Abstract
Historically, white supremacy has supported capitalist Europeans’ exclusive ownership of both tangible and intangible property, such as Black and Brown bodies, land, economic resources, social and cultural practices, behaviors, and even knowledge and intellect. In many ways, arts education has also been claimed in this declaration of property ownership. “Smog in the air” refers to the contemporary implicit messages and actions that reaffirm that arts education is the property of Whites. Employing Critical Race Theory, I use narrative to illustrate what smog looks like and how it functions in seemingly mundane situations with regard to arts education and arts learning experiences. The narratives are analyzed and conclusions are made regarding the destabilization of arts education as white property.
…Messages that affirm the assumed superiority of Whites and the assumed inferiority of people of color—[are] like smog in the air. Sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in
(Tatum, 1997, p. 6).
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- 1.
My understanding of position statements and their function is based on various definitions of position statements from multiple educational organizations, including the National Education Association, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Art Education Association. Additionally, position statements are characterized by the American Nurses Association (2017) as “a justification or a recommendation for a course of action that reflects the organizations stance regarding the term” (para. 1).
- 2.
Advanced placement (AP) is a program supervised by the College Board that allows high school students to take accelerated courses during high school that can earn them college credit or even set them up to take advanced courses when they enter college (College Board, 2017).
- 3.
Standardized teacher certification tests, such as Praxis Performance Assessments for Teachers and edTPA, have a disproportionately negative impact on students’ of color ability to obtain teaching licenses. Both the cost and the content of the tests are sited as roadblocks to diversifying the teaching profession (Barmore, 2016; Nettles, Scatton, Steinberg, & Tyler, 2011).
- 4.
The art canon is a socially constructed institution that communicates whose art is noteworthy and whose art is not. “The canon” is the epitome of cultural subordination, as it reinforces superiority of Western art and the marginalization of non-Western art (Emery, 2002).
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Acuff, J.B. (2018). Smog in the Air: Passive Positions, Deracialization, and Erasure in Arts Education. In: Kraehe, A., Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Carpenter II, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65256-6_30
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