This has not been the best of times for older, white women in the United States. First, there was a not particularly thoughtful New York Times article on self-described despiser of white boomer women Jamie Loftus. Then came word that the Art Institute of Chicago, in an effort to create a diverse staff more reflective of the city in which it’s located, is doing away with its volunteer docents, who are, yes, mostly older, white women.
Instead, a letter sent to the 82 docents noted, the museum would phase in a new program mixing paid educators and volunteers “in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.”
Let me translate this for you: Museum officials, fearing they would be declared irrelevant, had to find someone else to appear so.
Look, every institution should reflect its populace. Chicago’s population is 33% Black and 29% Hispanic or Latino, so institutional staffing should reflect this. But you don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Why not a program called “Training the Next Generation” in which docents are paired with junior docents who can then eventually take over some of the guided tours and other educational activities?
This, of course, is only partly about the racial makeup of museum staffs. What it’s really about is power — who has it and who wants it. Older, white women are perceived as having derived their power, status and money for years from those who oppressed others. (That would be older, white men.) And there is some truth to this. But there are many more older, white women who used whatever power they had on the frontlines of the social justice movements the last 50 years. Where would breast cancer awareness be without older, white women? Where would AIDS research be?
There seems to be a certain resentment of older white women’s “financial flexibility to participate” to borrow from the doublespeak of the dismissal letter. Apparently, it’s part of what drives Loftus, although the article on her did not make clear why she thinks white boomer women should be despised and what it is her mother doesn’t “get.” But if older, white women have a certain discretionary income that enables them to become docents, they’ve worked for it for more than 30, 40, 50 years. No one handed anything to these women, who for years couldn’t get a credit card, a bank loan or a mortgage without a man co-signing for it.
It takes time to gain rights and opportunities, acquire an education, build a career, marry and raise a family, create a home and a stock portfolio. But time is the great enemy of America, a most adolescent country that wants everything now. And it’s the great enemy of many members of the 30-year-old Loftus’ generation, who are no sooner on the job than they’re complaining that “it’s not working for me” and “this wasn’t what I was hired to do,.” (It doesn’t help that the internet, their vehicle of choice, is only about the moment.,) Loftus talks about the entitlement of white boomer women, but who’s more entitled than people who aren’t willing to put in the time and effort to succeed? Along with great communications skills, especially writing skills, many of her generation lack persistence.
Persistence is a quality older, white women have in abundance. Without it, they would never have pushed society to the point where young women have the luxury to declare their older counterparts obsolete.
But what I really fear is not being a dinosaur but that this so-called kind of “woke” behavior is the very type that enables conservatives to stereotype liberals as politically correct airheads. Already conservatives across the spectrum, from Alex Jones to The Wall Street Journal, have denounced the Art Institute’s decision. If the cons gain the upper hand in the midterms or — God forbid — in the 2024 presidential election, what do you think will happen to voting rights in America? There are going to be bigger problems than the face of docents at a museum.
But back to that face. Recently, an older, white woman approached me and my friend as we sat by the Three Graces Fountain at the New York Botanical Garden. She identified herself as a docent there, albeit one furloughed by the pandemic, and asked if we wanted to hear the story of how the fountain came to be there. I’ve covered culture in New York for so long — 41 years — that I could lead the tours at most institutions. And frankly, I was more interested in lunch by that point than what she had to say.
But we said “yes,” in part to be polite. As she talked, what struck me the most was not what she said but the passion with which she said it. She had a hunger to impart not just information but knowledge, to reach out and connect and touch others. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe she was a rich woman with time to fill. Maybe she just adored the garden and wanted others to love it, too.
I think anyone with that kind of knowledge and passion — regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity — should be allowed to share them.