Dear Arts Organizations: Now Is the Time to Take Discrimination Off the Table as a Defense Tactic.
No matter the kind of perceived danger.
Many arts organizations adopted policies of vaccination-status-based exclusion in response to Covid fears. This choice has severely strained or destroyed relationships between friends and colleagues within those arts organizations and the communities from which it draws patrons and volunteers, and thus weakened them. How can these communities be repaired? What concrete steps can leaders of arts organizations take to assure that the same costly mistakes won’t be made in the future?
What if these arts organizations now resolved to create guiding by-laws which would explicitly PROHIBIT the use of discrimination and exclusion against a community sub-population as an acceptable means for weathering any future perceived or actual danger. How might this be helpful?
Every 19th and 20th century episode of bigotry and exclusion, seen in retrospect as unjustified, was widely represented as a rational and acceptable reaction to a moral or physical danger at the time it was enacted. Just about all of them also featured the characterization of a sub-population as vile and less than human. Here’s how it was done in 2020-2021.
It’s highly unlikely this was our last cultural foray into authority-excused bigotry-driven discrimination. History teaches us that many humans don’t recognize what we’ve learned to regret and forswear about past episodes of injustice, in new circumstances; and that even if we do recognize them, we can be scared or tempted into not bothering to think about them too deeply. Comic James D.F McCann recently explained the dynamic well.
Why not get humble and anticipate this future? Are you responsible for an arts organization? Introduce a measure to take any kind of discrimination off of the table NOW, so that when the next perceived danger touches off fear, the organization can’t reach for the tactic.
If and when the leadership of an arts organization is gripped with fear or uncertainty, it would be less corrosive to an organization’s spirit and long-term vitality to temporarily close down until the real or perceived danger is past, than to embark on a community-crushing foray into moralism by dividing its membership into “good citizens” and “bad actors”, one group to be welcomed, and the other to be excluded.
The potential beauty of some variation of this proposal lies in the fact that it does not ask arts organizations to develop proficiency in reading scientific studies, assessing health benefit/risk claims or practicing skeptical technique, all skills which are rare enough in individuals to make a prediction that arts organization leadership teams may not possess them in abundance. All the proposal does is ask arts organizations to pledge to NOT respond to an actual or perceived crisis with the tactic of sub-group exclusion.
Under no circumstances, should discrimination ever again be given a pass as a legitimate tactic to employ because a goal is represented as worthy and attainable. If arts organizations want to rebuild their communities, and bring back those they summarily drove out, often with moral judgement and a deep lack of respect and empathy, they will first make a strong clear public commitment to never sacrifice that community on the altar of fear-rationalized exclusion again.
Agree! But I suspect that because Arts aren't "science", as it is commonly perceived, this will struggle for traction.
Wouldn't it be delightful if strong-minded folks in the arts community owned their intelligence and dared to assess what they saw, without delegating (or off-loading responsibility) decisions to "experts"?
I know someone, an arts person, who claims a Mensa-level intelligence, but who refuses to look at serious info because she's not a doctor...or not a scientist. It's so frustrating.
This is really well said. Clear. Just no. If you, an arts organization, or any other, but most particularly this one, feels that your only alternative to alleviate your fears, or your "customers" fears, is to point fingers at one group over another, and shun that group as the cause of your fears, excluding them from participation if they do not follow novel rules of inclusion created during a panic, then . . . close shop. There is no "public health" emergency that justifies a puritanical, pointed finger response of exclusion, ever. Ever. This we know. . . from history.