De Blasio Issues ‘Cultural Plan’ Linking Museum Funding to Skin Color | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This informational nugget was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is one of the most topical news events, it should be published on BCN.

    On Friday, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio - who suggested today that the presence of The New York Post was harmful to his horribly-governed city - announced a "cultural plan" for New York. According to The New York Times, De Blasio looks to "link future funding for museums and arts groups to diversity of their employees and board members."

    So, no longer will public dollars merely go to artists based on the alleged quality of their work. Now De Blasio will explicitly link those dollars to the skin color and sexual orientation of the artists. As the Times continues:

• This unusual move by the city, which rarely dictates policy to its cultural leaders, puts pressure on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, the American Museum of Natural History and other pre-eminent institutions that are led largely by white male executives and power brokers from Wall Street, real estate and other industries.

    Because the most important thing about art is obviously whether its funders are white. White people's art is simply too stultifying - let alone art by non-white people funded by white people. De Blasio said, "We do this because we believe in fairness." Not fairness of opportunity, of course. Equality of outcome, no matter the quality of the work itself. And then De Blasio, who gives practically none of his money to charity, tore into those cultural institutions largely supported by charity: calling them "elitist," he added, "There is still the assumption among many New Yorkers about where they belong and where they don't belong." So, in other words, if too many white people give money and sit on the board of the Met, De Blasio will look to cut funding to the Met, even if the Met is funding projects by people of color.

    De Blasio explained, "We've got a long way to go. We've got more work to do," citing the fact that 26 percent of senior staff members of cultural organizations are non-white. Which, of course, is not proof of discrimination of any sort, but is good enough for De Blasio to now promote government discrimination.

    By the way, De Blasio told the Times that he'd never been to his local museum.

    But at least the City Council can posture - Melissa Mark-Viverito braged, "There are people who will resist, who will resent, who will obstruct. Any moment for equality and inclusion doesn't come easily." Perhaps New York should begin by giving back any Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford, and Carnegie cash used to establish major institutions in the city. After all, those are old dead white men.

    The totalitarianism of the Left won't stop at crackdowns on political viewpoints (Governor Andrew Cuomo famously said conservatives weren't welcome in his state). It extends to art, too. Mao had his cultural revolution, and Maoist-lite De Blasio will have his as well.