Woke Arts: When Public Money Needs Withdrawal

Australia's peak visual arts body has decided that certain ordinary human characteristics now count as privileges that must be named, managed and, in practice, treated with suspicion. Whiteness is a privilege. Being male or female, rather than something more fluid, is a privilege. Heterosexuality is a privilege. Living in a city can be a privilege. In the language of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and its Code of Practice, these traits confer unearned advantages that organisations and individuals are expected to recognise and correct for.

The framework is familiar. It borrows from American academic theories that treat identity categories as moral rankings rather than neutral descriptions. People who fall into the designated privileged groups are invited to examine their advantages, make space, and accept that equity requires different treatment. The arts sector, already thick with such language, now has an official document reinforcing it.

Yet one form of privilege sits outside this conversation with remarkable ease: the privilege of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funding. NAVA operates as a membership organisation and advocacy body. It also draws public money. That money is collected from the same broad population that includes white Australians, men, women, heterosexuals and city-dwellers, the very people whose identities the organisation's framework singles out as privileged and therefore in need of structural correction.

This is the quiet contradiction. An organisation that tells a large share of the citizenry that their ordinary demographic traits confer unearned power is itself sustained by compulsory contributions from that same citizenry. The taxpayers who fund the operation are simultaneously positioned as the problem the operation exists to address. The arrangement is not reciprocal. Ordinary citizens cannot opt out of the tax system because they object to being labelled privileged. The arts body, however, can continue to receive the money while advancing a worldview that treats those funders as the beneficiaries of systemic advantage.

If the theory of privilege is taken seriously, public funding itself should be examined. Access to government grants and ongoing support is a form of institutional power. It allows an organisation to employ staff, produce codes of practice, run advocacy campaigns and shape professional standards across a sector. That power is not earned solely through membership fees or private donations. It is underwritten by the state. Removing or sharply reducing that underwriting would test how robust the ideology remains when it must persuade rather than prescribe, and when it must operate without the soft power that public money confers.

The suggestion is straightforward. Let organisations that define large parts of the public as privileged demonstrate their ideas without the privilege of the public purse. Market their worldview, attract voluntary support, and survive on the strength of their arguments and the quality of their work. If the framework is as self-evidently correct as its advocates claim, it should not require compulsory extraction from the people it criticises. The current arrangement: lecturing taxpayers about their privilege while living off their taxes, exposes the selective application of the concept. Some privileges are to be endlessly interrogated. The privilege of funding, it seems, is not one of them. Let's make it so.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/culture/national-arts-body-deems-whiteness-and-being-male-or-female-a-privilege/news-story/4f7feb3947b09d02c174a1ee1874907f

"Whiteness, living in a city, identifying as heterosexual or being male or female are deemed forms of privilege under a "safer spaces" policy developed by Australia's peak visual arts body.

The National Association of the Visual Arts, which receives almost $400,000 of government funding, has a majority female staff and board, yet its "safer ­spaces" policy urges participants at its meetings and training workshops to be aware of their own privilege and "power dynamics" and "understand how language can uphold systems of inequity".

Topping its privilege list is "whiteness, not being d/Deaf (sic) or Disabled, speaking English as a first language and identifying as cisgendered (male or female)".

Other NAVA-defined privileges are "class or wealth", "personal or institutional power/influence", "age in relation to those around you", "not having caring responsibilities" and (wait for it) "many more".

NAVA's "safer spaces" policy aligns with its "ethical" and "equitable" code of practice aimed at the broader arts industry and these standards reflect how influential players in the sector are increasingly driven by identity politics and notions of "equity" rather than merit and equality of opportunity.

The advocacy body's code of practice, which it developed over several years and frequently updated, recommends art prize judges undergo "unconscious bias" and "microaggression" training, while its art industry events and meetings should involve as many acknowledgements of country as the participants want to give.

NAVA says that once an initial acknowledgement of country is made at its events, "others can Acknowledge Country when introducing themselves or at any time using the chat function when the event is taking place online''.

The group's official website also states that when it comes to adjudicating art awards, it is "good practice to provide training and support to decision-makers, including in equity, unconscious bias, conflict of interest and microaggressions''."