Keep The Arts in Public Schools!!!

“My sense of order restored, my appreciation of the arcane ways of American cultural possibility was vastly extended. The men were products of both past and present; were both coal heavers and Met extras; were both workingmen and opera buffs. Seen in the clear, pluralistic, melting-pot light of American cultural possibility, there was no contradiction."
Ralph Ellison, "The Little Man at Chewhaw Station"


For my final blog of the semester, I thought I would resort back to using intriguing quotes from Ellison, since he has usually been my muse for my blogs. The story that I kept on thinking back to while reading Kammen’s American Culture, American Tastes was one found in Ellison’s essay “The Little Man at Chewhaw Station,” where the author reveals a time when he was discriminatory against his own race in regards to cultural preferences. After talking to a group of four black men, who are coal heavers, about opera, the author later asks, “Where on earth did you gentleman learn so much about grand opera?” What I found so funny about this scene was that the four black workers started laughing hysterically, which leads to Ellison’s embarrassment and shame. Furthermore, one of the workers then answers that all of the men have attended the Metropolitan Opera numerous times, and sometimes were not just audience members, but extras.

The reason why this scene is so relevant to this discuss about Kammen’s text is because it addresses the incongruities of race, economic status, education, and culture. The notion that race, economic status, and education dictate ones taste has always been perpetuated, but Ellison story shows that there are inconsistencies with this formula, that one may be at the lowest class and of a marginalized race, yet still can appreciate something thought to be high-brow. What I appreciate about Kammen is that he deconstructs the borders placed around highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow, and thereby shows how fluid their boundaries are and the mobility people have to go from one taste to the next. This is definitely what the democratization of American culture is all about.

What I have enjoyed doing while in Philadelphia has been to open inner-city children’s eyes to the fine arts, which I find so valuable. Although the democratization of American culture has occurred, I think there is still an issue of marginalized people feeling as though they are not able to connect with things they have been taught to see as highbrow, which then makes them feel as though they are not intelligent or educated enough to understand them. I think, however, that these feelings can be diminished by allowing easy access to the fine arts institutions as wells as strengthening art programs in public schools. Although the fine arts have been made more accessible via community programs at art museums and orchestras, what I am worried about is that less and less money is being put into art programs, especially at inner-city schools. Why I find this so troubling is that with the arts becoming less accessible for minority children, there is less of a democratization of American culture, which means that cultural stratification, especially along the lines of race, is reified. I do appreciate Kemmen’s optimism about the permeability of tastes when it comes to race, yet I feel that we as a society might be going backwards instead of forwards when it comes to the democratization of the arts.