The Toothbrush Test for Culture
Why cultural organisations need to brush their teeth on diversity
At the end of February Daniel York wrote a fantastic blog entitled ‘The Racial Pecking Order in British Theatre and TV’
The post lays out step-by-step how privilege for middle class, white people is maintained in the arts — in some ways building on Kwarme Kwei Armah’s depiction of “structural inequality.”
Daniel draws on the work of American sociologist David T. Wellman to refute the popular notion that all “racism” is born of ignorant prejudice.
Instead Wellman’s subject is
“culturally sanctioned strategies for defending social advantage based on race”.
Now few things are more incendiary than the word racism in polite company in the UK.
Actually the whole concept of prejudice is tricky for people in the arts. Many of them think that owning a couple of Ken Loach DVDs and having the ink of the Guardian on their fingers means that they should be exempt from such things.
Now I write this as a white male. Even more a white male who moved around the country a lot as a kid. So I can code shift if I want to. I’m pretty hard to pigeonhole which is helpful in this culture.
It seems to me though that you could see one of the “culturally sanctioned strategies for defending social advantage” in the response to Daniel’s blog. Basically lots of people retweeted the blog, talked about it when they met-up, and made generally encouraging noises. But nobody really did very much. Most of all nobody challenged anybody.
One of the “culturally sanctioned strategies” is actually to make the conversation on diversity really difficult. We’ve become quite used to just grumbling about a lack of diversity rather than drawing a line and saying things need to change now.
After all, diversity should be a issue of selfishness for arts organisations. How can they draw the best talent in? How can they find artists and producers who can connect to new and more diverse audiences? There are some of us who think diversity itself is a driver of creativity.
In finding a better way to talk about about this stuff we can take some advice from the American DJ Jay Smooth.
The fact is we all live in a culture that, whilst better than it used to be, has some pretty negative things in it.
Rather than calling people on racism like we’re demanding plastic surgery — demanding they undertake some drastic operation — we should think of it as reminding them of the basic principles of dentistry. If you don’t brush your teeth you’re gonna end up with some of this prejudice that is in the air on your breath.
There are some conversations we are getting better at having. A great invention in terms of this is the Bechdel test in film
In order to pass the test the film has to meet the following criteria.
It has to have at least two women in it, who talk to each other,about something besides a man.
It is amazing how few films pass.
Some cinemas have apparently taken to letting patrons know if a film passes before they choose whether to buy a ticket or not.
So I want to propose a new test for arts organisations. We have to be a bit less specific to one artform — but here is my first stab. We should call it the Toothbrush Test.
Does the organisation’s website feature an upcoming project that features at least two artists who are from an ethnic minority background, who express themselves about something other than their response to white British culture.
And if they don’t pass?
Simply tweet, email or facebook them an image of a toothbrush and a link to this article.
We’re not saying they are evil — but that they do have to make some changes.
I wonder how many do?
Lets at least talk about it.
