(The amazingly brilliant Jess wrote an amazingly brilliant post a while ago. And so, I’m breaking my rule of blogging about the silliest of the silly, to add my thoughts. I was originally going to leave a comment, but the comment got longer and longer, so I thought it best to move it over here. Also, I took a really long time posting this. I excel at planning, but suck at follow through)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the problems with professionalization or the problems that institutionalization brings to professions.
I think the main issue of the divide between professionals and, for lack of a better word, outsiders, is privilege.
Some voices, ideas, hell, some people are valued more than others and that is the nature of the beast. We know that in our society, there are just some things that are given more value than others. African, Asian, or any traditional folk medicine (including those here in America. I have two deeply Southern parents; ask me about the much-derided “old wives tales” style of healing.) won’t be considered legitimate until someone else says so.
The insitutionalization of art frequently makes it inaccessible and irrelevant to people outside of the academy. Why should art, any art, be contained within an elitist system? What good is it? And if someone protests that someone needs to protect art from being dumbed down, well–such comments echo/smack of the idea that the “unwashed masses” have such plebian tastes, they can’t be trusted to know what is good.
Ah, the art world, as much as we’d like to believe that artists could create a more egalitarian society, they just don’t. I learned that at Burning Man. A place full of artists still relied on the most basic, the most hurtful, and frankly, the most stupid stratifications. And also by its essential structure, Burning Man sets itself up as a playground for the privileged. Honestly, who else can afford those tickets but people whose first concerns aren’t basic necessities. (Not that Burning Man is some indication of the art world as a whole, and I don’t mean it to be a stand-in for the “art world”, just an example.) I think this attitude is why we see so many stories being appropriated. Think of the recent scandal with Margaret Seltzer. This is the story of many people of color, and somehow it’s not seen as worthy of telling until told by a white woman. It’s an experience that has been validated just by who’s telling it.
In my own life, I’ve seen my words stolen and passed along as someone else’s. It hurts. But, I knew where I stood in that equation; young, black, uneducated, working class < middle-aged, white, highly educated/credentialed, professional class. What could I have said? What could I have done? And, would I have even been believed? This is the life for those without privilege. We watch our ideas, our stories, and our voices be appropriated and validated by someone else. In my case, I think my silence had more to do with the fact that I was working for a cause I believed in deeply. Do I still? Well, obviously, less so now. But, as a pattern, it’s more than just me, and more than just one cause, or one idea, or one history. As an outsider, it’s knowing your point of view doesn’t matter.
I guess I don’t have any real conclusion to this–only that I think it’s a tragedy to see art corralled into the academy. History lost touch with the people a long time ago; I hope art doesn’t do the same.
I agree, it is a tragedy but what to do about it? In my job at a fancy pants college, I’ve seen people of color and/or outsider voices being paid lip service. It’s wonderful for the students to read books by and about people who aren’t like them. I applaud that, and I’d hate for it to stop. But it almost seems like it’s done just to say they’ve done it. So that later, when someone calls them on their privilege, they can say, “I can’t be racist/sexist/classist, I’ve read James Baldwin/bell hooks/Barbara Ehrenreich”(for lack of a better example, my brain’s about to shut off, this is most the most thinking I’ve done in a long time). They’ve studied the words without ever asking the questions, or having the simple interactions, or as Jess points out, finding the connection between art and real people.
I’m not particularly hopeful, although I try to be, that the academy will ever be willing to look past credentials (or lack thereof), and start valuing stories and experiences. I want that to be true because I know there are voices out there that aren’t being heard, and stories that won’t get told. I think we all make the steps forward by calling it out when we see people being marginalized.
April 24, 2008 at 11:14 pm
i used to have a similar style argument with my ex-wife all the time. she would insist that growing up the only asian kid in an all-white school had absolutely no bearing on my childhood. even telling her stories of the kinds of things these kids would say to me just to try to provoke me because i “probably know karate” would do no good.
it wasn’t until one of her korean friends said the same thing that she finally realized that these things happen all the time (and still do for that matter). and yet, i still find that very few people go outside their cultural sphere to find out what other people who are vastly different than them are experiencing. we grow up and live our lives pigeonholed into the places society drops us and very rarely do we break outside our comfort zones and engage the people whose lives we are most fascinated by. this is the real reason that validation occurs, imho. because people are too used to getting everything fed to them in the same wrapper they’ve been using all their lives and they need someone who has “cred” to give them perspective.
April 25, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Yeah, I grew up as one of two or three black kids in an all-white school, and I know, without a doubt, that it affected my childhood. (Not to mention my adulthood, those things don’t just go away when you turn 18). And as much as I tell people about my childhood, and the awful things people said/did to me, most don’t really believe it. “Oh, people still say things like that?” “People still think like that?” As if racism and ignorance were something we stamped out in 1965 and never looked back.
So while it’s easy to read a book about things like that happening, it’s much, much harder to ask, engage, talk, and most importantly listen when someone shares his/her experiences. Most people don’t do that, and the ones that do make the world better for us all.
April 27, 2008 at 12:52 am
That is such a perfect description!
Two things I would love to see at the academy: mandatory classes on listening skills, and a library with guaranteed acceptance and storage of anyone’s personal story as they want to tell it.
The internet to some extent helps with the second, since there’s no vetting necessary to post on the web. It just requires a certain level of affluence and education that a lot of people don’t yet have, so it’s still not quite there.
April 28, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Welcome, Erik!
I think that mandatory classes on listening skills should start in grade school! Maybe if we start young, we’ll learn to stop talking past each other.
As far as the internet, I’ve noticed that the same hierarchies we adhere to in real life, seem to make their way on the web. So along with the problems of access, there’s still the issues of gender/race/class that rear their ugly heads.