You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
States Rights on its face simply means that States should have the right to manage their own affairs without too much interference from the Federal Government. In the context of the 1960s, however, the term had particular racialized resonance: voters who didn’t think of themselves as racists would still resent the federal government forcing various institutions in their states to integrate.
Today on his excellent blog Createquity, Ian David Moss starts connecting the dots about Republicans, Gays and Anti-NEA organizing. He links to this blog post from Barry Hessenius in which Barry writes:
the “success” in getting us back to where we already were took a herculean effort and countless man hours and energy spent defending ourselves. The right wing spent relatively little time or energy putting us in that position. They know full well that “facts” aren’t important. Just a few well placed “accusations” and some media coverage, an appeal to highly charged emotions, and we had our backs to the wall, and almost lost the endowment. This Fox “report” is disturbing and alarming because it is arguably part of a much larger new right wing campaign to once again go on the attack – this time part of an effort to do anything that can be done to undermine the Obama and Democratic Administration. I fear this may have been the opening salvo in the new “cultural wars”, and the arts may again be on the defensive. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, of course, as the economic reality is making ‘survival’ problematic to a large percentage of our sector. There is little time, let alone funds and energy, to spend in defense of the arts – particularly against this kind of attack (i.e., taxpayer supported arts = pornography and ant-American sentiment).
I still believe those who make these kinds of baseless attacks are not at all interested in the art the organizations it seeks to attack are, or are not, involved with. I don’t think it was any coincidence in the first Cultural Wars that almost brought down the NEA that the “issue” in most of the attacks was gay related – Mapplethorpe nudes, a gay film festival in Texas, the production of the play Angels Over America in North Carolina - because what the attacks were really about wasn’t taxpayer money or art or pornography, they were about fund raising for the evangelical wing of the Republican party – and nothing has ever been more successful in raising funds from that sector than the specter of gay rights. When the coffers of the right wing are running dry, the time-tested solution is to trot out the threat of gays having equal rights – and it has, for a long time, worked very well. Couple the gay rights issue with the accusation that taxpayer money is spent on anti-American pornography – and, well, the potential for a fund raising bonanza is just too tempting for the right wing to ignore. A new cultural war is an easy way to grab headlines, raise the level of visceral response, and rally their troops.
It hardly matters what the motivation might be. And perhaps then here we are once again. If this is the beginning of a possible new wave of attacks on arts & culture and the NEA in particular, we’re in trouble once again. We will have no choice but to again try to defend ourselves – and waste precious time and resources in the process. But we should keep in mind that in large part the last cultural war, and very likely a new one - is but a means to an end for those who wage it against us. We should remember their real motivation as we brace for the attack and strategize to mount counter arguments. We should NOT make the mistake of thinking we have to mount free speech arguments or defend 'art'. This was, and will be, political. We need to act politically in our defense. One would hope the American society has come a long ways since the last time we fought this kind of war – but recent events suggest we remain a deeply divided country on many levels, that Washington is still a partisan citadel of power struggles and that the bickering is beginning to get nastier and deeper.
I think what we're also seeing here is the germination of a new version of the "southern strategy" aimed at anti-gay sentiment instead of anti-black sentiment. Gay rights are gaining rapidly in public support. That trend is not going to be reversed. If gay equality goes the same way as racial equality does in this country, we'll probably soon end up in a roughly similar place, where it because socially unacceptable to voice anti-gay sentiment, people when asked will say they support gay rights, and will believe themselves to deeply hold egalitarian values, while at the same time subconsciously having deep-rooted conflicts and ambiguities about their feelings about homosexuality.
When this happens, the GOP will have to develop a whole new sexuality-specific "code speech". And attacking the arts is going to be part of that arsenal just as attacking forced busing and HUD and welfare were (and continue to be) ways of triggering anti-Black sentiment without simultaneously triggering our egalitarian ideals.
In fact, I'd say it's already happening. The attacks on the NEA are thinly (and sometimes not even thinly) veiled attack on gay americans. And if you think about it for a moment, the arts are a perfect target because they easily fold into uncomfortable sentiments about the outness and gayness of gay people, aka, "I'd support gay equality, but why do they have to flaunt their gayness so much?" sentiment. So what does this mean for the upcoming fight over NEA appropriations? What it says to me is this: On gay rights, we are avery different nation than we were ten-twenty years ago. A majority of Ameircans (including a majority of servicemen and women) support ending DADT and allowing gays to serve openly. Gay marriage rights are more popular now than they've ever been. Many more Americans have close ties to openly gay people than they did twenty years ago.
In other words, we can fight back against anti-NEA mesaging in a different way that acknowledges the homophobia of the attacks directly and answers it. The latest political and social science research shows again and again that the best way to counter a covertly bigoted attack is to shine a light on the ugly underbelly and ask Americans to let their better angels prevail. The Democrats need to stop running away from gay rights issues, stop ceding the words "family values" and "Christianity" to a hateful minority and start using the language of equality. The fight over NEA funding is part of that fight. The Republicans are saying "You want to give money to faggots to make faggot art?" We need to call them on it as part of a broader discussion of both gay rights in America and the place of arts in our society.
Maybe the real problem is that sometimes our art is alienating... which is good because it pushes people to re-examine their lives and their moral and ethical inclinations. I think the fact that people are so willing to attack the institution is a testament to how vital and effective the arts are.
As an artist I have been taught that we can only control what we produce, everything else is a wild variable and focusing any energy on those uncontrollable elements undermines the real potential in a work of art.
The communication method art produces will always be more effective and profound than the words one may use. We have the advantage in that area. We can be silent as artists because we know our work will do the speaking.
Posted by: Derek | August 11, 2009 at 01:33 PM