Speckling the White Artscape by DeReau Farrar

SPECKLING THE WHITE ARTSCAPE

by DeReau Farrar

I make art in Whitespace for a living.

More specifically, I make music that is explicitly and intentionally tied to the spiritual lives and, when I am most successful, spiritual development of White people. I don’t mean to suggest that there are only White people there. That is not nearly the case. But, it is Whiteness - White idealism - that dominates that space.

So then, what does it mean for me, a queer and Black man charged with making art under these circumstances?

I am no stranger to White arts spaces. I have worked in several predominately and dominantly White churches, but, also, I have a resume full of theatrical, operatic, symphonic, choral, and film credits - almost all in Whitespace. Even the nearly countless times I have performed in Porgy and Bess have all been in Whitespace. Traveling with mostly Black people through Europe to perform spirituals and other Black music was still an artistic expression in Whitespace. And every time I make a commitment to make art in a new Whitespace, and even sometimes in the middle of that commitment, the tensive question I must always try to answer is about whether it is my job to produce art that represents this community, or whether it is my job to create art that represents myself.

I decided long ago that I am an artist and not simply an entertainer, which I believe answers the question, even if it does not ease the tension. As an entertainer, my role would be to satisfy the audience by providing an undisruptive experience that appeals to the senses. As an entertainer, I would position myself as something to do - a luxury item to fill one’s moment or evening or weekend with. This is not in any way to disparage or discredit entertainers. They do the sacred work of keeping us all balanced and, to whatever extent possible, functioning. And the best of them do it with more sensitivity, skill, and dedication than most of us are capable of in any aspect of our lives. Still, as an artist, my role is different. It is to create wholly from within myself, bypassing priority of the senses and reaching into the mind, heart, and soul. As an artist, it is my role to disrupt the status quo, promote necessary discomfort, and hope for a shift or response, no matter how slight, in even one person. Needless to say, it is impossible to be perfect in this work.

So, the simple answer is that I show up to work as myself.

Whenever I am welcomed into Whitespace, and I am generally welcomed very enthusiastically, I enter knowing that the dear, well-meaning White folks that brought me in likely have very little idea what it means to empower and grant authority to a Black person, especially one committed to showing up as authentically as possible. (I have been deeply conditioned to be a master code-switcher, so even though I try to arrive authentically, it is more complex than that.) These people are enthusiastic because hiring me often means progress toward their board-sanctioned diversity and inclusion goals. It means they can begin to feel better about their own relationship with racism. And because colorblindness has been so thoroughly poured into them, they make the mistake of believing that we are all the same even if we look different. They make the mistake of believing the stage and the artistic process and the organization can remain the same even if the people look different. Meanwhile, I know long before they do that they have invited in a disruption to their way of life as well as to their relationship to art, as we tend to doubt art’s subversive nature until we are on the impact end of it.

The victory of diversity, inclusion, equity, and anti-oppression work is not in how well we speckle the White landscape with Black and Brown faces, it is in how well we adapt to the influence of those Black and Brown lives on our own. If you are not changed by this work, you are doing it wrong.

The most difficult part of working in Whitespace for me is insisting on survival, which is no different from carrying my Black face and Black body through daily life. I am built for it, inherently and ancestrally. Black resilience is the unexpected side effect of generations of White oppression. The most difficult part is not my part. Every time one of the congregants of the church I serve says something like, “I can’t imagine what it must be like to work in such a White place and in such a White city,” I think to myself, “I can’t imagine what it must be like to learn that almost nothing you have was gained with any moral purity.”

You see, I can live with White people. I can make art that is beautiful and meaningful in White arts spaces. It seems to me that the difficult part lies within White society’s ability to adapt to the presence of my Blackness and all that it has to offer. The most successful White arts spaces will acknowledge that there will be substantial losses, embrace the change happening within them and their people, and have faith that the art we make together will inspire generations of people much better at this than we ever were.