Community Arts University Without Walls
Marta Moreno Vega
The challenge for historically marginalized communities that are part of the matrix of the United States and other colonial countries is how to have their cultures and contributions valued as integral to the civil society they have been critical in forming. As colonies have won their independence many find themselves still beholden to their former colonial oppressors due to the underdevelopment of their infrastructures that were and are kept fragile to assure continued dependency through mis-education and creation of a labor force directed to continued enrichment of the colonial power while keeping the colonized in a pattern of economic servitude. Important to the process of sustaining people on the margins of colonial imposition has been devaluing the humanity, history, and creative products of those historically oppressed which renders invisible the contributions they have made to their countries and to world cultures.
According to José Luis González (1993: 3), in Puerto Rico the Four-Storeyed Country,
in any society with classes the true relation between the two cultures in that society is one of dominance, with the culture of the oppressors dominating and the culture of the oppressed being dominated. It follows that what is often passed off as “the general culture,” even as “the national culture,” is, naturally enough, merely a description of but one of these cultures—the dominant culture of the oppressors.
Throughout my educational journey in public schools and institutions of higher education the history of the Puerto Rican experience that speaks to the contributions of my forebearers remained invisible and hidden from the history books, art classes, and educational programs that prepared me as an educator. A teacher who was prepared to share what I had learned in my studies with my students in the Lower Eastside of New York City, an underserved economically poor community where education was viewed as the road to a better tomorrow, I felt woefully inadequate as I stood before them. My students shared my brown complexion and shared the migrant/immigrant experience of my family to El Barrio, East Harlem New York. Their stories were my family’s story of coming to New York in search of a better future in the land of promise that had colonized their homeland—Puerto Rico.
Their parents like mine faced overt racism, verbal, and physical abuse when seeking employment. When jobs were available they worked in underpaid menial positions often off the books and were not paid after doing the work. They labored in invisible positions with no benefits or security at the whim of their employers. The poet Pedro Pietri immortalized the struggle of our parents in his legendary poem Puerto Rican Obituary describing the commitment our parents had to jobs that exploited their labor and their love of family that kept them working for little financial gain, today the working poor.
Our parents labored in deplorable conditions to pay unaffordable rents in heatless apartments. Without health care or official employment their lives were dedicated to keeping a roof over their family’s head and food on the table. My students in junior high school were young adults before their time, often working in after-school jobs to help their parents. They were substitute parents so their parents could sustain their jobs.
As an arts education student teacher and graduate of New York University P.S. 121 in the Lower Eastside employed me. The student body was primarily Puerto Rican, Dominican, and from different parts of Latin America. The faculty with the exception of three of us was White. On the second day of class the principal waited by the time clock to inform another Puerto Rican teacher and me that we were not allowed to speak in Spanish in our classes although our classes comprised primarily non-English-speaking students. Needless to say communication was close to impossible.
Feeling like a total failure as a teacher I got home one day and I started crying. My mother asked me what had occurred in school. My response to her was that my students didn’t understand me as I was acting on the instructions of the principal not to speak Spanish. With my mother’s usual wit, she proceeded to ask me if the classroom had a door. When I nodded yes, she laughed and said, “lock the door and speak in Spanish to your students.” The next day with the door closed I spoke in Spanish to my class. The classroom turned into a joyous celebration as students who had placed bets on whether I was Puerto Rican, Dominican, or Panamanian celebrated my speaking in Spanish. My students became my co-conspirators; I instructed them not to let anyone know that we spoke Spanish in class.
A few weeks into the school term I presented the class with paintings of one of my favorite artists Paul Gauguin attempting to interest the students in an art history that excluded our experience. When the students saw the brown skin of the women painted by Gauguin I captured their interest in viewing and discussing his work. One student in her excitement said that the women looked Puerto Rican and another student said no, they were Dominican; another said they could be Black.
My students saw themselves in the artwork and I realized that my love for Gauguin’s work was more than his incredible artistry. It also spoke of my need to be visible in the field I had chosen. The Tahitian women depicted were brown-skinned like me.
I also realized that in the questions of my students I had never learned about Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and African American artists in my school journey nor the history of my people. Through my students I understood the power of education to render visible and invisible the stories of different human experiences. The power and process of valuing and devaluing people and their cultures while imposing stories of dominance as true history became clearer to me.
I thank my students for making me self-realize and pushing me into breaking the chains of my invisibility providing the pathway to insert our experiences and create places that nurture our humanity and value from the frameworks that sustain and honor our legacy and contributions.
This chapter is dedicated to all of us that insist on being visible by claiming and writing our narratives and assuring our stories are integral to the telling of history and the valuing of our people and their experience while breaking the system of mis-education that renders some people and their stories invisible. It is the process of understanding that we are all valuable and vital contributors to history making.
New York City is a reflection of the nation; it is home to populations from all parts of the world. We are all migrants and immigrants brought to the seshores by force, exile, or the promise of new beginnings and a better future in a democratic nation.
Native peoples are the only cultural group that can authentically claim to be the First Americans. Yet through mis-education we continue the mythology that there was a discovery ignoring that Christopher Columbus came upon populations of Native people in the Caribbean who had a complex system of farming, housing, medicinal, and hunting skills. Also in the fabrication of the story of discovery it is forgotten that Columbus was lost and thought he was in India or China when he landed in the Caribbean which caused him to misname the people he met living on the islands. The groups he met were Tainos, Caribe, and Siboneys among others with their distinct cultural traditions and practices. The islands had names; Boriken is the native name of Puerto Rico, renamed San Juan Bautista by Columbus, as Turtle Island is the original name of New York City.
Columbus and his crew were the immigrants who imported the racists and discriminatory practices of Spain to the Americans. According to Eduardo Galeano (1992: 180) in the publication We Say No, according to the mindset of the invaders, “God and Man lived in Europe; the New World was inhabited by demons and monkeys.”
In the colonial mindset of Columbus types it is evident that the power to name, the power to label, positions others as primitive—lacking in value and power. The colonization of the rest of the Caribbean, Latin American, United States, Africa, and other countries soon followed framed within the lenses of the mind-set of dominance.
The mindset of dominance continues in contemporary society as we witness the shifting demographics within the United States and other urban international countries closing their doors to the people they have oppressed in their former and in the case of Puerto Rico present colonies. According to Galeano (1992: 180):
No imperial undertaking, neither the old kind nor today’s has the capacity to discover. An adventure of usurpation and plunder does not discover; it covers up. It doesn’t reveal it hides. To be successful it needs ideological alibis that turn arbitrariness into law.
Ibid.
It also requires an educational process to disseminate arbitrariness to assure that generations are instilled with the “cover up” turning a lie into “truth.” History has taught us that conquering nations as a first step use their power to subjugate the conquered by relegating their cultural history to the margins and invisibility through force and legal systems. Galeno (1992: 212) further notes that:
The dominant culture expressed through the educational system and above all through the mass media does not reveal reality; it masks it. It doesn’t help bring about change; it helps avoid change. It doesn’t encourage democratic participation; it induces passivity, resignation and selfishness. It doesn’t generate creativity it creates consumers.
The recent defeat of the Dream Act in the New York Senate by two votes speaks of the continued framing and labeling of the illegality of immigrants that are viewed as lesser by those former immigrants and descendants of immigrants who now have the political power to exclude. Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn posted the following on March 17, 2014 on his website:
This piece of progressive legislation was brought to the floor earlier this evening and if passed, would have ensured immigrant children, in search of the American dream through educational access and financial aid, the road map to success.
Senate Republicans failed our young people. Not a single member of the Republican Conference voted yes. Not a single member of the Republicans voted yes for opportunity or yes for equality. Instead, the Republican Conference stood up and implied that the Statue of Liberty no longer stood for an open door.
They stood up and argued that our great state of New York has limitations on who should succeed. They argued that there was a time the Statute of Liberty stood for opportunity for all, but even though they were all descended from immigrants, that was then and this is now.1
In the voice of a student echoes the words of Galeano and the sentiment of centuries of those groups excluded and labeled the“other” by those with the power to legislate, Luba Gomez stated to NY 1 News:
“We’re criminalized, and we have to sort of hold this cross over us saying, ‘Oh, you’re not worthy,’ which is really what I feel the senate said today, that we’re not worthy of a higher education because we are what they call as ‘illegals,’ and it’s really heartbreaking,” voiced volunteer Luba Gomez.
The denial of formal education to young people is the denial of their right to be active participants in the potential of their lives and that of the country they are part of. The inability for the New York State Senate and the Nation to pass the Dream Act continues the segregation of educational opportunity in this State, in this Nation. Although formal segregation, expressed through the framework of separate but equal schools, were outlawed by Brown V. Board of Education in 1954–1955, the actions of government, the under-resourcing of schools in historically marginalized communities and the rising costs of education makes education available to the economically privileged at the expense of the poor. Economic disparity continues to create a system of segregation and inequality. Immigrants, primarily of color, of economically poor communities, are now caught in the continuing battle over who has the right to a formal education and who doesn’t.
The importance and control of education and its content is mirrored in how the United States government instituted its educational policies in the island of Puerto Rico. Note that the island became a booty of the Spanish American War in 1898 and continues as a colonial possession of the United States.
In the chapter entitled “Puerto Rico: The Permanent Possession” in The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century, author Ronald Fernandez (1992: 56) addresses the educational system in Puerto Rico, a Spanish language-dominant island still.
Beginning with the military occupation, English was the mandated medium of instruction; however, none of the children, and few of their native teachers, understood English. So like the biblical Tower of Babel, education in Puerto Rican schoolhouses confused everyone in the room. Even in 1991 only 20 percent of islanders spoke English, in the first decades of the twentieth century the tiny portion of islanders who spoke the language was a sure guarantee that few students would ever garner even basic educational skills.
The attempts to Americanize the population by changing the name of schools to Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, and attempting to remove traditional holidays like the Three Kings Day and other island holidays met and continue to meet with failure and resistance. The cultural identification of the people continues to be Puerto Rican and the language Spanish under a colonial framework of the United States that is now 116 years old.
The role of culture as affirmation and resistance is powerful! A racially mixed population with a significant Black presence in Puerto Rico was and continues to be an anomaly for the United States. While racial segregation reigns in the United States the racial policies of oppression in Puerto Rico carry a similar mindset relegating Puerto Ricans to an inferior race, as noted by the comments of Representative Atterson Rucker of Colorado at a Congressional Hearing during 1907: “The production of children, especially of the dark color, is largely on the increase…” (Fernandez 1992: 57).
The colonial status of Puerto Rico with the United States is a reality that insists on understanding the role of culture, community, national identity, and the role of education is creating spaces of free thought and creative action.
As the United States commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, part of the thrust of President Lyndon Johnson to create a just and civil society, it is important that we connect the direct linkages between race, limited access to education, healthcare, housing poverty, law, class, and social status, and all other systems that rendered and continue to frame too many of our population in a devalued status.
According to Mark Updegrove, director of the LBJ Library in Texas, as quoted in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, April 7, 2014:
“President Johnson’s vision for a more just and honorable America contributed to the most transformational civil rights legislation since Reconstruction and a crucial step in the realization of America’s promise,” says Updegrove. “But his vision went far beyond ending racial discrimination. He believed that education, economic opportunity, health care, clean air and water, and access to the arts and humanities were inherent civil rights for all Americans.”
The need for legislation to state what should have been a given in a democratic society, a promise to its citizens, was and is a dream differed to its Native inhabitants of the land and other populations who are of color and poor within the borders of the United States of America.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the State of the Union of January 8, 1964 stated: “Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.”
Governmental ratification in 1964 was a result of many non-violent and confrontational overt reactions to the ravages of inequity suffered by different racial and cultural groups within the United States and its dominant policies abroad. Before the passage of the 14th amendment in 1868 the cry for freedom and equality for African Americans reigned as it did after in the “official” end of enslavement in 1865. The refusal by African Americans to allow the indignities of racial segregation were met by violent behavior by the Whites in the South that included bombing of churches, vicious dogs being released to attack African Americans and their supporters; beatings and death speaks of the magnitude of fundamental immoral behavior that persists.
”Setting the Record Straight: A View from Seneca Country”, by G. Peter Jemison in Voices from the Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity, addresses the plight of Native Americans in having their history rendered invisible and where present recorded incorrectly and inaccurately.
Who has the power and distribution system to tell the story and determine the point of view from which it is told? The result is that the information that is taught to the young is thereby circumscribed and then reflected in the conventional media.
The story told by the textbook writers has been carefully edited for the young minds that the system wanted to mold. But we are challenging the American educational system, which has permitted amnesia to replace a truthful history. The continuing activities of our movement are forcing the system to reexamine the presentation of historical contributions of all peoples to the fabric of America.
(Vega and Greene 1993: 24)
Jemison reminds us that among the Native community the following are part of their goals:
Our movement seeks the recognition of Native American artists, writers and musicians. It relies on a conceptual reawakening of our way of life.
Actually this way has never vanished, but most Americans still know very little about the Native Americans. Our art is the indigenous art of this country, in fact. The American Indian way of life goes on despite systematic attempts by the United States government to extinguish our languages and traditional ways.
(Vega and Greene 1993: 23)
What the Native American experience teaches us is that inequity is at the foundation of the colonial mindset that frames the power structure of this nation as that of other countries and people that follow a structure of dominance. It is so embedded in our thinking and teachings that it is reflected both in the mindset of those who imposed their dominance and those who have been dominated.
”In Rethinking Who We: Are A Basic Discussion of Basic Terms” by John Kuo Wei Tchen, we are encouraged to look deeply into our ideas and the framing of our worldview.
I’d like to make a few comments on some underlying ideas that are so pervasive in the United States life that, like the air we breathe, they are so much a part of the basic ways in which we think of ourselves and others that we seldom consider what they are truly about. The simple declarative statement “We are modern individuals living in a pluralistic, democratic society” embodies much of what Americans would say about themselves. Now let’s dissect the phrase and analyze the ideological baggage it contains.
First of all, we is a nationalist term still used in this increasingly global, trans- and international world. Despite this culture’s fascination with encounters of the third kind, it resolutely stands for those who are inaccurately self-designated as Americans – which only truly means those of the United States. Of course, we can immediately sense some of the limits and complications of such binary terms. Does we necessarily mean a legal citizen? What if due to racist laws a person of color is not allowed to become a citizen? Why are Asians who have been in this country for generations still viewed as foreigners by virtue of their “look”?
In addition, we is juxtaposed to them, which presumably refers to peoples of other nations and cultures who do not necessarily have this combination of qualities we believe we embody.
(Vega and Greene 1993: 4)
Tchen insists that we critique words’ hidden meanings and have the courage to reinvigorate and redefine and invent words with inclusive definitions directing us to reconstruct American society incorporating social and I would add artistic movements to his statement making this nation a humane and just society. He states the following: “To truly make these words sing to our hearts, we have to build popular, grassroots places for engaged and meaningful dialogue about who we are becoming” (Vega and Greene 1993: 4).
In “Battle Stancing” Bernice Johnson Reagon (Vega and Greene 1993: 69–70), like a weaver creating a tapestry, unites the strands that provide the path to our work as disenfranchised communities still, as the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Legislation in 2014. As a prominent cultural activist in the Civil Rights Movement her voice framed and continues to voice our reality.
We are African American, Asian American, Chicano; we are Iroquois, the Hopi, the Puerto Rican Americans; we are women, we are the differently abled. We are citizens of this land and a part of the cultural future of this society. Our constituencies are cultural and historical communities that have been neglected and attacked by a majority culture that upholds the principle of cultural dominance, which holds Western European culture and its derivatives as supreme …
Through our work as scholars, cultural programmers, art managers, community organizers, artists, educational specialists, or institution builders, some of us work to challenge monocultural dominance.
We work in many ways so that we can bring an end to the false and crippling concepts of cultural dominance and superior knowledge.
We see our work as a part of a contemporary struggle to bring into being a new national format, generated from a community base that will allow for the survival and prosperity of our cultural communities as equal partners within the society.
These excerpts from the essays of contributors to Voices From The Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity, edited by Marta Moreno Vega and Cheryll Y. Greene, are versions of papers presented at the Cultural Diversity Based on Cultural Grounding II Conference in New York, October 17–18, 1991; a series of conferences designed to bring cultural activists and advocates together to create pathways to equity for all communities.
In the United States the Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts, Nuyorican, La Raza/Chicano, Native American, Asian, Rural, Gay Movements, although considered and treated as marginal, have consistently sustained their aesthetic centricity defining and creating from their standards of excellence. Understanding the importance of education as the promoter of the values of the dominant cultural and social values groups considered marginal during the late 1970s and 1980s advocated for departments focused on their contributions to world cultures. The growth of Chicano, Puerto Rican, Asian, Native, and African American studies departments and programs that emerged in higher education carried the stigma of being marginal histories and often emphasized the point by being non-credited courses.
Like the Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Movement, the concept was to develop curriculums of a true history that inserted the accomplishment of historically disenfranchised communities of color, poor white communities, the voices of women, address gender and the broader inequities that impacted all. The importance of assuring that scholars and experts from historically marginalized communities should be the creators of educators in these programs was key to assuring an educational process of inclusion and historical correctness.
Similar to opportunities that would be available through the Dream Act to young people today, government programs like SEEK opened access and created opportunities for economically challenged students from marginalized communities.
The Creation and Purpose of SEEK
SEEK was created in 1966 when the New York State Legislature enacted a law that mandated the creation of programs providing access and support for New York City residents and to advance the cause of equality and educational opportunity at the City University of New York. Today the university maintains a commitment to admit students under the provisions of this law and accept students who normally would not qualify through regular admissions criteria.
As noted by the last line the programs also stigmatized the students applying for these opportunities so as to “accept students who normally would not qualify through regular admissions criteria.”
Outside the anti-poverty and educational opportunities that the Johnson administration launched to create a more equitable society, communities organized cultural movements to give voice to the authentic voices and issues plaguing our people. On the West Coast the Black Panther Party emerged in 1966 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement on the East Coast. This empetus was reflected in the Young Lords Party founded in 1969 in Chicago followed by a New York Chapter in East Harlem by Puerto Rican youth. They were the first generation of university students out of Old Westbury College and Columbia University who aspired to achieve professional careers. The founders of the New York Chapter, who were brilliant young people, soon understood that the formal educational school college process was not providing the education that was needed to improve the conditions of their communities.
Felipe Luciano, former Chairman of the Young Lords Party, voiced his thoughts published in Palante Young Lords Party states the importance of education in the following statement: “America should never have taught us how to read, she should never have given us eyes to see” (Abrahamson 1971: 28).
In Harlem parents also reacted to the mis-education of their children by insisting that the school district should develop a project called El Museo del Barrio. Witnessing the African American artistic movement’s creation of Studio Museum in Harlem, Puerto Rican parents understood the importance of creating a space of cultural identity. The vision was a participatory children’s museum providing historical and creative arts education placing the narrative of Puerto Rico at the center of their consciousness and learning. As a project of District 5 artists, Rafael Ortiz was its first director. Under school decentralization it was moved to District 4, and the second director educator Marta Moreno Vega was appointed.
Arlene Dávila in her article entitled “Culture in the Battlefront: From Nationalist to Pan-Latino Projects” in the book entitled Mambo Montage The Latinization of New York by Augustin Lao-Montes and Arlene Dávila (2001: 506) notes:
El Museo del Barrio, for its part, was similarly involved in larger social struggles of civil empowerment in the late 1960s. In particular, this was the result of the growing demands for education equity and for the representation of Puerto Rican history and culture in public schools, issues that provoked demonstrations and boycotts throughout the l960s. The idea to develop a non-school educational program that would provide Puerto Rican children with a positive self-image came out of a group of parents and educators from community school district 4.
El Museo was conceived by its founders as a community museum that, following the emergent model of such institutions, sought to place people rather than collections at the center of its mission.
El Museo del Barrio, Studio Museum in Harlem, and other cultural organizations across the country sought to redefine the role of museums creating a vision and mission of inclusiveness. The openings provided by the Civil Rights Movement and Anti-Poverty Programs created the resources and opportunities previously not available.
Education was more affordable to historically excluded communities with open enrollment programs and low-cost student loans. Today affordable loans have virtually disappeared while public and private higher education generate escalating quantities of debt making it almost impossible for the economicallychallenged marginal and middle-class communities to afford higher education without going into significant debt. This is certainly a reversal of the goals of the Civil Rights and Anti-Poverty goals of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Traditional museums, according to Susan E. Cahan (2007: 423) in “Performing Identity and Persuading a Public: The Harlem On my Mind Controversy”:
In the 1960’s, art museums in the United States were forced to respond to an unprecedented set of democratic demands from artists and activists …
… Many artists also asserted that institutional equality required racial integration of mainstream arts museums.
Cahan notes that on January 18, 1969 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exhibition called“Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968.” In response to the demands of inclusion by the Black community the response was an exhibition conceived and curated by Allon Schoener, a White curator. The exhibition was primarily a photographic documentation of Harlem that didn’t include the work of Black artists. The overt demonstrations and negative reactions of Black Arts and community spoke of the indignity and patronizing irrelevancy of the exhibition.
In response to the exclusion of communities of color the New York State Council on the Arts created a program called Ghetto Arts:
In the past several years many New York State municipalities attempted to reduce racial tension during the summer months by offering ghetto residents arts and recreation programs. Inadvertently, they helped to bring to light artists who would speak for the ghettos artists who existed within the communities and had something to say about their lives there. The Ghetto Arts Program seeks to develop these artists by giving them an audience, a training ground, and a place to experiment. Hopefully, it will also help to place them in the larger art world so that the now disquieting title of “ghetto arts” will no longer be needed.
(NYS COUNCIL ON THE ARTS 1969–70: CHAIRMAN’S REVIEW, Seymour Knox, New York State Council on the Arts)
Although disquieting to the Chair of the Council Mr. Knox, the program was still given the name Ghetto Arts by the National Endowment for the Arts. Like Schoener, the curator of Harlem on My Mind, instead of including artists and scholars from the Black community being invited to curate the show and program, the mindset of arrogance prevailed.
There is no question that there have been changes since the Civil Rights Actand opportunities that were unavailable in the past are now more available. Nonetheless significant inequity and disparity continue as is evident in the funding patterns of public and private foundations.
The push by historically marginalized communities in part was successful in making a broader community aware of the vast contributions of individuals and their cultural groups to society. The narratives of multiculturalism and programs that have emerged in large traditional Eurocentric institutions while creating an awareness have also made diversity the “flavor of the month” or exceptional rather than the norm. Ghetto Arts at the New York State Council is now the Special Arts Program, although the mindset remains tied to its creation.
Arts organizations of color still remain marginalized in the Special Arts Program with few organizations of color being funded by other art-disciplined categories. The Special Arts Program has the most extensive programs to fund with limited resources that continue to diminish as state funds are cut. The New York City Department of Cultural Arts funds 34 traditional arts organizations called the Cultural Institutions Group with 85 percent of its funds while 15 percent is distributed to more than 1,200 small and mid-size organizations in the Program Category where the predominant number of art organizations of color are relegated.
This holds true for the national funding patterns across the nation. In “Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change: High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy,” Holly Sidford2 states:
A growing number of artists and cultural groups are working in artistic traditions from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific Rim, as well as in new technology-based and hybrid forms. They are using the arts in increasingly diverse ways to engage and build communities and address the root causes of persistent societal problems, including issues of economic, educational and environmental injustice as well as inequities in civil and human rights.
Much of this work is being done at the grassroots and community levels by artists and relatively small cultural organizations. Yet, the majority of arts funding supports large organizations with budgets greater than $5 million. Such organizations, which comprise less than 2 percent of the universe of arts and cultural nonprofits, receive more than half of the sector’s total revenue. These institutions focus primarily on Western European art forms, and their programs serve audiences that are predominantly white and upper income. Only 10 percent of grant dollars made with a primary or secondary purpose of supporting the arts explicitly benefits underserved communities, including lower-income populations, communities of color and other disadvantaged groups. And less than 4 percent focus on advancing social justice goals. These facts suggest that most arts philanthropy is not engaged in addressing inequities that trouble our communities, and is not meeting the needs of our most marginalized populations.
The data in my opinion reflects that the more things change the more they stay the same. The inequity forged throughout our history continues although the population of communities of color rapidly grows larger and contributes to the economic growth of the nation as “illegal immigrants”, “legal” citizens, and “migrants”. The income gap between the top and the bottom grows ever larger as the conversation on inequity as demonstrated by the occupiers of financial centers attested.
Issues of inequality seem poised to play a large role in the public discourse this year. President Obama is expected to use his Jan. 28 State of the Union speech to promote specific proposals aimed at inequality, such as raising the federal minimum wage. Congressional Democrats reportedly see inequality as an issue that could help them in this year’s midterm elections. And some Republicans, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have begun talking about creating “a new opportunity society in America” as a conservative approach to addressing persistent poverty.
As the debate gears up, it’s important to understand some basic facts about how inequality is measured, the trends over time and how the U.S. compares globally. Here’s a “5 Facts” primer …:
1: By one measure, U.S. income inequality is the highest it’s been since 1928. In 1982, the highest-earning 1% of families received 10.8% of all pretax income, while the bottom 90% received 64.7%, according to research by UC-Berkeley professor Emmanuel Saez. Three decades later, according to Saez’ preliminary estimates for 2012, the top 1% received 22.5% of pretax income, while the bottom 90%’s share had fallen to 49.6%.
The result in part is as startling and offensive as the aesthetic centricity and cultures of marginal communities are too often coopted and viewed as commodities in commercials, multicultural exhibitions, festivals, and higher educational programs that are developed to “serve” marginal communities without their presence or significant input. The model set forth by the exhibition Harlem on My Mind continues to exist in similar ways although more covert. Whether well intended or not the result is the appearance of inclusion while in actuality historically marginal communities are at increased risk.
Developing ways of understanding and valuing the wide range of aesthetic visions, standards, systems of learning, and identifying experts that have to work with an inclusive equitable framework is essential in developing approaches and systems that are directed at achieving cultural equity.
Community Art University Without Walls is an initiative that seeks to engage the process of higher education in a more equitable inclusive process bringing together the expertise of varied sources to share and involve students in transformative experiences that honor cultural equity and social justice as a way of thinking and functioning in the world. The community and course facilitators are community members with a long and current history of working within their communities as partners for progressive change.
Community Arts University Without Walls is a special course of study for those interested in the impact and role of cultural arts in engaging issues of social justice within communities. The courses taught by renowned community experts and scholars culturally grounded in the arts, public policy, and advocacy will present and engage with students on best practices that have made positive and significant contributions to diverse communities. The two-week intensive course of study focuses on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, important contemporary issues including cultural equity, social and economic justice and their continuing impact on the present and future generations of cultural arts activists.
The courses are designed to provide for reflection and examination of students’ core beliefs and assumptions in the areas of cultural equity, advocacy, and art for change as it relates to their realities, ideologies, and assumptions. Engaging with colleagues in similar areas with other working frameworks provides for critical analysis and exchanges to further enhance their praxis. The exchange of information and knowledge is designed to motivate creative and innovative thought, while exploring possibilities for joint work and collaborations with community cultural advocates in Puerto Rico and other locations during the two-week intensive courses and over time as work with mentors continues.
Each day is divided between classroom sessions in the morning where all students attend together, and site-based study in the afternoon for smaller groups of 12–15 students. The morning classes provide cultural, historical, and policy contexts while the afternoon sessions afford practical experiential learning opportunities with established local community groups.
There are two classes, a morning session and an afternoon intensive—The Community Imperative: Achieve Cultural Equity and Global Cultural Social Justice Movements. In the afternoon, students actively engage in community innovative and transformative projects with cultural workers. This two-week intensive is designed to provide significant immersion into community engagement strategies focused on cultural equity and social justice.
This course brings together an analysis of global contexts and local innovations to develop an understanding of a movement for cultural equity through advancing community arts. The continuous challenges posed by racial and cultural diversity within nations and globally insist upon the need for understanding how cultural issues of equity and inequity are addressed in varied locations and at the manner that communities generate forms of cultural expression and ways of life that affirm and express their values and sensibilities. Understanding the global landscape necessitates an understanding of the global issues impacting cultural communities that are a reflection of public policy that determines the social status of varied communities ranging from cultural issues to economic opportunities.
The why and art of community cultural work are important to understanding the art of meaning and intent that addresses issues and solutions. These narratives have been marginal and/or excluded from the the traditional arts narrative from the perspective and voice of the culturally grounded communities that are the articulators of their political and creative work.
The importance of cultural preservation through education and the arts is of paramount importance. Coursework develops an understanding of community-based initiatives, varied narratives, and organizational frameworks that assure the recognition of the heritage and legacies of cultural communities. Included in this pursuit are new heightened levels of public discourse, awareness, and involvement leading to significant policy changes. Special emphasis is placed on the analysis of goals, strategies, and outcomes of student involvements. A first-hand dialogue with Puerto Rican university students actively involved in raising issues of social, cultural, and economic equity is provided.
The program is conceived in partnership with advisory groups of community leaders, educators, scholars, and students to assure the best thinking of the diversity of perspectives. Aimed at developing cultural equity and social justice as cultural ambassadors, the two-week engagement is designed to witness the power of community members in designing their present and future as positive change agents in their communities. In the words of Galeano (1992: 213):
The struggle against structures hostile to democracy, structures of impotence, requires the development of a liberating national culture, capable of unleashing people’s creative energy and capable of washing the cobwebs from the eyes so that they might see themselves and the world.
Abramson, Michael. Palante: Young Lords Party. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. Print.
Cahan, Susan E. “Performing Identity and Persuading a Public: The Harlem on My Mind Controversy.” JSTOR, July 2007. Web.
Fernandez, Ronald. The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century. 2nd ed. New York: Praeger, 1992. Print.
Galeano, Eduardo. We Say No: Chronicles 1963-1991. Trans. Mark Fried and others. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992. Print.
Gonzalez, Jose Luis. Puerto Rico: The Four-Storeyed Country. Princeton and New York: Markus Wiener Publishing, Inc., 1993. Print.
Lao-Montes, Augustin, and Arlene Dávila. Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York. New York: Colombia University Press, 2001.
Vega, Marta Moreno, and Cheryll Y. Greene. Voices from the Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity. Trenton, NJ: Africa World, 1993. Print.
Campbell, Mary Schmidt, and Randy Martin. Artistic Citizenship: A Public Voice for the Arts. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Carbone, Teresa et al. Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties. New York: Brooklyn Museum and Monacelli Press, 2014. Print.
Clements, Alexis. “Recovering the History of the Puerto Rican Art Workers’ Coalition.” Hyperallergic, n. d. Web. April 18, 2014.
Davila, Arlene. Culture Works: Space, Value and Mobility across the Neoliberal Americas. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Print.
De Andrade, Mario. Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral. New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1979. Print.
Goldberg Jr., Fred et al. “Exempt and Nonprofit Organizations Alert: New York Non-Profit Revitalization Act.” Skadden. Skadden n.d. Web. April 9, 2014.
Kozol, Jonathan. Rachel and her Children: Homeless Families in America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006. Print.
—The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2005. Print.
Manjon, Sonia B., Dr., and Dr. Marta M. Vega. A Snap Shot: Landmarking Community Cultural Arts Organizations Nationally. New York: CCCADI, 2012. Print.
1 Parker, Kevin. “STATEMENT FROM SENATOR KEVIN PARKER ON THE SENATE VOTE ON THE NEW YORK STATE DREAM ACT.” NYSenate.gov, March 17, 2014. Web <http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/statement-senator-kevin-parker-senate-vote-new-york-state-dream-act>.
2 Sidford, Holly. “Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change:High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy.” National Committee For Responsive Philanthropy. National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy, n.d. Web <http://www.ncrp.org/paib/arts-culture-philanthropy>.