Arts & Culture Interrupting Structural Racism Part 1
From the President’s Blog
Eddie Torres
At our most recent national conference Converge/Transform, Grantmakers in the Arts foregrounded the voices of Indigenous and Black colleagues. I explained that Grantmakers in the Arts believes that in order to be pro-justice, we must be pro-Black.
“GIA is pro-Black and recognizes the role public and private support for arts & culture play in structural racism. This includes the school-to-prison pipeline, philanthropy, and public policies as well as support for education and the arts. The cultural funding system, the housing, tax, education, police, courts, prisons, employment, and campaign financing systems are all racialized systems that interact. As arts funders, we have the opportunity for cultural funding to interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, unemployment, low wages, and outsize corporate political influence. ”
Our housing policies and practices , in addition to our tax policies, keep BIPOC children in under-resourced schools, which offer fewer arts opportunities. The segregation of schools has been declared unconstitutional since 1954, yet schools remain segregated, with children of color concentrated in schools in low-income communities. Statistics have shown that the concentration of poverty in schools results in poorer educational and life outcomes for children. Stanford researchers have found that the single-most powerful predictor of racial gaps in educational achievement is the extent to which students attend schools surrounded by other low-income students.
According to PolicyLink’s Equity Atlas, 40.83% of students of color were in high-poverty schools, while only 8.5% of white students were.
How has this come to pass? Home ownership is the primary driver of wealth in the U.S. Redlining’s lasting effects include undervaluing homes in communities of color. About 36% of education funding comes from local property taxes. These two policies and their legacies result in students of color being concentrated in low-income communities and under-resourced schools.
A report by the Government Accountability Office found that schools identified as needing improvement, and schools with higher percentages of BIPOC students were more likely to experience decreases in time spent on arts education. This forms a vicious circle. Where there are few or no arts courses, the educational picture often includes higher dropout rates, less availability of high-level coursework or effective teachers, and poor academic performance. However, this circle can be interrupted. Longitudinal studies show that arts education increases literacy, advances math achievement, engages students in school, and motivates them to learn. Various studies have revealed that the positive academic and social impacts of the arts have greater impact on students from lower-income backgrounds.
We’ve seen how the housing policy and practice interacts with our system of taxation and allocation of resources to education interact. With what other systems does our education system interact? The police, the courts, the carceral system.
In 43 states and the District of Columbia, Black students are more likely to be arrested than other students while at school, according to an analysis by the Education Week Research Center. How a child is punished for acting up in school could depend on [their] race, a report by the Government Accountability Office found. The report found that Black students in K-12 schools are far more likely to be disciplined — whether through suspension or referral to law enforcement — than their counterparts of other races. When a student is suspended or expelled, there is a significant increase in his or her likelihood of being involved in the juvenile justice system the subsequent year.
Black children make up 16% of all youth in the general population, but make up 30% of juvenile court referrals. Black children make up 38% of youth in residential placement, and make up 58% of youth admitted to state adult prison.
How do the courts and the carceral systems’ interactions with the educational system and BIPOC youth touch other systems like the private sector? Education is supposed to prepare us for employment.
As of September 2022, our current general unemployment rate is about 3.5%. Formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27% — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.
Thus far, we have explored how public policies and practices racially segregate us. This leaves BIPOC children in underfunded schools with little arts and culture investment, priming the school to prison pipeline, and resulting in unemployment in BIPOC communities. These are examples of how racialized systems interact to form racialized structures.
It is essential that we recognize our parts in structural racism. Our governments’ policies and practices are resourced by taxes (and, for some, our labor) making us all a part of our governments’ actions. This is one reason that GIA encourages advocacy for changes to public policies and practices. In Part 2 of this blog, we explore how our government interacts with the private sector, including with philanthropy, and creating opportunities for us to interrupt structural racism.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eddie Torres is President & CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts.
