Black cultural advancement: racial identity and participation in the arts among the black middle class

While there are well developed theoretical elaborations of the role of consumption in establishing and solidifying the class boundaries of elites, there is less understanding of the ways that elites draw on cultural participation to assert racial and ethnic membership. I address this gap and explore how middle-class blacks experience art patronage as a collective project of black cultural advancement. Drawing on in-depth interviews with middle-class blacks, I document how some middle-class blacks see themselves as uplifting the race by being patrons of black artists and black cultural institutions and by owning black art. Through elaborating how middle-class blacks experience arts participation as a form of racial unity, this paper contributes to a more complete understanding of the role that cultural participation plays in the racial and ethnic identity construction of elites.