The Arts as White Property: An Introduction to Race, Racism, and the Arts in Education

Learning to unlearn - Tracing Failures Within Arts-Based Participatory Research

“…Vázquez, 2020). Modern aesthetics founded on Enlightenment logic conserve a normative canon which disregards and rejects other forms of artistic practice as being proper and true art forms (Mignolo & Vázquez, 2013Gaztambide-Fernández et al, 2018Vázquez, 2020). I am thinking about the film We're Already Here (my translation) (Lundestad Joof, 2018) where Fadlabi, a visual artist says: I think there is a lie in art history, in generated terminology such as primitivism, for example, where the white man was the genius who saw the jewels that those 'primitive' people could make, you know, like he is the hero (laughing).…”

“…The same desire makes it difficult for me to see what's going on. Despite the fact that cultural production and creativity is morally neutral, being as applicable to crime as to good works (Gaztambide-Fernández et al, 2018;Kara, 2015, p. 39, Seppälä et al 2021), it's as if within the discourse of arts-based research the belief is that the research participant can transform herself with the magic of a unicorn, and the researcher somehow setting the stage, shedding the light of the rainbow over the process -the rainbow made purely from the researchers' good intentions. As Kara states, "Participatory frameworks may seem like a marvellous idea to the researcher, but considerably less marvellous to the participants, who have much less to gain.…”

Dissensus, Street Art and School Change

“…As Gaztambide‐Fernández et al (2018, 2) argue, ‘because racism is foundational to Eurocentric understandings of culture and cultural production, it is always implicit in how the arts and artists are recognized and valued’. The equation of the (white) arts with goodness relies on a binary opposition which understands ‘Black (non‐White) bodies and cultural practices as abject, threatening, and the Other’ (Gaztambide‐Fernández et al 2018, 16–17). Similarly disruptive of Eurocentric and other dominant art traditions is street art, designed to unsettle, confront and question the public at large.…”

“…Similarly disruptive of Eurocentric and other dominant art traditions is street art, designed to unsettle, confront and question the public at large. In this light, resistance to the statue reads as a manifestation of antiblackness in education and the Manichaean logic of the ‘arts as white property’ (Gaztambide‐Fernández et al 2018, 6). It also reads as a reaction to street art’s irreverence, in this case, its syncretic and, for some, sacrilegious, blend of Christian iconography (the long red, satin cape and the hands giving blessing invoking the Virgin Mary and other saints, the dove, the halos) with that of other spiritual traditions (the jaguar is an important symbol of power in many pre‐Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, and birds are highly symbolic across many religions).…”

A Dance of Resistance from Recife, Brazil: Carnivalesque Improvisation in Frevo

“…Sarmento goes on to explain that patrimonialization has positively affected regional self-esteem, cultural visibility, and the valuation of popular culture (2010, 114–21), but it has also whitewashed the traumas of frevo's violent history in favor of the illusion of a “clean” and “pure” cultural heritage (2010, 133). Gaztamide-Fernández, Kraehe, and Carpenter have described how nonwhite art forms have had to battle the notion that the arts are “white property” and that these forms must be “whitewashed” to be legitimized (2018, 18). In Recife and Olinda, there are two main strands of frevo: one that exhibits a more Westernized aesthetic (straight lines, extended limbs, verticality) and is commonly seen on mainstream or touristic stages, and another that favors a more hunched and inwardly focused style that is more common on the streets of carnival.…”