African American Youth and the Artist's Identity: Cultural Models and Aspirational Foreclosure

Ethnicity and Participation in the Visual ArtsThe recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which tested 8th-grade students in four arts areas - visual art, music, theater, and dance- found that Black students scored lower than Hispanic, White, or Asian students in creating and responding to visual art (Keiper, Sandene, Persky, & Kuang, 2009). The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reports that the percentage of African Americans who attend visual art events is lower than other racial/ethnic groups (Nichols, 2003). Moreover, while African American and White students enroll in art classes during high school in similar percentages, "the effects [on African Americans] of taking lessons or classes... was less strongly related to [subsequent] interest and participation" (DiMaggio & Ostrower, 1992, p. xvi). It follows, then, that in spite of increases in Black college enrollment over the past decade (Planty, Hussar, Snyder, Provasnik, Kena, Dinkes, KewalRamani, & Kemp, 2008), the percentage who study the arts at the undergraduate college level relative to the total African American college population remains significantly lower than for other groups. An even smaller proportion of Blacks continues on to graduate study, the recognized path to a professional career in the fine arts (Table 1).1It has long been recognized that African Americans are underrepresented in the professional art world relative to their representation in the U.S. population (Lippard, 1990; Pindell, 1989, 1990), and numerous books and articles have called attention to African American participation in the visual arts, both as producers and consumers (Berger, 1992; DiMaggio & Ostrower, 1990; Gilroy, 1993; Ostrower, 1997; West, 2001). Data collected by the NEA show African Americans' participation in visual art activities, both in the role of producer and audience, to be significantly lower than their involvement in other art forms such as dance, music, and theater (DiMaggio & Ostrower, 1992; Nichols, 2003). Applying statistical controls for such factors as age, gender, educational attainment, occupation, socioeconomic status, marital status, and area of residence, DiMaggio and Ostrower found that Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites participated to a similar degree in every art area except visual art, where Black participation was significantly lower (1992).Scholar and social commentator bell hooks (1995) wrote of her experiences with visual art, her family, and her community in Art on My Mind, the dissonance resounding loudly in high school:Even though [my art teacher] Mr. Harold told me I was an artist, I really could not believe him.... I longed to be an artist, but whenever I hinted that I might be an artist, grown folks looked at me with contempt. They told me I had to be out of my mind thinking that black folks could be artists - why, you could not eat art. . . Life taught me that being an artist was dangerous. The one grown black person I met who made art lived in a Chicago basement. [He] was talked about as someone who had wasted his life dreaming about art. He was lonely, sad, and broke, (p. 1)Rationales for Black Non-participation in Visual ArtsIn the past, various rationales have been offered to account for low levels of African American participation in visual art. These include the historically hegemonic, anti-other aesthetic of the Western canon (Duncan, 1991; Lippard, 1990; Reynolds & Wright, 1989; Welsh-Asante, 1993), a paucity of opportunities for Black children to participate in educational activities (McCarthy & Crichlow, 1993; Young, 1990), and the discouraging effects of a racist professional art world (Pindell, 1989, 1990; Reynolds & Wright, 1989). In spite of an increasing number of African American artists and curators over the past two decades who have redefined their relationship with the art world through a post-Black aesthetic among other means (Golden, 2001), echoes of past hegemony, structural racism, and lack of opportunity persist among the general public. …