As arts funding becomes increasingly dependent on private funds, there is a smaller pool of financial support available for minority arts organizations. Additionally, with their dependence on funding for programming, it is now difficult for minority arts organizations to ignore the threat from the Trump administration’s proposal for elimination of the NEA budget completely. Over the years, the Republican party, including Trump, have been unsupportive of the NEA.

Trump is threatening to cut funding to arts organizations, which would only affect the federal budget microscopically – in 2016, NEA only got $148 million. For example, Defense is more than 3,600 times that — almost $583 billion a year. The correlation between arts funding distribution and the elitist white point of view that remains persistent in America since Reagan’s administration reveals that the government continues to ignore the role art-based programs play for minority communities.

To put into perspective, consider this:

If you were at Thanksgiving and asked for a slice of pecan pie proportionate to 2016 NEA spending relative to the federal budget, you would end up receiving a piece of pie that needed to be sliced off with a finely-tuned laser.

Or this:

If you make $50,000 a year, spending the equivalent of what the government spends on the NEA, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting combined, would be like spending less than $10.