THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well hello, this is your host artist Miriam Schulman and you’re listening to episode number 104 of The Inspiration Place podcast, I’m so honored that you’re here. Today, we’re talking all about imperfect ally-ship. In today’s episode you’ll discover what practical action steps you can take to embrace being an anti-racist artist or an inclusive art educator. Why color blindness is an inauthentic platitude that actually reinforces white supremacy and how your imperfect actions best perfect placating captions. By the way, before we dive into today’s topic, I wanted to make sure that you knew that I’m running a free workshop for artists who want to teach art online. It’s called the Build Your Digital Art Course challenge. And yes, it did kick off August 24th, it’s in my private Facebook group, the Artist Profit Lab, but if you’re listening to this, when it goes live, it’s not too late to join us.
You’ll learn how to narrow down your topic, choose your technology and get started. Plus Amy Porterfield will be joining us in the group. I’d love to have you join the party, so please consider this your personal invitation. To join the challenge go to schulmanart.com/challenge. Okay. Now to today’s show. Before I bring on today’s guest I wanted to talk to you about an historic event. As we’re going live, we’re basically are nearing the hundredth anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. So this is huge and it relates to today’s topic. So what I wanted to share with you that I actually found mind boggling is in Central Park, in New York city where I’m from, there are 24 statues in the park, and most of them depict as you might expect, white historic male figures. And the women in the park are all fictional.
So we’ve got frigging Alice in Wonderland. I think there’s like some goddess or something. So no historic women and New York city as a whole is not much better, out of the 150 statues scattered across New York, only five of them depict women. And I think that includes Alice in Wonderland, which probably means that there are more statues of animals in New York city, like the lions in front of the New York Public Library and the bull on Wall Street. Then there are of women, and across the country, there’s 5,200 statues and less than 7% of those depict women. But here’s the thing, women have been invisible that for so long no one hardly noticed. So what’s happening now that I’m very excited about in New York city on August 26, which is the week this interview goes live with the commemoration of the suffrage act being passed, there is a 14 foot high statue depicting three suffragists, which is going to commemorate the amendment giving women right to vote.
I’m super excited about this. And it’s a wonderful thing as artists for us to know about and talk about. I wanted to introduce today’s guest because we’re going to talk a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion, and how that relates to us as artists. Today’s guest has dedicated her life to expanding how others interact with the world through powerful conversations. As an entrepreneur and certified coach, her work is frequently focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, which we will also refer to as DEI, imperfect ally-ship and impostor syndrome. This work has taken her across the country and onto stages and into communities as a key speaker and educator. She also has a podcast that features open conversation and dialogue on the topics of her work and more. And her podcast is excellent. I am a listener and a fan, it’s Pause On The Play. Her support and leadership facilitates engaged conversations within six figure communities, international podcasts, and live events to connect people and create change. Please welcome to the Inspiration Place, Erica Courdae. Well, hi Erica. Welcome to the show.
Erica Courdae:
Hello there Miriam, thank you for having me.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, I’m so glad you’re here. So I don’t know that I ever shared this, but I heard about you through Tyler McCall, who was a very early guest on this show, like one of the first 10 guests on my show. And right after the George Floyd murder, he had put out that he was working with you. And I was like, okay, that’s what I’m doing because I’m like this clueless white girl who has no idea how to handle what was going down inside a lot of the communities that we are in. So thank you for that and thank you also for joining me today to help talk about this important topic.
Erica Courdae:
It’s my pleasure, thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So I also want to let the guest know, this is not something I talk about too often, but I am famous for interrupting, you can call that the New York interrupt. That’s what we have to do in my family, because we all talk all over each other. Although it might also be an ethnic thing like Jewish people, but I don’t know, like New Yorkers we interrupt. So if I’m interrupting Erica, I want everyone to know that it’s not because I don’t respect what she’s saying, it’s just I’m excited and I want to jump in. I may push back if there’s something I don’t quite understand, I will question her. And I have invited Erica to call me out if there’s something I say that she doesn’t quite agree with also, is that cool with you?
Erica Courdae:
Yes, interruption is good because that’s a part of, I think dynamic conversation. The other side is I will call you out and/or I will address things after the fact, if I’m like yeah, let’s not do that one right here. So there may be some things that I’ll say here, but I feel like there’s a fine line between calling somebody up during conversation and then there’s also that place of like, let’s go sit over here and talk for a hot second. I think this are two different things.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, okay. If you need to do that, we just say, this is something for Brian to address, that’s my podcast editor.
Erica Courdae:
Just say it.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So I want to start off by coming up with some definitions. I wanted to go with the title, how to be an anti-racist artist because I thought that was good SEO for the podcast. And you wanted to go with imperfect ally-ship, right? Can you help me define those terms and why you prefer ally-ship for this?
Erica Courdae:
And from a business point of view, you have to do what you have to do. And I understand that as a business owner, I get that, but this is also where like the person that helps me with my writing is like, yes, this is what you need to do. I know what you want to do, but here’s what needs to happen so that’s fine. I think when the word anti-racist comes up, people get scared and they get nervous and they get a little skiddish. And so I think it’s important to acknowledge that this is not meant to be scary, but it’s meant to acknowledge a strong line in the sand. From the point of view of you are not going to basically say that someone else receiving less access, less opportunity, less visibility, less rights, less validity is okay. And that you are going to actively work against that.
You are going to actively in some ways, hop from behind the shroud of white privilege and not be as protected from it. And so it’s not, oh, I’m not racist. I don’t discriminate. I don’t think anyone is lesser than, it’s actively saying, there are systems of oppression that are set up for that to happen and I don’t operate within those parameters whenever possible. And I say whenever possible, because hopping out of that fully, isn’t really an option right now, the way we would love for it to be. No better than the fact that I don’t think anybody really wants to fully buy from places that aren’t aligned. But well, sometimes you got to buy from Amazon. It is what it is.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, I could tell you I was like very unhappy because I got a Johnny Was catalog that was very white. And I was like, what? I can’t buy from them anymore. But this month I did get one that included women of color. And I was like, okay, good, I can keep buying this rest as I’d like.
Erica Courdae:
Well, because it’s a process. And that’s where I feel like imperfect ally-ship comes in because what happened is when George Floyd was murdered, essentially a snuff film was made for eight minutes and 46 seconds of us having to watch it. That was people having to have a moment of like a reckoning of like, wait, am I actually doing this? Am I going to silently be complicit in this? And when people then were like, no, I don’t want to do that. But then it was like, so do I burn my business down? Do I still market? Do I not market? What am I supposed to do? And that catalog is an example of what it looked like to not pick one or the other, you still market the business and you figure out how to make it less whitewashed, I guess you could say.
Miriam Schulman:
And I just want to say for the record that I had my white blinders on, for sure and I’m going to own it. Like before that moment in time, I did not see, I would not have noticed that the catalog that I was receiving did not feature women of color. I was not noticing. And from that moment on, it was almost like I had put on these glasses, and when I first got glasses, and I was like, oh, that’s what the world looks like.
Erica Courdae:
And that entire concept happens over and over and over because I think it happens with color. I think size is another huge one that that happens with.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Erica Courdae:
So like the first time that you see like a woman doing yoga that’s not 5’9, blonde, white and skinny you’re like, oh wait, wait, other people do yoga. And it didn’t even originate with white people. Yes. So that’s not the norm though.
Miriam Schulman:
No. And then let’s go back also to the statues. So this was put together by a volunteer group of women. They call themselves Monumental Women. And the thing is, is that a writ- So yay, we have women in Central Park, but that statue design it originally only included two women. Did you read the article about that? It did not include the third black woman that got added. And I was in that camp of people, here I am fighting for women, fighting for women and not noticing how I’m missing out on also including people in this way as well.
Erica Courdae:
Well, but that happens often from the point of view of, there are a lot of rights that white women have fought for that did not include black women or other women of color. When we saw all of the marches and the pink pussy hats and all of those things a couple years ago, there was this fight around, these are my reproductive rights and you can’t infringe on them, but it’s like, okay, so I guess that didn’t apply when it was forced sterilization because it didn’t apply to you. And so it’s very often that if we go back and we look at the fact that for the longest time, the power that white women held was to own people, which were enslaved people, like they weren’t fighting for everyone, they were fighting for them as number two on the totem pole.
There’s something to be acknowledged to say, I am going to like take off those blinders and realize that there are women that come in an array of other shades that aren’t included in this fight. And have I taken that into consideration because they weren’t even invited let alone considered
Miriam Schulman:
That was something I wanted to ask you at the top of our conversation, how do you prefer I refer to people of color? What’s the term, and I know you don’t speak for all people of color and I didn’t even ask you what term you wanted me to use.
Erica Courdae:
I, for me, I’m fine with black. I am fine with African American. Like neither one of those bothers me. I mean, I think what at least for me personally is important is a term along the lines of BIPOC, B-I-P-O-C tends to be helpful because I think what happens very often is when we talk about the conversation of race, that there’s eraser happening of intersections within that. And so if we are talking about black lives mattering, but black trans lives or black queer lives aren’t included, to me that eraser matters. And it matters even more when there are a number of people that aren’t allowed to fully stand in who they are and how they identify out of fear or because is this going to affect how I’m able to be visible? And so to me, that’s a piece that is important. I don’t know that any of it is perfect, but that’s something that at least to me, it minimizes speaking about like, oh, it matters here, but it doesn’t matter here.
It only matters if I have quantified this … Because unfortunately like there’s so many pieces that don’t get brought to the table. It’s like, okay, black lives matter when they have money. It doesn’t matter what socioeconomic status pop center, we’re talking about a certain group that requires additional assistance because of the system that puts them at a disadvantage. And so this is where I’m like, as much intersection and inclusion can be brought in when that conversation is had, I think that, that adds additional context that’s necessary and it helps to minimize the eraser.
Miriam Schulman:
I saw this post the other day, an artist who I admire very much Alisa Burke, I will make sure to tag her in the show notes. So she was talking about something that I’ve experienced myself as well as an artist who post pretty pictures. We get a lot of push-back from our followers when we post anything that they deem as political, which we may not even see as political. And I wanted to make sure we brought this up early on, because the question is, why are we even talking about this on an art podcast? And it matters a lot why we’re talking about this. Oh, I wish they could see your face.
Erica Courdae:
That’s my whole thing. You see me in person I’m like, I can’t fix my face and I have no intentions on doing so. The minute something is perfectly curated, I call bullshit because I don’t think that that’s accurate. First of all, I think that curation, it’s you trying to placate this image that everybody told you, you had to have. So I already don’t care for that particular part, but I don’t like the fact that you are now saying, if you don’t show up in this specific way, in this specific tone, with this specific set of images that you are invalidated, which to me also speaks about your invalidation as a human. And I’m like, no, that’s BS. Let’s not do that. But this is also someone else passing judgment on something. And this is where I’m going to say, and I want your opinion on this, I feel like art is a very layered and personal thing.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, extremely. And artists have always been by the way, passionately political. I mean, I did a whole podcast on even the famous white European guys, it was a lot of political art. You have the French Revolution art, you have Guernica and Frida Kahlo, lots of communist art that she did. So we have always been very passionate about our beliefs and to be an artist is to see connections in the world and to help people see the world in a different way. That’s what art does.
Erica Courdae:
Well, then you’re creating something that isn’t languagable, something that doesn’t have words. But I had a conversation earlier today around, it was something in part of what this person said was like, well, I don’t know if this thing is political and at least at this point in time, not that I think that this is the singular time at all, but I’m like, it’s all political. It absolutely is. And it’s political because of the fact that these policies and stances directly affect people, they directly affect access. They directly affect safety. To try to pull that out, you can’t.
Miriam Schulman:
Also, what are we talking about when we’re talk about politics? We really are talking about people’s narratives. We have Fox News narrative, we have the CNN narrative, we have the MSNBC narrative, it’s all storytelling, it’s stories. And what is our art? It’s also a narrative.
Erica Courdae:
It is. And what happens now was then you begin to have like NPR or whatever. There’s always something that somebody is like, I don’t subscribe to this so now I’m going to create something else. But it’s still somebody somewhere that said, I’m going to create something else, another bubble. And it’s like, ah, no. And art, at least in my opinion is one of the few things that you can do what you want with it. And there might be people that don’t like it, or that are going to say whatever they say about it, but art is something that can actively be ugly and yet get the most attention and conversation and interaction.
If somebody says that a person is ugly, they’re not going to get that, and that’s a sad truth. And it’s not something that I say because it feels good, it’s true though. Art can be something that you’re like, God, this looks terrible, but you know what? We need to talk about this. It brings up conversation. But I don’t think that we can extract political anything from anything right now. I don’t even think that’s a concept to consider.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So let’s talk about, and I feel this is maybe the part where we’re a little bit different viewpoints, the black square. The black square. So those who somehow don’t know what we’re talking about, there was blackout Tuesday. And I remember my husband was actually the one who brought it to my attention and said, “The musicians are doing this.” I go, “Huh? Let me think about that.” Because to me that was a radical act to put a black square on my pretty Instagram feed, it felt really radical. Just wanted you to know, and I know that you and India have some things to say about it. I’d like you to speak first and then we’re going to discuss it.
Erica Courdae:
First of all, I didn’t like the fact that the black square ended up being this robotic action that a lot of people took and they didn’t know why they were supposed to do it and they didn’t know why they were doing it. And that was something that I was absolutely not onboard with. That IGTV video, it was a live, I didn’t … I mean, it’s now as IGTV. That was where a lot of people got introduced to me because I was just kind of like, I don’t know why you’re doing this. You don’t know why you’re doing this and let’s talk about why it’s not okay to go silent and it’s a privilege. And so I didn’t like the concept of people jumping on something because it felt like the easy thing to do, it felt like I’m making a statement and it is a statement. And at the same time, do you know what you’re stating? Do you know why?
Because the thing that I think was bothering me so much as a whole, at that time, and it still continues now is people doing things and they didn’t know why, other than the fact of please don’t come after me, do not come from me. Please don’t come and tell me that I did it wrong. Don’t yell at me. My white fragility is popping up. My personal protection instincts have said, please don’t because I can’t handle it right now. But I just felt like it was something that people didn’t really know why they did it, and I think that there was purpose that could be in doing it. But I also felt like it was an empty gesture if there wasn’t clarity on what you were doing and what you were going to do next, now, what? You did a black square. Okay. What does that mean? I’m still not going to feel any more safe when I get pulled over.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I see what you’re saying about that and I don’t remember what day black out Tuesday was, but it was early June, right?
Erica Courdae:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
As of the end of July, there were still people discussing underneath my black square their opinions.
Erica Courdae:
Oh, it still needs to be discussed. I think there’s a lot to it.
Miriam Schulman:
And then I did have a moment exactly what you’re talking about, where one of my followers who I’m assuming has a very conservative viewpoint basically, do you even know what this black lives matter organization stands for? And I had that moment like, oh my God, no, I don’t. What do they stand for? Do they promote [inaudible 00:22:11]? Are they antisemitic? Like, what am I getting behind? So I went and checked that, I was like, okay, actually no, I’m okay with what they stand for.
Miriam Schulman:
But I did have that moment, Erica, where I was like, oh yeah, I did do something without thoroughly knowing what I was doing and why. And I did exactly what you and India, I’m going to introduce this very cringey thing you guys said. I say cringey because I cringed. Like I was like, oh my God, that sounds like me. It was the, “The white women’s handbook of social media responses,” because that’s exactly what I did. I did. I took, okay, what did Tyler McCall say? And maybe three other people and I put that in my mixing bowl and I spit it out, my white woman response.
Erica Courdae:
And a lot of people did. I’m going to also acknowledge that a lot of the actions that were happening at that point were under duress because we were already stuck in the house. So there was COVID and quarantine, but then again, eight minutes and 46 seconds of watching someone be murdered, which to be clear, I still have to this day not watched it because I won’t, I cannot, I know how it ends and that’s more than enough for me. I won’t watch it. But there were people that watched it. There were people that re-posted it and I’m like, never would you see somebody’s white child being murdered in that way in a video turned into a meme, it wouldn’t happen. Because you’ll hear people that will say things about black lives matters and how they don’t agree with it. I don’t care if you agree with the organization, the organization doesn’t matter to me, it’s the concept that black lives matter.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, that’s what I initially said to this one follower. I say, well, my support was for this-
Erica Courdae:
Correct.
Miriam Schulman:
… not necessarily the organization. However, by the way, because she was talking about all this other stuff that I had to ask my 20 year old much hipper than I am son, what is she talking about here? And they were like, oh, that’s code for does not believe in gay marriage and that’s code for like, there was certain things in there that she was saying that kind of was lost on me. Do you feel that it’s virtue signaling to put the black square and do you think that is a bad thing, a good thing to virtue signal?
Erica Courdae:
If that’s the only thing you’re doing, yes. If it is an empty action, yes. If you are doing this because you don’t want someone thinking that you’re doing nothing and you’re trying to save your own ass, yes it is. If you need to prove to someone that you’re one of the good white people that doesn’t speak from the white women’s handbook of captions and messaging, yes. If you are doing it because you are making it clear what you stand for and what you stand against, no, it’s not virtue signaling. If this is a part of a larger set of actions that comes from you as a person and your brand, no, that’s not virtue signaling.
So to me what can happen is so many people are concerned about if a singular action is about virtue signaling, and while I think there’s validity in auditing any of your messaging to makes sure that it’s actually aligned with your values, I think there’s also this place of, if you don’t say something, that speaks volumes as well.
Miriam Schulman:
Right? Because I don’t necessarily agree that virtue signaling is necessarily bad in and of itself.
Erica Courdae:
If you break it down, that concept of like, I am signaling to you that like, I am a safe space. I stand for you, I stand for things that are better than what we’re currently dealing with. I don’t think that that concept is what’s wrong, what’s wrong is when you have the people that do it and it has nothing to do with anything else, but they do it after they did something wrong and it’s like, no, no, no, wait, see look, no, you just misunderstood me. That’s when it becomes a problem.
Look at how much money I gave away, look at how many black kids I sent the school in Uganda. Wait, so you step over the homeless dude, but you sent the kids to school in Uganda, what are we doing here? Like, that’s not okay. And I say that as like from the New York point of view like, what do you do with the person that’s asking for money? It’s like, I’m fine ignoring it here in my own backyard, but I’ll outsource all of that help somewhere else in order to make me feel better about myself. And you need to post … Like those people that go to places and like pose with the like disadvantaged children that aren’t that clean, they’re not properly clothed, I’m like yeah, that’s icky. That’s like, I want to punch you in the face. That’s mean, and I acknowledge that, but that is virtue signaling. That is not-
Miriam Schulman:
I got it.
Erica Courdae:
… saying I support black entrepreneurship.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So the problem is not necessarily the black square, it’s the black square in absence of real action.
Erica Courdae:
Exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Now I want to jump also to, this was something that really bothered me when there was a couple of, we’re going to call them influencers, who said they weren’t going to sell that week. I was like, I can’t afford to do that, what are you talking about? Why?
Erica Courdae:
So there’s a few things there. Let me first acknowledge, it’s a privilege to say I’m not going to sell. So there’s something to be said about that and that I have the choice to turn this on or off. I think that, and this is the continuing challenge with when that happened and it was like the amplify black voices kind of week when it was like, I’m only going to amplify black voices, I’m not going to sell, I’m not going to center myself. In theory, awesome. Great. I see what you’re going for and this means that you weren’t doing it before and what will happen after this week?
Miriam Schulman:
Well see, that’s the thing that really bothered me also. So my husband and we care a lot about being Jewish and we belong to a synagogue and we became aware that a lot of the melodies sung in our synagogue were written by a rabbi who was a known sex abuser, who abused women and girls. Very similar actually to what, to just happening now in the Catholic church, there is someone who wrote a lot of popular hymns. However, we’re still singing the songs, but what happened to my synagogue is they decided to take a year off. And so then it was like, we’re making a stand. We’re going to take a year off, we’re not going to sing the songs anymore.
And then the year’s over and we go back to singing songs with no discussion about anything. And it just felt so empty. This felt like exactly the same thing. Like we’re going to take a week off to make us feel good, so it’s like fasting for the day. I’m going to fast for the day and then tomorrow I’m going to go back to eating the way I normally eat, or like giving up carbs for a week. It’s like great, well, what happens at the end of the week?
Erica Courdae:
Now that feels like virtue signaling because you did it just to … Because when you look at people’s feeds right now-
Miriam Schulman:
Oh no, it totally was. And so PS, my husband and I left our synagogue.
Erica Courdae:
Oh well, there you go, see. Because you’re like, this doesn’t feel right.
Miriam Schulman:
No it did not. We were members for 20 years, the only reason they took the year off is at the time that this came up for discussion, my husband was president, which just shows you how involved we were. And when his presidency was over, they honored us. And a week later they brought back in the melodies. It was like, oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Erica Courdae:
No, and that’s the thing.
Miriam Schulman:
Because you really don’t care about this issue. You’re just doing because you know that a big donor was at stake.
Erica Courdae:
And it’s easier to bypass and then act like it wasn’t a thing. And this is where if you look at somebody’s feed now, it’s like, okay, scroll, scroll, oh, I can see when it was and then you keep going and then it all goes away. All the melanin exists within like those let’s say, two to four rows and then it all goes away. It wasn’t before, it’s not after it. That’s virtue signaling because it was like, you did it because that was the thing to do. That was the cool thing, that was in. And then it went away. And especially now, because for a lot of people, they’re beginning to feel like is this still important to me, does it still matter? Do I want to change anything? Do I want to be inconvenienced? And it’s like, well, if you really don’t want to be inconvenienced, then all you did was prove that, that level of immediacy that you had, that was virtually signaling then.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m going to share a story. But before I do that, I just want to be clear that one of the reasons I like the title, how to be an anti-racist artist and I also like the book, How to Be an Anti-racist is because the thing that he acknowledge is from the beginning, help me pronounce his name because I’m terrible with name pronounce. Ibram-
Erica Courdae:
Ibram Kendi.
Miriam Schulman:
Thank you.
Erica Courdae:
Ibram X. Kendi.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Is that we’re all racist because we are products of a society that is racist. And when I read that, it was such a sigh of relief for me, it was like, oh, okay. It’s okay that I have this as long as I’m fighting against, and not that it’s okay to be racist, but it’s okay to label something, am I articulating that … You want to jump in?
Erica Courdae:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t know.
Erica Courdae:
But you said it right and that we all do. We’re all programmed to uphold a specific system. And unfortunately people of color are not immune to that because just like in the book when he talks about assimilation, like nobody is immune to feeling like, what do I need to adapt to be more adaptable, to be more likable, to get more opportunities, to receive more, to be seen more. And I say that, and I guess at least to me, I think that’s worth acknowledging because I see a lot of spaces where black people and Jewish people are actually pitted against each other. And I feel like it’s a very divisive measure, but we’re all given things to other each other, in my opinion, that’s my opinion.
Because I feel like then we get to this point of like, well, this was worse than this. And I’m like, I’m not doing the oppression Olympics with you. I’m not trying to fight on who had it worse, I’m not doing that. And it was all shitty. None of it should have happened. And none of it should still be a thing that is happening now. So can we focus on that and what we need to dismantle?
Miriam Schulman:
So I just wanted to bring that up because when I introduce my next story, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to say why I’m a good one, because that’s not what I’m saying. It’s not an “White girl privilege,” I fully own it. During the week following toward Floyd when everyone was raising voices and sharing lots of black art on my news-feed, I came across a wonderfully talented student. Her name is McKayla Kaiser, and we will include a link to her Instagram feed in the show notes. And when I found that she was a student, I invited her to be mentored by me this summer. And one of the things that I’ve learned, thanks to your help, Erica, when I was working with her.
So by the way, I don’t think I mentioned this, I did pay for one of Erica’s ask me anything sessions, we will include a link to that in the show notes. But if you want that, it’s ericacourdae.com/contact, so that was one of the first things I did. I just signed up. It was like a month after I signed up, I just paid to ask you whatever I wanted. So one of the things that we discussed, so she’s part of my Artist Incubator program free of charge for the summer. And I was making introductions for her, to people who are big names in my space. So Lisa Congdon, Jennifer Orkin Lewis, Lilla Rogers. And for artists, they recognize those names usually right away. But here’s the thing, they’re all white. I said to you, “Well, should I be introducing her to women of color who are in this space?” Then you go like, “Yes.” So I said, “Well, I don’t know any woman.”
So I went back to Lisa and back to Jennifer and back to Lilla Rogers. Now Lilla Rogers is an artist agent. She represents lots of artists. And my contact there for this particular piece was not Lilla herself, it was somebody on her team. I said, “Well, do you have any artists in your roster?” “Nope.” “Lisa, do you know any artists?” “No.” “Jennifer, do you know any artists?” “No.” And Jennifer Orkin Lewis is represented by another very large agency of artists. These are very well connected women, they didn’t know. And then the other thing was that Lilla Rogers came to me and says, “What program did you work with to get your intern? I mean, to get your mentee, we would like to get our own mentee.” I was like, “Are you kidding me? I found her on Instagram. It was like, it was not hard to find. There’s lots …”
Erica Courdae:
She’s not an oddity to collect.
Miriam Schulman:
No. And also it shocked me that these two big agencies, there are so many artists putting out so much beautiful work, it’s not hard to find them. I was like, my mind was blown.
Erica Courdae:
Yeah. But if you stay in your little white woman bubble, you don’t get anything outside of that. And you don’t ever think to look outside of that. That’s just like, when people hire people and they’re like yeah, I’m just not getting diverse applicants. And I’m like, because you kept asking the same people that look just like you, who probably don’t know anyone that doesn’t look like them.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, and by the way, can I just check off a good white person box we have? I have a very diverse-
Erica Courdae:
Oh, gosh.
Miriam Schulman:
I know, I know. I have a very diverse team by the way, I have three women of color on my team.
Erica Courdae:
But that’s the thing, how many people … I mean, you just proved it. And that they don’t-
Miriam Schulman:
I only have five people on my team besides me.
Erica Courdae:
Yeah, but that’s like something, that’s more than half. That’s 60%.
Miriam Schulman:
And I do have one dude.
Erica Courdae:
There you go.
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t know what people’s sexual orientations are. I don’t ask them, but they’re welcome.
Erica Courdae:
That doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, come all, come one, come, let’s go, come on. But this is where, when you’re looking for that diversity, whether it’s because you’re looking for a summit or like a conference that you have coming up, you’re looking for someone for a program. You’re looking for an intern. You’re looking for a VA, an employee, anything. When you realize that there’s no diversity, well guess what? Now you’re already a little too late because you didn’t have it and now it’s like, wait, I need to go find a black person. Don’t do that. Because part of what’s happening then is now you just want to stub in body of color. Is it safe for them, for you to just insert them into this whitewashed space that never included them before and you only want it because it makes your photos look good, your Instagram?
Now your employee is like photos on the website, oh look, I have one too. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Like that’s not okay. And so it calls to the fact that you’re not diversifying who you’re interacting with, who you’re buying from, who’s buying from you, who you’re working with, who you cooperate in different projects with. Like, if there’s no diversity showing up anywhere and nobody does anything to begin to work on it from an organic place without a necessity for it to be something right now, then you get to this place of yeah, no, I don’t know anybody. Fancy that.
Miriam Schulman:
What we’re talking about is important, but for my audience, most of them don’t have teams. So I want to just bring something else I wanted to talk about that’s more relevant to them. One thing I saw a lot of artists doing, white artists doing is suddenly painting black people. Okay. Erica just covered her face, she has like an eye headache and she’s shaking her head back and forth. So let’s talk about, I think the word is appropriation. Is that the word you would use for that?
Erica Courdae:
I think it’s appropriation, but I think it’s also co-opting the narrative. The interesting part is I didn’t even think about it within this particular space of art, but I had a lot of conversations about it around like the documentary film space, in the sense of people not being able to tell their own narrative. And I think from an artists point of view, there’s this space of, are you allowing people to be captured and depicted through art in a way that they are giving permission for and through their own view? Or does it have to go through your lens? And there is this place of representation mattering as a whole, but if that representation has to be through the white gaze, that’s problematic.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, it’s kind of like Gauguin painting, the naked Tahitian woman, right? Is that diversity and inclusion or is that using black bodies?
Erica Courdae:
But see, here’s the thing, I think when you take someone’s form and you process it through the way that you see them or the way … Like, have you ever heard someone who gives you advice and it’s like, well, if I were you, I would, or I think you should. It’s very much based in what they think is the best version of you, the best actions for you. And I think that there can be a lot of problems when you are giving responses or content based on what you think that person should be or how they should show up or how they should be viewed. And so I think that there’s a place to consider, is this how they show up or is this how you process them? Just like, if you have a man that is capturing a woman’s form nude, is that how she shows up or is that how he processed her?
And I think to an extent there is always that place of your art is your processing of things. But there’s also the difference of like, but is this who this individual is? Do they have a say in how they’re captured? Do they have a say in the narrative that goes along with this art form? And that’s where I feel like there’s some additional responsibility that maybe needs to be considered when you have groups of people that have not had that opportunity to have a say in how they are represented, how they are captured or how they are processed.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that.
Erica Courdae:
Miriam’s got that, she’s got that face.
Miriam Schulman:
I have a face too. And by the way if you’re looking to see how black women represent themselves, I’m going to link in the show notes Deborah Roberts, Bisa Butler. These are two contemporary artists who I absolutely adore right now who are sharing versions of their own narrative. And I really admire what they’re doing. Okay. So I’m going to skip a couple of these questions that I was going to ask, because I love what we’re talking about. Here’s something that I promised we would talk about, of color blindness. I’m going to have to make my mother and I vulnerable right now, about a little fight we had.
So I did a podcast episode a few months ago about Derek Walcott. I was using his poem and then my mom and I got into an argument about whether or not he’s black and she’s saying he’s not black. And I said, “He is black.” And then she got mad at me because I kind of shared that argument on the podcast. My mother doesn’t listen to the podcast, but I think her friends do. And I heard somebody saying, Erica, I’m not sure if it was you or somebody else that color blindness is part of white privilege. Is that something you agree with?
Erica Courdae:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Miriam Schulman:
It is, she’s nodding her head vigorously. Could you explain that for my mother so I can play this for her?
Erica Courdae:
Yes. So mom, there is a place of being able to minimize someone to a place of having no cultural reference based on their color. That is a privilege to be able to do that when there are entire groups of people that have been categorized, utilized and minimized based on that exact thing. And while I think that the ultimate goal can be to be at a place to where color does not factor into how we process each other for negative means, and that it is not something that is meant to say who is above or below someone else. However, that is not a point that we are at right now. And so the only way to be able to address things as they are, is to be able to actually utilize these categories in order to be able to show where inequities or injustices stand.
And so, there is a place of not saying, its to say that someone is more or less than, but it’s acknowledging that that term by a number of standards does do that. The constitution says that black people are three fifths of a human. And so you can’t talk about that and not call it what it is. And so that to me, in order to get to a place that we don’t have to talk about it, we have to acknowledge why its existence is needed to actually call out the inequities. You can’t say there’s disparities, between who? Those and those, what is that? What? Whose and-
Miriam Schulman:
It’s kind of like, just to bring it back to where I introduced this whole conversation, it’s when there’s a group of people who are not being acknowledged and are invisible. If you don’t say, look, there are no women in Central Park except for Alice in Wonderland, and somebody sort of say to me, well, why are we calling them female statues and male statutes? They’re just statues, to me like it’s to say, you can’t address the inequity if you don’t call it out.
Erica Courdae:
Correct. And so as much as, yes, we don’t want to have to call it out, we don’t have that luxury yet. We’re not at that place yet. We’re working on that and so until then use black, use black.
Miriam Schulman:
By the way, wonderful poem and I will link to that episode in the show notes, because that was one of my favorite episodes. Okay. So we have so much more to talk about, hopefully you’ll be back on the show. I’m putting you on the spot.
Erica Courdae:
You’re always welcome to. I like to talk, so I’m good.
Miriam Schulman:
You know what? We did not talk about poverty mindset and I feel like that needs its own episode. So we will schedule something later in the fall. Yeah?
Erica Courdae:
I think there’s a whole thing with that with artists, so that needs to be talked about.
Miriam Schulman:
We will talk about that. Let’s wrap this up. I just wanted to let everyone know that I did do one of Erica’s ask me anything sessions, ericacourdae.com/contact. She and India, Jackson India will also be coming on the show this fall. She is offering an implicit to explicit masterclass. And what that’s about is really getting in touch with what your values are, I am taking that. So if you want to be part of an intimate group, how many people do you let into that at a time?
Erica Courdae:
Six, that is it.
Miriam Schulman:
Six people at the table and I will be one of them. I’m signed up for September 16th. This episode is airing the end of August, so it may not be too late to grab a spot, pauseontheplay.com/events. I know Erica also has a Pause On The Play community, what’s the benefit of that? I know you’ve moved that off Facebook. Do you want to talk about that?
Erica Courdae:
Oh yes. We don’t have to worry anymore about saying things that are going to get anybody’s shadow banned. If we say racist or white people too much, or any of those things, we don’t have to worry about that we’re going to target you with ads because you’re listening to our conversations, which feels a little bit sketchy to begin with. Essentially, we want it to take our space being safe in a closed container to another level, which was why we did move off and we’re on Mighty Network. So it is fully our space.
And so the community is basically, it’s an opportunity to say that I am here to work on my ally-ship. I am here to be a better human, a better entrepreneur. I want to support people that need to be able to receive equitable access and being able to have the conversations around it, receive support, support others, to have a place that you can ask the questions and not worry about can I ask this here? Are you going to look at me like I’m crazy because I said this? No, no. And you’re able to get my lens as well as India’s, which is the visibility in the marketing side of it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. And if I could just say one of the reasons I paid right away for your session is not because I don’t have black friends, but I didn’t like the, oh, go ask so and so what she thinks and let them be the representation of what the right thing is to do. Like that felt like no.
Erica Courdae:
No, but that would be like me being like Miriam, I don’t have any other Jewish friends.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so offensive.
Erica Courdae:
Like rude, don’t do that. No. God no.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Erica Courdae:
And it’s also not fair to make somebody … You have put them in a role of having to be the professional when they just want to be your friend. Can you just let them be your friend?
Miriam Schulman:
Me personally, I have a big problem when people try to pick my brains on anything without picking a payment first. So that’s why I don’t do it to anybody else.
Erica Courdae:
That’s right. I love that. You want to pick my brain, you better pick a payment. I mean, I’m going to tell you now, I’m going to steal that one and deal with this steal like an artist, I’m stealing that. That is so, yes. Yes, because it’s true.
Miriam Schulman:
The author to Steal Like an Artist was also a guest on my show, Austin Kleon. I will link to him in the show notes as well. All right. So we’re including links to everything we mentioned in the show notes. You can find that at schulmanart.com/104, and don’t forget, if you liked this episode, you have to check out the Artist Incubator. It’s my private coaching program for professional artists who want to take their current art business to the next level. It’s by application only, go to schulmanart.com/B-I-Z, that’s biz. You’ll get my eyes on your art business and we’ll discuss the next steps you need to take to reach your goals and thrive.
Also, in the month of August and September, I’ve partnered with Amy Porterfield so you can get started teaching your art on line. If this is something you’ve thought about, but have no idea how to get started, or maybe you tried it, but your first attempts didn’t work out. I know my first attempts didn’t, that’s what happened to me. Then I invite you to join the free challenge going on right now, schulmanart.com/challenge. I know I’ve dropped a lot of links for you, so just go to schulmanart.com/104. Alrighty Erica, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Erica Courdae:
Just be in action, imperfect action.
Miriam Schulman:
Mic drop. Okay. Thank you so much for being here on the show with me.
Erica Courdae:
Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
Loved it. If you enjoyed today’s show, please leave me a review. We’ve now made it so much easier for you to leave a review, just pop on over to schulmanart.com/review-podcast and by the way, I learned how to do that through India Jackson, because that’s what she did on her show. If you pop your Instagram handle at the end of the review, I’ll even give you a shout out over on my ID stories. All right, guys. Thank you so much for being with me here today, I’ll see you same time, same place next week. Make it a great one.
Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with those on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram at Schulman Art and of course on schulmanart.com.
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