Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector

Caste and the discrimination, exclusion, marginalization, othering, oppression, subalterning, and subjugation that it produces continue to challenge creative industries compromising culture’s verisimilitude as a public good. Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector explores the relationships between access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI), and creative justice in the U.S. creative sector as a solution to meaningfully address enduring creative injustices.

Whether it’s the #BlackLivesMatter, #LandBack, or #MeToo movements, caste remains structurally and systemically built into U.S. Society, and thereby the creative sector. Acknowledging this realization after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 has galvanized a quest for solutions. This book encourages sincere consideration for the human toll of insisting on artistic excellence and artistic merit at the expense of profound and unnecessary identity-based human suffering.

Providing a practical guide on how to activate ADEI to achieve creative justice and a research agenda, this book is an essential reading for practitioners and scholars who feel compelled to address creative injustices that constrain the creative flourishing of historically and continuously low-casted peoples throughout the entire cultural ecosystem that defines the U.S. creative sector.

antonio c. cuyler is Professor of Music in Entrepreneurship & Leadership and Faculty Associate in Voice & Opera in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), and Faculty Associate in the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan. His Black-owned arts consultancy, Cuyler Consulting, LLC, partners with cultural organizations to maximize their performance and community relevance through access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI).