Prompt #4

This is the hardest question out of the list for me to answer, for several reasons.  First, I grew up in an overwhelmingly white community.  When I was in High school, there are only three black students I can remember.  There is only one Asian student (she was adopted) and no Hispanic students that I can recall.  My childhood and my public education experience holds almost no connection to "people of color."

Second, as a classical musician, my colleagues and teachers are largely white.  I have never studied with a black, Asian or Hispanic music teacher at the collegiate level.  I can count on one, maybe two hands the number of students "of color" I have worked with over the past 16 years while being involved in the RIC music program.  My field is overwhelmingly white.

That is not to say, however, that I have only worked with white people as a musician.  For three years, I wrote arrangements for a funk band out of South Providence called "South Side".  It was an eight member group that contained 5 older black men, 2 white men, and a white woman.  The group went through several members, and a lot of conflict.  I was shocked to see the number of stereotypes that were in play amongst them.  The black men could not spell, almost to a man.  They had lots of trouble with homophones.  They also had lots of trouble with authority.  They lived with a paradox amongst themselves concerning authority; none of them wanted the trouble of leading the group, and none of them were willing to follow anyone else.  Suggestions about their performances were often met with a hostile response, as if to suggest that they could do something different, or better, was an insult or a demonstration of disrespect towards them.  For example, I was confronted, in a very hostile manner, by one member of the band for suggesting that he end the song on the tonic rather than the mediant (Music Theory 101 kind of stuff).  I eventually became frustrated with the group and left.

I refuse to let that experience color my judgment.  that being said, my educational and professional experience with "people of color" is largely limited to what I have read.  I'm an excellent example of Johnson and "white privilege."  I've had a list of second chances, including this one right now, that many "people of color" have not had.  I'll have to keep that mind, be sensitive, and try and steer students in the right direction.