Privileged, Highly Educated People Are Rapidly Colonizing The Racial-Justice Conversation (Unlocked)
I am sorry the tone of your organization's anti-racism platitudes disagreed with you
This article original ran on 7/30/2021 in paywalled form here. My decision to unlock it was inspired in part by Freddie DeBoer’s excellent recent appearance on Bari Weiss’s podcast, which covered some similar themes. If you like this article, please consider becoming a paying subscriber, or gifting a subscription to someone else.
Happy Friday, everyone. We’ve had a nice little bump in subscriptions lately, so if you’re one of my new readers (thank you!), you should know that the posts are usually more spaced out than they’ve been this month: This is my fifth in the last 11 days, which is very much not the norm. I just had some travel and other busyness early in July, so it ended up being a backloaded month, newsletter-wise. Next month the schedule should be more normal.
On July 5, in a post calling for “A Materialist Alternative to ‘Antiracism’,” Freddie deBoer wrote:
The obsession with microaggressions is a perfect example of the desperate need for materialism in racial politics. Yes, it’s unfortunate if people say or do things that subtly indicate racial superiority or otherwise embody imperfect racial attitudes, such as making oblique references to stereotypes. But human beings have profoundly limited control over their minute social interactions. (Among other things, we literally do not choose the things we say.) Policy cannot effectively stop microaggressions, even if we implemented heavy-handed laws to attempt to do so, and I certainly hope we won’t. Meanwhile a mile or two from me a bunch of Black children live in Brownsville in environmentally unhealthy housing, go hungry every night, and are regularly exposed to violence and crime. The notion that we should spend so much time talking about microaggressions and so little talking how to improve the conditions of those children can only happen when the racial discourse has been hijacked by a bunch of cossetted affluent college-educated journalists and academics who are as far removed from Brownsville as they are from Mars, whatever their race. And this is another key element of materialist approaches to race: recognizing that we in fact have limited political and social and argumentative resources, that we must prioritize, that we will never achieve a perfect racial environment and that our efforts to do so are counterproductive. We have to decide what comes first, and what should come first is making sure people are safe, fed, housed, clothed, educated, and cared for. After that we can worry more about being nice to each other.
A couple weeks later, the New York Times published an article headlined “Asians Are Represented in Classical Music. But Are They Seen?” by Javier C. Hernández. It’s chock-full of interviews with remarkably successful musicians talking about the difficulties they’ve encountered in their jobs as a result of being Asian. It’s also centered on a group that, as the headline suggests, is not underrepresented in classical music. Rather, there’s a bit of a truth to this particular stereotype, in that Asians are statistically overrepresented in American classical music, while blacks and Latinos are underrepresented. So since the Times can’t argue that Asians are being unfairly shut out of classical music, the framing of the article centers mostly on whether they’re being seen. (Raise your hand if you feel consistently ‘seen’ at work, whatever you do.)
I don’t want to knock the whole article. It contains some examples of undeniable racism that would be painful to experience. In addition to recounting everyday examples of microaggressions like names and faces being mixed up, Hernández notes that “In June, the eminent violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman was widely denounced after he invoked racist stereotypes about Asians during a Juilliard master class. He later apologized.” It’s also undeniably the case that there is a long history of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. No one is questioning that, or claiming that stereotypes widely held 30 years ago have somehow been entirely snuffed out in the intervening period.
What I’m questioning is the importance of focusing so intently, and so repeatedly, on the complaints of very privileged people who, whether or not they are victims of racial discrimination, have been at worst very lightly dinged by it.
After all, this is a trend. In the New York Times alone, there have been recent articles about alleged racism within the wine world, at Condé Nast, at Bon Appetit, within top medical journals, and at Gimlet Media. Some of these institutions surely have genuine race issues, but in certain cases the allegations are questionable at best. The Condé Nast article includes a young staffer offended she was given a copy of a style guide, because she was apparently unaware that this is a common gift for editorial higher-ups to give to their subordinates (she interpreted it as a racist implication that she didn’t speak good enough English). No one has any freaking clue exactly what happened at Gimlet, and despite so many media folks’ evident eagerness to present it as a race-related controversy, the closest anyone can get to a coherent argument in favor of this storyline is “Two staffers, one of them herself a woman of color, initially opposed a unionization drive favored by many staffers of color.” This is not exactly fodder for a pattern-or-practice investigation.
What all these institutions have in common is that they are the domains of highly privileged, college educated people. If you are in the wine world, or publishing or food writing or medical research, there is an overwhelming likelihood you have a college degree, probably a good one, and that you did not come from a poor family. Here and there are exceptions, of course, but they prove the rule. deBoer is right that this conversation is increasingly about microaggressions committed by and inflicted upon very, very privileged people. People who are likely to be only a couple steps removed, at most, from the sorts of journalists who write for The New York Times and other elite outlets, and who can raise awareness of their plight.
Let’s look into the types of people and situations the Times is choosing to shine a spotlight on in Our Racial Reckoning: Orchestra Edition. The article starts with the story of David Kim, a violinist in the San Francisco Symphony. He apparently had deeply troubling experiences there:
Kim, who is Korean American, was already disturbed by what he saw as widespread racism in classical music. He believed Asian string players were marginalized and treated “like cattle,” as he put it in a recent interview. “Like a herd of mechanical robots.”
And he felt his white colleagues in San Francisco, who make up 83 percent of the orchestra, did not share his urgency about building a culture more welcoming to Asian, Black and Latino players.
Feeling isolated and angry, Kim, 40, began to question his career. In March he resigned as the sole musician of color on an orchestra committee focused on equity and inclusion. And after the ensemble resumed live performances in May, he took time off, feeling on several occasions too distraught to play.
“I felt invisible, even though I was speaking very loudly,” Kim said. “I lost my passion for music.”
So what exactly happened? Because this article doesn’t contain much reporting other than uninvestigated quotes, we don’t find out. There was disagreement about diversity, but what sort of disagreement? What changes to the culture did Kim want that the SFS refused to make? Very few hints. At the end of the piece, Hernández does note that Kim had “grown tired of clashing with colleagues over issues like the tone of public statements on racism.” The exact right tone of a statement condemning racism is a tricky thing to garner consensus on, to be sure, but doesn’t seem like a major issue. Kim also views classical music itself — that is, the genre he is paid to play — as “racism disguised as art.” If Kim told his colleagues at the San Francisco Symphony that he thought classical music itself is racist, that might account for some of the tension and differences of opinion (but that’s speculation on my part).
Anyway, whatever the specifics, being treated “like cattle” sounds really bad and dehumanizing, of course. It reminded me of what I’ve read about some of the worst jobs in America, in slaughterhouses and avocado fields in California and so on. That is, jobs that workers who are frequently very poor and undocumented sometimes die doing.
I have tremendous sympathy for these people, but to be honest — and it could be a deficit of moral imagination on my part — I am having trouble mustering a similar level of sympathy for Kim. He’s a musician in one of the top symphonies in the world, holding a job that a veritable army of his fellow violinists would kill for. As of 2018, the minimum base salary of musicians in the SFS is $3,263 per week, which bumps up to $3,570 per week for the last six months of a contract, meaning the lowest-paid musicians in this symphony make well north of $170,000 per year, plus “payments for broadcasts, over-scale, seniority, and other added compensation: 10 weeks paid vacation, paid sick leave, a health care plan, and annual pension payment upon retirement.” To be fair, these musicians are in the midst of temporary, significant salary reductions as a result of the pandemic’s devastating financial impact on their symphony, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are well-paid by any reasonable standard (though surely very hard-working as well, because no one achieves that level within the music world without a sterling work ethic).
I guess what I’m saying is that overall, David Kim is in an exceptionally privileged position, a true member of the elite who, by dint of his talent and hard work and now connections, will never have trouble paying the bills, and will never have to engage in the sort of truly demeaning labor millions of Americans face every day, for the rest of his life. He is also, barring some unlikely catastrophe, extremely unlikely to ever experience the full brunt of racial oppression inflicted upon many of his ancestors. (Here, we’re similar: Barring some unlikely catastrophe, I am extremely unlikely to ever experience the full brunt of anti-Semitism inflicted upon many of my ancestors.)
Further down in the story, we hear from another alleged victim of this unwelcoming climate:
“You’re not always allowed to be the kind of artist you want to be,” said Nina Shekhar, 26, an Indian American composer who said her music is often wrongly characterized as having Indian attributes. “It feels very invalidating.”
Who is always allowed to be the kind of [whatever] they want to be at work? Who is always validated? Shekhar’s complaint is that… sometimes people think her heritage influenced her work? If you go to her website, you’ll see that she is an astonishingly successful musician, especially given her age, whose work has been covered favorably by some of the most important news outlets in the country:
Described as “vivid” (Washington Post) and “surprises and delights aplenty” (LA Times), her music has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, LA Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, New York Youth Symphony, ETHEL, violinist Jennifer Koh, Ensemble Échappé, Music from Copland House, soprano Tony Arnold, Third Angle New Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Lyris Quartet, Ray-Kallay Duo, New Music Detroit, and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra. Her work has been featured by Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walt Disney Concert Hall (LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight), Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, National Sawdust, National Flute Association, North American Saxophone Alliance, I Care If You Listen, WNYC/New Sounds (New York), WFMT (Chicago), and KUSC and KPFK (Los Angeles) radio, ScoreFollower, TUTTI Festival, Blackbird Creative Lab, Copland House’s CULTIVATE, Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music. Recent and upcoming events include performances by the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic (joined by soloists Nathalie Joachim and Pamela Z), Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and New World Symphony. Current projects include commissions for the Grand Rapids Symphony, Albany Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, The Crossing, 45th Parallel Universe Chamber Orchestra (sponsored by GLFCAM), saxophonist Timothy McAllister, and Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) (sponsored by LA Phil and New Music USA). Nina is the recipient of the 2021 Rudolf Nissim Prize, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2015 and 2019), and the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Leonard Bernstein Award, funded by the Bernstein family.
…
Nina is currently pursuing her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University. She previously completed composition graduate studies at University of Southern California and undergraduate studies at University of Michigan, earning dual degrees in music composition and chemical engineering. She was recently appointed as the 2021-2023 Composer-in-Residence for Young Concert Artists. An active educator, Nina is currently a Composer Teaching Artist Fellow for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and is on faculty at the Idyllwild Arts Academy and Brightwork newmusic‘s Project Beacon initiative. She has also held composition residencies at Western Michigan University and Portland State University. She recently served as an inaugural Debut Fellow of the Young Musicians Foundation, mentored by violinist and social activist Vijay Gupta.
This person is 26 years old!
Imagine telling one of the approximately two-thirds of Americans without a college degree, or the more than half living paycheck to paycheck, that this is who the New York Times wants you to feel sympathy for on account of the racial insensitivity she has been victimized by.
Let’s talk about another alleged victim:
Yuja Wang, another Chinese pianist, has tried, with mixed success, to satirize the stereotype of Asians as robots, which scholars attribute partly to misconceptions about the Suzuki method of teaching music. (It originated in Japan in the 1950s and was criticized in the West for producing homogeneous musicians, but remains in wide use, including among non-Asian students.) In 2019, Wang joined a comedy duo for a contentious concert at Carnegie Hall that was filled with crude jokes about her sexual appeal and Chinese heritage.
Wang, 34, said in an interview that early in her career she faced stereotypes that she was technically adept but emotionally shallow. “I didn’t like how they just categorized us and pigeonholed us,” she said.
While she said she has rarely experienced overt racism, Wang said she has at times felt like an outsider in the industry, including when others mispronounce her name or do not appear to take her seriously.
Ah yes, that thing where you experience mild racism and then you are invited to Carnegie Hall to artistically express what it felt like. (I don’t know if this site is accurate, but it says that Wang has a net worth of $20 million.)
Anyway, to be fair Hernández also quotes some Asian musicians who outright told him they didn’t find their work climate to be racist, and notes that others didn’t respond to his query on this front. And again, some of the stuff in the article is undeniably ugly.
But my point is that this is clearly part of a trend in which some extremely privileged people are increasingly colonizing the discussion over racial justice, dragging it away from a set of important, consequential questions — Who dies because of a lack of access to diabetes treatment? Who lacks health insurance altogether? Who gets thrown in prison for years on bogus charges because they were assigned a narcoleptic public defender? — and toward a culture of endemic microcomplaint. Someone thought my music was Indian-influenced! My organization’s statement condemning racism didn’t have exactly the right tone! I’m sorry: These are not major problems, and do not belong in any genuine, good-faith conversation about American racism. At least not, to borrow from deBoer, until we’ve solved many other, much more pressing problems.
The problem is, among Times readers and their ilk there is an insatiable appetite for these sorts of race stories at the moment. And anyone can produce any story suggesting any field has a race problem — or any problem, really. You literally just send out feeler emails to well-connected individuals in the field in question saying “I’m looking to talk to people in [FIELD] who feel they have been treated unfairly as a result of [THING].” You could literally Mad-Libs this — I could get you a story about aggrieved Muslim beekeepers by this time tomorrow.
Of course if you seek out people who feel a certain way about a certain thing, you will find them. And if you string together enough of their stories (without fact-checking the details), you have yourself a Pattern. Journalists love Patterns — in fact, a big part of our job is discerning them. Or manufacturing them, as the case may be. In the setup to his piece, Hernández writes that “the success of some Asian artists obscures the fact that many face routine racism and discrimination, according to interviews with more than 40 orchestra players, soloists, opera singers, composers, students, teachers and administrators.” There is no universe in which Hernández contacts 40 people in these fields, asks the questions he asks, and doesn’t come away with the story he planned on writing all along.
All of this is an increasingly superficial ‘reckoning’ that has nothing to do with the problems most Americans face at one point or another. Don’t be surprised if the backlash is a bit more pointed than usual.
Questions? Comments? Articles about the microaggressions faced by Jewish podcasters with caustic lesbian cohosts? I’m at singalminded@gmail.com or on Twitter at @jessesingal. The lead image is of a 2019 performance of the San Francisco Symphony, with full caption and credit ino below.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JAN. 18: Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony at the Davies Symphony Hall on Friday, Jan. 18, 2019, in San Francisco, Calif. Coronavirus-triggered performance cancellations brought about a $40 million loss of revenue. As a result, the musicians approved a 30 percent salary cut to help with solvency. (Santiago Mejia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)