Who Goes to Shows? Race-ethnicity and the Visual and Performing Arts

Abstract

Using data from the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, I investigate whether education’s influence on the likelihood of visual and performing arts attendance in the USA varies by race-ethnicity. The results reveal that education increases the odds of attendance for both Whites and non-Whites, but it has a stronger impact upon the former than the latter. Unlike Whites, education’s effect on attending visual and performing arts activities for non-Whites is insignificant for high school diploma recipients when compared to their counterparts with some college education. These findings suggest a racial-ethnic bias in visual and performing arts attendance net of education that connects to the European roots of “legitimate” art in modern western society and the history of US racial discrimination. European Americans have dominated the USA’s social institutions for centuries and have held prejudices against minorities’ artistic capabilities since the colonial era. Consequentially, they could determine which arts genres provide valuable cultural capital. Conversely, minority art communities have only recently acquired the resources for self-sustainability. This likely limited their ability to develop formal institutions within their own communities to support the arts.