Cultural Equity
An Evening with Ta-Nehisi Coates
A standard Seattle November night at Benaroya Hall, inside as much as out. Donning brands such as Patagonia, North Face, REI, Merrill, and Hunter, they raced, but not obviously, to ticket windows. One committed couple posted nearby, asking random ticketholders to possibly “buy just one.” But with a slight tip of the head, concerned eyebrows, and that smiling grimace that says sorry not sorry, Patagonia (“Pat” for short) and the others clutched their tickets and filed in line for the talk.
On this night, Seattle Arts & Lectures 2017/18 Presents hosted renowned journalist and Black civil rights advocate Ta-Nehisi Coates for a conversation about his latest book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, which Pat and the others happily paid a little extra to receive. Sixty dollars secured a ticket and the book. I described this scene to an associate.
“It’s as if every white person in town knew about it before we did”, she said. But this was about more than simply knowing.
Recall Proposition 1, voted down earlier this year by King County residents like Pat and by others completely different — people of color, even. Prop. 1 would have provided funding, through sales tax, for delivery of cultural access programs to our vulnerable population — a group defined in the measure as “persons or communities that…
