Revisiting Our Value of Transformation by Addressing White Supremacy
Grantmakers in the Arts would like to close out this year by revisiting our value of transformation. GIA stands against White Supremacy, which infiltrates oppressed communities, and we explicitly name Jewish people in that framework. We denounce the current and historic oppression of Jewish people. We denounce the current and historic oppression of People of Color, Trans and Queer People, Disabled People, and all people facing violence and mistreatment as a direct result of White Supremacy.
Globally, we have seen a rise of anti-Jewish and Islamophobic rhetoric amid the war overseas. As GIA explains in our Racial Equity in Arts Funding workshops, racism works by pitting oppressed groups against each other. Regardless of the perpetrator–are they acting out a narrative that serves the ruling class’s interests? Attacking one another and distracting us from financial elites’ societal rule is the function of racism.
How racialized narratives are shaped and deployed by financial elites to disrupt efforts at solidarity and sow division among the oppressed is well-documented in books such as White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class by Ian Haney López, and The Sum of Us: How Racism Costs All of Us and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee, among others.
Those who see the dangers of this separation strategy work to highlight the commonalities in our social struggles. We Fight to Build a Free World: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz at The Jewish Museum in New York City is an attempt to highlight our unity. The show was conceived from a starting point following the “Unite the Right” rally and includes work by artists such as Glenn Ligon, Gordon Parks, Fritz Scholder, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Kara Walker, and Charles White. The exhibit comprises Robert Colescott’s painting George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook, a scathing critique of the racism within our nation’s founding.
“Art and culture humanize each other, highlight our interdependence, and reaffirm our solidarity. ”
These efforts highlight how essential it is not to allow ourselves to forget the historic alliances between oppressed communities, and the work of these artists are examples of why GIA’s members support art and culture. Art and culture humanize each other, highlight our interdependence, and reaffirm our solidarity.
It is no surprise that one of the figures who informs our perspective is Eric Ward, who entered his work on anti-racism as an artist, encountering White supremacy’s most literal forms as he tried to share his music across communities. As he states in Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism, “Antisemitism is a particular and potent form of racism so central to [white] supremacy that Black people would not win our freedom without tearing it down.”
“At a time when White supremacists and White nationalists take advantage of this moment to sow confusion and promote antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism, misstating what antisemitism is harms all of our work for justice and endangers our communities.”
GIA encourages us to wrestle with the dangerous conflation of interweaving the terms anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, as outlined by A Jewish Voice for Peace and PARCEO Explainer, “At a time when white supremacists and white nationalists take advantage of this moment to sow confusion and promote antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism, misstating what antisemitism is harms all of our work for justice and endangers our communities.”
As we continue to combat anti-Jewish and White Supremacist behavior and actions, we encourage our community to collectively explore resources like Curriculum on Antisemitism from a Framework of Collective Liberation. GIA calls for us to support art and culture as part of our broader embrace of intersectionality, interdependence, and solidarity.
