Art, Race, and Racism

This chapter takes up the question of the role of artistic practices in the formation of racial identity, and the sustainment and legitimization of racial projects. Rather than examining the ethical value of artistic representations in virtue of themselves, this chapter examines the ethical value of artistic representations in virtue of what they do in specific sociohistorical contexts, specifically in virtue of how artistic representations shape and are shaped by processes of racialization. The chapter first introduces the notions of race and racism as political categories. Next, the author examines how artistic practices contribute to shaping resistant racial identities, and how artistic representations are used to legitimize white supremacy. The next section examines the role played by artistic representations of racialized individuals in how we engage with one another, and, therefore, how they impact the experience of concrete racialized subjects in and of the world. The author also examines the place of political aims in artists’ acts of self-expression, and the problem of cultural appropriation.