Represent

Art and Identity Among the Black Upper-Middle Class

Patricia A. Banks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135177959
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art & Business

Patricia A. Banks traverses the New York and Atlanta art worlds to uncover how black identities are cultivated through black art patronage. Drawing on over 100 in-depth interviews, observations at arts events, and photographs of art displayed in homes, Banks elaborates a racial identity theory of consumption that highlights how upper-middle class blacks forge black identities for themselves and their children through the consumption of black visual art. She not only challenges common assumptions about elite cultural participation, but also contributes to the heated debate about the significance of race for elite blacks, and illuminates recent art world developments. In doing so, Banks documents how the salience of race extends into the cultural life of even the most socioeconomically successful blacks.

1
Constructing Black Identities

INTRODUCTION

In the hit television sitcom The Cosby Show, scenes of black life by African American artists hang in the home of the Huxtables’ New York brownstone. In their elegantly appointed living room Ellis Wilson’s Funeral Procession hangs above a fireplace, and near the front door Brenda Joy Smith’s Madonna hangs. If any viewers thought that this fictional black upper-middle-class family had lost touch with their racial identity, the black art in their home subtly indicated otherwise. The intimate connection between middle-class blacks’ racial identity and their consumption of black art has been documented in this number one show and noted in major newspapers and magazines.¹ The goal of this book is to describe in depth how upper-middle-class blacks construct black identities through consuming black visual art. I draw on fieldwork in New York City and Atlanta, Georgia. In these cities with large black middle-class populations and rich histories of black cultural production and consumption, I interviewed more than 100 upper-middle-class blacks, photographed the art in their homes, and attended black arts events.

In New York, I met upper-middle-class blacks like academic Joseph White and retired journalist Sidney White² who display black figurative paintings, prints, and photos throughout their home, and during the holiday season decorate their house with black angels and nativity scenes. I also talked with couples like Veronica and Craig Green, who take their son Gary to museum exhibitions on African art. In Atlanta, I met Erica Carter, who owns a sand painting of The Door of No Return that she bought on a trip to Gorée Island, Senegal. I also talked with Susanna and Al Franklin, who sit on the boards of black visual arts institutions.

In the pages that follow, I describe how these and the other upper-middle-class blacks I interviewed engage in black arts participation to self-consciously articulate and sustain their own and their children’s racial identity. For them, activities such as decorating a home with black holiday ornaments, buying art on a trip to Africa, and sitting on the board of a black museum are practices through which they construct different aspects of black identity, including appearances, history, pride, and unity. By deliberately participating in black arts activities to construct their racial identity, these upper-middle-class blacks practice black cultivated consumption.

Through elaborating how upper-middle-class blacks construct their racial identity through consuming black culture, this books builds on the broader research on black middle-class identity. For many middle-class blacks, racial identity is an important part of how they see themselves and their families. These middle-class blacks self-consciously articulate and nurture their racial identity through moving into black neighborhoods (Hyra, 2008; Pattillo, 2007; Prince, 2004; Taylor, 2002), joining black social organizations (Lacy, 2007), and participating in other activities that are related to blacks. The theoretical argument developed in this book deepens understanding of black identity among the black middle-class by revealing how cultural consumption is also an important practice through which middle-class blacks produce and reproduce their racial identity.

This book also engages literature on class and cultural consumption. The study of class and cultural consumption is dominated by the perspective that the consumption of high-status culture establishes and maintains the class position of the middle- and upper-class (DiMaggio, 1982a, 1982b; DiMaggio & Useem, 1978; Ostrower, 1998, 2002). For example, in arguably the most infiuential research on class and arts participation, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu theorizes that visiting art museums, buying art, and engaging in other forms of high-status arts participation distinguish the middle-class from the working-class (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu, Darbel, & Schnapper, 1991).³

Research on the black middle-class also emphasizes how high-status cultural consumption, such as shopping at high-end stores and wearing expensive clothes, is a class marker for this group (Frazier, [1957] 1997; Lacy, 2007; Landry, 1987; Pattillo, 2007).⁴ For example, in one of the most widely discussed and controversial portraits of black middle-class lifestyles, E. Franklin Frazier ([1957] 1997) argues that middle-class blacks are caught up in a web of conspicuous consumption where they wear costly jewelry, drive expensive cars, and consume other high-status goods to mark their class status.

While these studies cast light on the significance of high-status cultural consumption for class identity, we still know very little about the significance of high-status cultural consumption for racial identity.⁵ I address this gap in the literature by documenting how upper-middle-class blacks construct black identities through high-status black arts participation, such as displaying original black art in their homes and attending black museum and gallery exhibitions. This is an important contribution not only because it broadens understanding of high-status cultural consumption among the black middle-class, but also because it provides insight on increasing diversity in the art world.

In recent decades, the art world has become more diverse as middle-class blacks have been developing and participating in art groups that focus on African American and African art at major museums such as the Detroit Institute of Art and the Museum of Modern Art; donating collections of African American art to institutions such as the Savannah College of Art and Design and the University of Delaware; and helping to found and support black museums such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is being built on the National Mall. This book documents how increasing diversity in the art world is being driven in part by black cultivated consumption among middle-class blacks.

In the remainder of this chapter I describe the theory and literature that guides this study; outline my argument concerning black cultivated consumption; and briefiy describe the sites and methods. I also want to note that while participants in this study can be most specifically described as part of the black upper-middle-class, I see black cultivated consumption as a practice that characterizes the art consumption of middle-class blacks as a group. While the black cultivated consumption of upper-middle-class blacks is likely distinct from the broader black middle-class in some ways, I expect that as a whole-middle-class blacks concertedly consume black culture to construct their racial identity.⁶ As such, I discuss black cultivated consumption not just in reference to upper-middle-class blacks, but also the collective black middle-class.

RACIAL IDENTITY AND THE BLACK MIDDLE-CLASS

The opportunities and experiences of middle-class blacks in the United States have been powerfully shaped by race. For many middle-class blacks this has meant that being black is an important dimension of how they see themselves. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we see this with black middle-class intellectuals who “vindicated” the race through their work, and with black middle-class men and women who engaged in racial uplift through their organizational ties (Drake, 1978; Gaines, 1996; Higginbotham, 1993).⁷

Research on middle-class blacks in the late 20th and early 21st centuries also shows that a strong sense of racial identity is common among many members of the group. For example, in his research on African American politics, Michael Dawson (1994) finds that most middle-class blacks believe that their individual fates are linked to those of blacks as a whole.⁸ The sense of black attachment is so strong that some middle-class blacks report feeling closer to lower-class blacks than to middle-class whites (Benjamin, 2005; Hochschild, 1995). There is also evidence that high percentages of middle-class blacks feel that they should help less advantaged blacks (Durant & Sparrow, 1997; Sampson & Milam, 1975) and that racial discrimination limits opportunities for blacks (Hochschild, 1995).^{9, 10}

Some middle-class blacks self-consciously articulate and nourish the conceptions and feelings that surround their racial identity through their behavior. For example, research on “black” gentrification shows how middle-class blacks move into poor, urban black neighborhoods with a mission to connect with other blacks and improve the communities (Hyra, 2008; Pattillo, 2007; Prince, 2004; Taylor, 2002). The desire to articulate and nurture black identities is also intergenerational. In her ethnographic research on suburban middle-class blacks, Karyn Lacy (2007) charts how middle-class blacks move into black middle-class neighborhoods and join black middle-class social organizations to nurture their children’s black identities. In her research on black middle-class families who live in a predominately white community, Beverly Tatum (1999) finds that childrearing for these mothers and fathers involves “cultivating blackness.” Through building black peer networks for their children and other activities, the black middle-class parents in her study hope to nurture their children’s sense of self as black (Tatum, 1997).¹¹

While a systematic research program has not developed to examine how middle-class blacks enact and nurture black identities through cultural consumption, evidence within the broader black middle-class literature and cultural consumption literature speaks to this point. For example, in his study on race and class in Harlem, anthropologist John Jackson (2001) recounts how black middle-class residents draw on black culture to negotiate black identities. In her research on an urban community in Chicago, Mary Pattillo (Pattillo-McCoy, 1999) describes how black middle-class youth use black vernacular English and wear urban clothing styles to signify their blackness. Similarly, Paul DiMaggio and Francie Ostrower (1990) argue that higher levels of consumption of “Afro-American musical forms” among middle-class blacks than middle-class whites is evidence that middle-class blacks consume black culture to assert black identities.¹²

In this book, I build on this literature to deepen understanding of the ways that middle-class blacks use arts participation to assert and maintain their racial identity. I investigate the question: How do upper-middle-class blacks construct black identities for themselves and their children through the consumption of visual art?

BLACK CULTIVATED CONSUMPTION

I argue that upper-middle-class blacks self-consciously engage in black arts participation (activities that involve art by black artists or about black people)¹³ to enact and nurture their own and their children’s racial identity.¹⁴ I call this practice black cultivated consumption. Black identity and black arts participation are mutually reinforcing because upper-middle-class blacks engage in black arts participation to enact their already existing black identities, and the experience of black arts participation nourishes their racial identity. During this process different dimensions of black identity are constructed, including black appearances, black history, black pride, and black unity.¹⁵

Black appearances are constructed when upper-middle-class blacks consume black visual art to articulate and sustain understandings of black phenotype; black history is constructed when upper-middle-class blacks con...