Last edited Fri Jun 26, 2026, 01:03 PM - Edit history (1)
My initial impression was that your question was not a better question, but simply the same question, rephrased. Then I thought about it some more and decided that my original question makes an assumption about the reason black people don't attend classical venues that your question does not make. So, your question is better phrased. I'll give you that. I should have thought about it more carefully before posting it, but I did dash it off just before leaving the house.
However, I don't agree that it's presumptive to assume black people don't like classical music. I made that statement based on observation, not on presumption. About three weeks ago I went to a classical music concert that included one of my favorites, the Sibelius fifth symphony. Wow, I love that symphony! Especially that incredibly beautiful second movement. I saw exactly two black faces there. One of them was one of the two ticket-takers at the entrance. The other was a young black woman in the audience. This was in an audience of several hundred people and an orchestra of several dozen musicians, in a midwestern college town of 130,000 that is about 15 percent black population. Look at the performance I posted above and try to find a black face in that orchestra or in the audience. I don't know how many black people there are in Vienna, but I'm sure it's a much higher percentage than were present in that concert hall.
Several posters in this thread said they find the question I posed offensive. They should find that societal condition offensive. All I am doing is calling attention to it. There is nothing offensive about noticing a sociological phenomenon and wondering what the reason for it is. And also please notice that I said that it bothers me, and that if I were in a position to do something about it, I would try.
In case anybody is wondering, I am a 76-year-old white man. Not that it matters.
-- Ron
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