Diversity

Everywhere you look, there’s a new editorial touting the importance of “diversity in classical music,” or a new initiative to “promote diversity in the workplace.” Many answers abound in common threads, like “people with different backgrounds make better art in the long run”, or “growing our audiences means we have to cultivate art patrons of all ethnicities.” When we engage and ask “how?” and “why?’, the op-eds seem to neatly wrap up their final sentences.

I’ve been teaching an after-school program at an NYC performing arts public high school for the last four years. While the seniors have decided to study other subjects in college, they could easily start a degree in music and hold their own next to other horn students. All of the students in my class are what society at large would consider “diverse”. In fact, the hour-long commute on the train to the Bronx is a study in itself on how quickly demographics change from borough to borough.

The first class of the year is always a joyful one, where the reunion with the returning students takes place and the entering freshmen look at me with a cocked eyebrow, as if to say “who is this overly energetic short lady with a cut bell and a loud, metronomic snap?” I go around the room and make introductions and spell out the cell phone rules, which are a necessary evil on the after-school scene. And yet, this was the first year that a student had questions for ME.

”Wait, you’re Mexican too? Where did you go to school? On scholarship? Did you get it because you’re Hispanic?”

YIKES. I was surprised at how that took my breath away.

The truth is, I’ve always had it in my head that I was the weakest player in the entering class of the school I went to. I have two or three colleagues from that time that regularly remind me of the “drastic improvement I made while I was there”. As a minority in the arts with no musical family, from a time before El Sistema and before Sphinx represented more than one community, it’s pretty daunting to look back and question where you’re really from, and what you have. We all want to believe we’ve earned what we have, but let’s be honest: the fact that we even considered a future in the arts reflects some kind of lucky break or privilege.

So I answered, “Maybe, but I’ll take it. It doesn’t matter how you get there, but it matters what you do with it afterwards. If you want it, make it happen.” That student made serious strides the following hour.

Earlier that week, I met some parents of a young boy. He is also Hispanic, and was cast in a role that was specifically designed for someone who looks like him. His story was my story: out of the blue, he found something he loved that no one else had ever done in his family, and he followed the path of hard work and lucky breaks that led to his current job. They were overjoyed for him, and I was overjoyed to tell them that he was indeed REALLY talented. I was touched at how, if that role hadn’t existed, it may have taken him as long as it took me to break in, and would he have stayed the course?

Is it special treatment to hire people because we want more minorities or women in our workplaces? Maybe that’s not the right way to see it. Maybe it’s more about expanding the net, and not about finding people for the sake of being diverse. Maybe it’s about sharing the privilege we now have of thinking that a career doing exactly what we want is something everyone deserves. Maybe we all deserve the same starting point because we’re all people living in America, and a person who fizzles out before they get the chance is a dearth of talent that we should all mourn.

As for me, I can’t quite hire people and give them their dreams, but I can keep sharing my story and functioning as the person that someone hears in the back of their mind in their own times of doubt. I heard a TED talk by America Ferrera where she discusses how her most impactful roles are the ones that encompass her story as the daughter of immigrants, entitled “My Identity Is My Superpower.” I guess I’ll make sure to let people see my superhero cape a little more often.

What are your thoughts on diversity? Feeling inspired to cast a wider net? Comment below!