One US survey from 2014 found that artists and other “creative workers” were more likely to come from middle-income homes even as they make something like 35 percent less than their comfortable parents did. A 2018 UK study noted that in addition to the very real barriers of money, artists also face a series of gatekeepers who remain attached to the idea of art as a meritocracy—gatekeepers who tend to come from more comfortable backgrounds themselves, making it easier for them to wave away the difficulties that artists of color with less (or no) family support face just getting to enter that
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