaded. He may be right. He may be both.

TED is extremely popular and I still believe in the idea that more knowledge is a good thing. Even when something fails or seems to be irrelevant, talks about space, music, comedy, and art still get my brain cooking on new ways to solve basic problems. And while most of the AI talks are abhorrent to my values system,

This is not about TED talks. This is about large, monied performing arts organizations and their ever-perpetuating old white audiences.?

And Black performing arts organizations and their Black audiences.?

And Latinx performing arts organizations. And LGBT performing arts organizations. And Indigenous/First Nations. And And And And And…

By now, I’m guessing you understand where this is going.

Having attended arts organizations’ offerings – organizations of all sizes, styles, ethnicities, and races – anecdotal evidence reflects that audiences match the organization. By extension, donors and foundations also match the organization.

Large organizations that make no mention of race, ethnicity, or any other descriptor in their by-laws, literature, press, or advertising automatically, even if unintended, default to white.

In 1996, August Wilson, whose 10-play cycle of plays about Black life in the 20th Century garnered every accolade, award, and honor bestowable on any playwright, told a mostly Eurocentric (white) Theatre Communications Group (TCG) conference that Black theatre can't ever be defined as white theatre with Black people in it. Black theatres, he went on, were there to produce Black theatre. That was 26 years ago. Mr. Wilson died 17 years ago. Things have not improved much - there is still far less money for Black theatre, per capita, than Eurocentric (white) theatre.

Don't you wonder what August Wilson would have thought of this extremely white musical playing at a theatre with his signature on it? (Photo: Andreas Praefcke; cropped by Beyond My Ken - via Wikimedia Commons)

If Black theatre is meant for Black people to reap the benefits of producing it, who is invited to attend (“Everyone” is not a valid answer.)? What about plays that concern Chicanos in Los Angeles - do Black people attend? Should heterosexual audiences attend gay operas in San Francisco? Questions like this have haunted the industry just as much as the biggest one: do white audiences attend Black, Latinx, or Indigenous/First Nations performances?

Do white gay people attend all gay organizations, or just the white ones? And what about Asian performing arts? We know that some white audiences attend, but do Japanese people attend concerts featuring Indian dance? Do Korean people attend Chinese musical concerts?

And what about all the money that supports all these organizations? Why do the white ones get the most money, both in real dollars and by percentage, from every one of the largest funders? How can it happen that a governmental agency can award one company $20,000 to buy a new, state-of-the-art NASA-developed turntable mechanism for its largest stage (because the current, active one is 10 years old) while denying another company $10,000 for theater seats to replace 100-year-old church pews that have fully deteriorated?

Sadly, there is no DEI manifesto out there that seems to address this inequity. There are no new arts leaders that can turn the tide just because they happen not to be white; it’s not about the artist or executive in charge.

Indeed, should we expect that all the positive DEI change we desire for performing arts organizations in America will only become, as Oscar Schwartz described TED?

“TED’s archive is a graveyard of ideas. It is a seemingly endless index of stories about the future — the future of science, the future of the environment, the future of work, the future of love and sex, the future of what it means to be human — that never materialized. By this measure alone, TED, and its attendant ways of thinking, should have been abandoned.”

Do we have time to wait? Or will the wave of change do what it always seems to do: recede.

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Based in Kirkland, Washington,?Alan Harrison?is a writer and speaker specializing in nonprofit organizations, strategy, and life politics. His columns appear regularly in major publications and here on LinkedIn. Contact him directly at [email protected]. Alan would be delighted to engage with your board or staff.

Alan is always looking for good opportunities to write and consult for nonprofits that need a hand. And, of course, that elusive?Perfect Opportunity?.

If you're interested in meeting him, just shoot him an email.?In the meantime, please join the 501 (c) (3) Guru LinkedIn group and add your ideas to the brainstream.