A clown world.

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[–]jet199 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

One big problem here is saying arts instead should only reflect the communities they serve.

We get this a lot in London form people who think London is the whole world.

The trouble is that London attracts people into the arts from all over the country, not just the local community. So while some areas of London are 50% white British the applicants they are getting will be reflecting the make up of the UK, which is around 90+% white British. So they would have to discriminate against white people by a huge extent to get parity.

Then you have the fact London also draws its audience from all over the country so the audience is also likely to be a different ethnic make up again.

Then you have the fact that it's vital for cultural growth to get people from different countries mixing and working together so good local kids will often get looked over for good kids from abroad. This brings more diversity but will usually make an institution look even less like its neighbourhood.

Then you have the issue that some ethnicities have their own arts which they are quite happy to enjoy and want nothing to do with boring plays, modern art, etc no matter the colour of the creators or which cultures they are representing.

And finally you have ethnicities who won't let their kids go into the arts because they aren't stable or even sensible carers and they want their kids to be happy. I've known a couple of women leave orchestras because it's gotten to the stage where everyone had slept with everyone else, this isn't a life which will suit people of all backgrounds.

So to say an arts institution has to reflect the community it serves is in the end not understanding its community at all.

[–]NecessaryScene1 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

We get this a lot in London form people who think London is the whole world.

The same problem gets even more ridiculous when it goes international. In the knitting purity spiral you had Americans getting upset that events and organisations in Scotland or Finland were so much whiter than they thought the "correct" ratio was. Because everything has to reflect American racial sensibilities apparently.

The trouble is that London attracts people into the arts from all over the country, not just the local community.

I saw a bizarre sight on YouTube recently - footage from a "Black Lives Matter" march in London which was so incredibly white, it must have been whiter than the average London Tube commuter crowd. It looked like a load of white middle-class college students had travelled in with their pink-white-and-blue flags. Something for anthropologists/sociologists to analyse...

[–]RestingWitchface 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I have always noticed from a young age that Americans appear obsessed with race... for example, so much of American humour relies on racial stereotypes that we don't necessarily have in Europe. Now I see peope trying to impose an American analysis of race on Europe. In Europe of all places, you can't just treat "white people" as a homogeneous blob. You had better be clear which white people you are talking about. We define each other by nationality much more than by our heritage or our race (e.g. I am of Polish descent but would never call myself that, not speaking a word of Polish). I know many Finns who resent being told they have "white privelege" after enduring centuries of occupation by Sweden and Russia. Finland never participated in the slave trade. Our immigrants came here to work or as refugees. That's not to say we shouldn't deal with racism that exists here, just stop trying to superimpose an analysis that doesn't work for our population, history or culture.

[–]NecessaryScene1 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have always noticed from a young age that Americans appear obsessed with race...

Indeed. But there is a reason for that - they have this large black population that are largely descended from a transplanted population, and that population's history and culture is uniquely American. They were, as a policy, decoupled from the culture of the countries they were brought from. That makes American's black population a form of diaspora, with their own unique culture.

American's "race" issue is really about the collision between the three groups that combined to form America - the indigenous population, the settlers, and the settlers' slaves.

They view that 3-way collision in terms of "race", approximate that by skin colour, and then nonsensically reassign the American historical roles to people with the same skin colours in another country. Which is just dumb.

The ending of that response to that Harpers open letter was a gob-smacking example of this American genre:

The intellectual freedom of cis white intellectuals has never been under threat en masse, especially when compared to how writers from marginalized groups have been treated for generations. In fact, they have never faced serious consequences — only momentary discomfort.

PS, recommended if you haven't seen it - Bret Weinstein's recent round table with a bunch of black writers and academics. More sense than you'll hear from any of the Woke crowd.

[–]Realwoman 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Yeah, they're basically showing their American privilege and imperialism with this nonsense.

[–]DimDroog 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Whooo boy, I wished I saved this particular post: way back on Livejournal, in a "woke" community, someone made a post about American privilege, to the community of multiracial Americans.

They flipped out on the OP.

It was hilarious.