Born on Third Base

“I hate the unfairness of injustice. Anyone who thinks they are better than others or ‘chosen’ or feel they have entitlement … be it through monarchy, government, or money. I think we are all born the same. We are entitled to an equal shot at life.””

— Liam Cunningham

One of the major roadblocks in the ability of White folks, particularly, White males, to accept the notion of social justice for all is the inability to recognize that many of us were born on third base, thinking we hit a triple. 

It begins with the American ideal that anyone who works hard enough can “make it.” Yes, working hard increases chances of success, financial or otherwise. And I understand the tendency to take pride in having earned everything you’ve achieved without “handouts.” We all like to think we have overcome adversity and achieved success because of effort and virtue rather than privilege and luck. The flip side is that someone who is struggling or poor or perhaps gets in trouble with the law “deserves” it because he or she is lazy, not smart, or flawed in some way. 

I “made it,” why can’t “they”? If I can do it, why can’t “they”?

An essential first step in becoming a positive force for social justice is to recognize that for Black folk, systemic racism has littered the path to “success” and “making it” with obstacle upon obstacle. That’s why virtually every Black parent must tell their children they will have to perform twice as good as White folk to get or keep a job. This should not be surprising. After all, we’re talking about a country that had written into its founding document that Blacks were counted as 3/5 of a person. 

In response, it is common to invoke false comparisons between Blacks and other immigrant groups such as Italians, Jews, and the Irish. The claim that these groups had similar challenges but made it nonetheless only tells part of the story. Once again, let’s leave it to Martin Luther King to set the record straight. He wrote in “Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos: 

“Why haven’t the Negroes done the same? These questioners refuse to see that the situation of other immigrant groups a hundred years ago and the situation of the Negro today cannot be usefully compared. Negroes were brought here in chains long before the Irish decided voluntarily to leave Ireland or the Italians thought of leaving Italy. Some Jews may have involuntarily left their homes in Europe, but they were not in chains when they arrived on these shores. Other immigrant groups came to America with language and economic handicap but not with the stigma of color. Above all, no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil, and no other group has had its family structure deliberately torn apart. That is the rub.” (King 1968, 110)  

My typical response when I hear an Old White Dude suggest he is a success due to his hard work and that everyone else can achieve such success if they only worked as hard goes something like this. “So, the fact that you grew up in a stable household without having to worry about having adequate food or healthcare didn’t give you an advantage? Or did you attend a well-funded, often private, school and have parents who could pay for you to go to a good college? Or that when you began your career, you could get your foot in the door because your parents or their friends had contacts to open those doors of opportunity. Or maybe you were able to take an entry-level, unpaid internship because your parents were able to support you, while others couldn’t take advantage of such an opportunity because they had to work to help the family pay the rent.” 

Their response often goes something like this. “Today, everyone has the same rights by law. Everyone is equal. In fact, with today’s affirmative action measures, the White man is being denied equal opportunity. How can you say systemic racism is a problem today? We elected a Black president twice and now have vice president of Jamaican and Indian descent.” 

Yes, we have made progress in becoming a more just society. But over 400 years of discrimination against Black folk throughout virtually every facet of American life cannot be erased with the passage of a few laws and election results brought into line within a generation. From health care to housing, from the education system to the legal system, from policing to the prison system, from voting rights to access to capital, the myriad of hurdles to advancement for Black Americans are formidable and, in many cases, overwhelming. Such a deeply ingrained system will take tens of decades to transform fully. It will be a long and difficult path. But it’s a path that we all must pursue in doing the tough work to undo systemic racism at its core. 

The All-American notion of the rugged individualist who “makes it” due to superior talent, intellect, and work ethic is an enduring mythology of the American experience. It’s an easy narrative to embrace when it comes to social justice because it essentially provides an excuse to justify White privilege. It lets us off the hook for taking responsibility to understand the root causes of injustice and inequity. It also tends to cloud our judgment regarding exactly how much we benefit from White privilege. We’ve got to acknowledge reality as it is, not how we imagine it to be.

In other words, you may be standing on third base, but you definitely did not hit a triple. And there is absolutely no shame in admitting that. 

Critical Race Theory

“The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased with the Black man’s misery.”

— Frederick Douglass

Another battle in the fight against racism being fought is whether, and if so, how schools should teach the history of slavery and racism. Given that these issues remain particularly contentious, coupled with our increasingly polarized society, it is no surprise that the issue has been highly politicized. At the center is the concept of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Before moving forward, let’s be clear about one thing. Critical Race Theory is not being taught in our grade schools and high schools. Claims to the contrary are false. It is, however, taught in law schools. CRT, as an academic concept, posits that racism is a social construct and not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice but is embedded in legal systems and public policies. Given the crux of the theory, it makes perfect sense to teach the subject in our law schools.

Again, to reiterate. Claiming that CRT is taught in our grade schools and high schools is utterly disingenuous and false. Worse, it is pretexted to discourage or outright ban the teaching of our nation’s history relating to racism. The result has been numerous state legislatures proposing and passing bills to ban its teaching in the classroom. The idea that we cannot even acknowledge our sordid history of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow as part of American history because it might make White folks “uncomfortable” is perhaps the most blatant example of White fragility.

I fully understand that people of all faiths and political persuasion are entitled to their opinions and beliefs. But working to deny the ability to teach US history with little mention of the role that slavery and racism have played in that history is irresponsible and dangerous. It shows how White fragility can cause us to avoid recognition of our responsibilities as White people, not simply to work towards eliminating racism and injustice in our society but for even making the effort to understand the root and causes of those injustices.

How can we teach basic, fundamental US history without referencing slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement? We cannot. The institution of slavery is often referred to as America’s “original sin”. It is a fundamental bedrock pieces of our collective history. You can’t ignore it. It happened. This is another example of Whites having to deal with the world as it is rather than how we want to believe it is…or was.

This begs the question. What are we afraid of? If, as we like to say, “I didn’t enslave or lynch anyone and don’t actively perpetuate racism,” why would we cover our ears and close our eyes to that history? 

These events, issues, and policies all happened. They are historical facts. They are a part of our collective national story. It’s time we faced that head-on. You can’t sweep our common history under the rug as those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. The fact is, we, Blacks and Whites, have been, are currently, and forever will be, bound together as Americans. Our history is a shared history, warts and all. If there has ever been an example of the possibility of “the truth setting us free,” this may be it.

Jazz as a Leadership Development Tool

What do sports coaches such as Bill Belichick and Bobby Knight and music directors and conductors such as Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis have in common? The answer is that to achieve their level of success, they have all had to be effective leaders. 

Say what? Sports such as football and music such as jazz can be equally effective as platforms to teach effective leadership skills.  

Absolutely. 

In fact, given that April is Jazz Appreciation Month, it seems appropriate to take this opportunity to make the case that music, in general, and jazz specifically, may, in fact, be a more effective leadership development tool than sports such as football for the 21st Century. 

A common cultural belief is that nothing instills in participants character traits such as discipline, personal responsibility, collaboration, and leadership skills than participation in team sports. The leadership skills taught and developed on the playing field, it is said, carry over to effective leadership off the field. The notion that team sports build leaders is a long-held and very powerful justification for our continued heavy investment in them as an effective educational and leadership development tool. 

But the fact is, music also provides opportunities to exhibit and develop leadership skills. There is no difference between a team and a band in terms of the requirements for reaching the predetermined goals of winning (sports) and achieving a particular sound (music). In short, any team or band setting offers tremendous opportunities to develop leadership skills. 

But the elements and characteristics required of good leaders are not static. Effective leadership requires recognition that worker attitudes, work environments, and productivity expectations can change. That being the case, desirable and effective leadership skills, and styles must also evolve. There was a time, for example, when the iron-fisted “my way or the highway” style of leadership was considered very effective. But times change, people change, and entire industries can change. Employees now demand more respect and collaboration. As a result, effective leaders can no longer simply demand performance; they must nurture a more collaborative work environment if they wish to maximize worker and company productivity. Employees today don’t want to feel like cogs in a machine. They want to be respected and have a part in the decision-making process. Smart and effective leaders understand that. Simply put, employees who are more invested in the decision-making process are more productive. 

Frank Barrett, in his book Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz, elaborates: 

We have grown up with a variety of models of organizations, most of which have relied to some degree on a mechanistic view of top-down approaches to change. Command-and-control models of leadership stress routines and rules. They demand rigorous and clear organizational structures reinforced by rules, plans, budgets PERT charts, schedules, clearly defined roles, and the use of coercion or intimidation to get worker compliance. These might have worked well in the first part of the twentieth century when organizations were designed like machines, tasks were broken down into small parts that could easily be replicated, and people could be replaced as easily as machine parts. But as we enter the knowledge-intensive demands of the twenty-first century, we need to rotate our images and increase our leadership repertoire beyond these hierarchical models so that we can more fully appreciate the power of relationships.

This begs the question. Given this shift in desired leadership style to a more collaborative, participatory focus, how does the traditional leadership style of the sports culture hold up versus the jazz-influenced leadership style outlined by Barrett? He continues:

“Leaders don’t have the luxury of anticipating or predicting every situation, training and rehearsing for it and getting learning out of the way before executing. Rather, leaders must master the art of learning while doing and spread this mastery throughout their systems. That’s why jazz bands are such provocative models for us to consider as we create teams and organizations in the twenty-first century. 

“How do organizations thrive in a drastically changing world predicated on uncertainty? By building a capacity to experiment, learn and innovate – in short, by engaging in strategic, engaged improvisation. The model of jazz musicians improvising collectively offers a clear and powerful example of how people and teams can coordinate, be productive, and create amazing innovations without so many of the control levers that managers relied on in the industrial age. An improvisation model of organizing created a kind of openness, an invitation to possibility, rather than leaning toward a narrowness of control.” (Barrett, 2012, pp.xiv,xv.)

In short, both sports and music can provide a platform for teaching leadership skills. But is it possible that while sports’ top-down style of teaching was better suited to the Industrial Age, the jazz-influenced collaborative model of leadership style may be more effective in the creative economy and workplace of the 21st Century? 

The point is not to dismiss sports’ potential as a vehicle to teach leadership skills. Rather it is simply to recognize that when we consider how to invest educational and community resources for purposes of developing leadership skills in our populace, team sports do not have the market cornered on effectiveness. Investment in music education can be as effective, and in some cases, even more effective, than sports as a vehicle to instill those characteristics. 

That’s something to consider not only during Jazz Appreciation Month but year-round. 

What Are We to Make of the Term “Woke”?

This essay appeared in the March 28, 2023, edition of Lancaster, PA’s LNP News

What Are We to Make of the Term “Woke”?  

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” - Albert Einstein

It’s safe to say that we are living in an era of significant polarization. And a central theme or issue driving much of that polarization is swirling around the concept of “wokeness.” 

In no way do I want to dismiss the intense feelings this term evokes from both sides of the political aisle. Clearly, the term has gained currency and attention as it has been applied to issues relating to our ongoing fraught public debates around racism, justice, and equity. And it is a debate that has accelerated and intensified on the heels of the racial unrest of the past few years. 

What to make of it all? 

Frankly, I am having a hard time understanding what the fuss is all about. This feeling was exacerbated after watching a recent interview with conservative writer Bethany Mandel, who has co-authored a new book titled “Stolen Youth: How Radicals are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation,” which critiques progressivism. During the interview, Mandel was asked to define “woke.”

Despite claiming that an entire chapter in the book was devoted to defining the term, she stumbled and mumbled, unable to provide a cogent definition. If a supposed “expert” on the subject cannot define it, what are the rest of us supposed to think it means?    

Regardless, I remain baffled as to why this term and all that it implies has become such a “thing.” And why has “woke” fostered such heated debate and caused such widespread angst and division? Conservatives and the political right use it as a slur, while liberals and the political left consider it a badge of honor. 

My impression from the public debate around the term is that it has come to represent not simply the desire to learn facts about social justice but implies a willingness to actively work on being more aware of and committed to addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  

When in doubt, particularly where language and words and their meanings are involved, you go to the primary source: the dictionary. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of “woke” is to be “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” 

Ishena Robinson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund wrote on that organization’s website that the term “woke” has its “roots in the Black American vernacular.”

Indeed, she noted, the use of “woke” as an in-group signal urging Black people to be aware of the systems that harm and otherwise put us at a disadvantage is documented as far back as the 1920s. …To some, woke is now a derisive stand-in for diversity, inclusion, empathy, and yes, Blackness.” It has become a weapon to criticize those who want to accurately and fully teach this nation’s history and acknowledge its struggles with racism and discrimination.”  

What I find puzzling is why those who have weaponized “woke” think so poorly of people. Apparently, they do not trust people to be smart and thoughtful enough to be exposed to truth, facts, and history and thus be able to decide for themselves as to what to think of that history. Do they believe that people are too fragile or immature to handle the truth? A better approach, it seems to me, would be to expose people to facts and truth and trust them to make their own judgments and decisions.  

My questions are simple. What is so bad about being aware of and attentive to facts and issues about any subject, including racial justice? What is wrong with being curious regarding facts and truth? Isn’t that what life is about - being curious and learning about history and pertinent facts on a wide array of topics and, in the process, growing and evolving as a person? 

I simply can’t get my head around why “being woke” has come to be a character trait that is to be vilified and criticized. 

If being “woke” means that I am curious and want to learn and, in the process, grow as a more informed human being, please count me in. Being curious and wanting to learn more about our history and culture - regardless of where the facts may take me - is something I will embrace. And if I am curious about the history and impacts of race, justice, and equity and how we might, as a society, mitigate the negative impacts associated with those issues, by all means, call me “woke.” 

I am OK with being “woke.” 

How about you? 

Dr. John R. Gerdy is the founder and executive director of Music For Everyone and author of the upcoming book “The Journey of an Old White Dude in the Age of Black Lives Matter: A Primer.” 

Silence Is No Longer an Option

““To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.””

— Theodore H. White

Being a force against racism is not about charity. It’s not about coming to the rescue of a beleaguered group. It’s not about making us feel good about ourselves or soothing our guilt. And, at the end of the day, it’s not about people of color. It’s about us Old White Dudes. White men wrote our nation’s foundational principles. And when they did, they codified White privilege or, more specifically, White male privilege. Consider who wrote those founding documents. There were fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, which, as we were taught in grade school, reads in part, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Note that of the fifty-six white signers, the majority—forty-one—were enslavers. In the minds of our Founding Fathers, only White men were created equal. Black men and all women were not worthy of those same unalienable rights.

From that original seed evolved a system designed to preserve and defend that privilege, often at any cost. The system is stacked against the achievement of equity because, to this day, Old White Dudes dominate our system of government. Take, for example, the US Senate. In the history of that body, there have only been eleven.

Black senators. Today that number is three out of 100. And since the US Supreme Court was established in 1789, 108 out of the total 116 justices have been White men.

Yes, we have made progress with Barack Obama being elected president twice and now with Kamala Harris as vice president. But the overall numbers do not lie. That’s why it’s no surprise we are seeing a rash of bills at the state level designed to limit voting access and suppress voter turnout, primarily among people of color. This is another means by which the White male-dominated establishment maintains White privilege and power.

Again, I understand you haven’t done anything overtly and purposefully racist. But that does not excuse you from not doing something to mitigate its negative impact. We have been complicit in our silence and inaction. Doing nothing is an act in and of itself—an act of omission. We’ve been complicit in not standing up and accepting personal responsibility to work at dismantling a system of White privilege from which we have benefitted. This is about our core being as humans. It’s about taking responsibility to work to right a wrong. It’s about first healing ourselves. And a first step is to look in the mirror and acknowledge that White privilege is real. And then we’ve got to step up and do the hard work. We can do better. It’s like that cartoon where Pogo looks into the mirror and sees that “the enemy is us.”

“We cannot change the hypocrisy upon which we were founded,” writes Nikole Hannah-Jones in The 1619 Project. “We cannot change all the times in the past when this nation had the opportunity to do the right thing and chose to return to its basest inclinations. We cannot make up for all the lives lost and dreams snatched for all the suffering endured. But we can atone for it. We can acknowledge the crime. And we can do something to set things right, to ease the hardship and hurt of so many of our fellow Americans...None of us can be held responsible for the wrongs of our ancestors. But if today we choose not to do the right and necessary thing, that burden we own.” (Hannah- Jones 2021, 475)

She continues, “[W]e must make a choice about which America we want to build for tomorrow. The time for slogans and symbolism, and inconsequential actions has long passed. Citizens inherited not just the glory of their nation but its wrongs too. A truly great country does not ignore or excuse its sins. It confronts them and then works to make them right.

“If we are to be redeemed, we must do what is just: we must finally, live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded.” (Hannah-Jones 20212, 476)

Sometimes it is less about what you do or say than what you didn’t say or do. The times you didn’t step up or do something are the times that haunt you. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I speak up, step up, or do something?

In some ways, the struggle for racial justice is like grassroots, guerilla warfare—family to family, friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor, block by block, and community by community. Like a rock thrown into a pond that sends ripples in all directions, your voice can similarly echo. If you show the courage to say or do something, there will be others who, because of your courage and actions, will also step up. Many people who want to do the right thing simply need a bit of inspiration to take that first step. In stepping up first, you provide cover and give them an example to follow.

In short, it is not enough simply to deny being racist. Instead, we should actively denounce or oppose various racist notions, regardless of how widely believed. Racist words, slurs, slogans, memes, and beliefs must be vigorously challenged and called out. Repeatedly. Not stepping up to say something says an awful lot. Silence is complicity. Which means silence is no longer an option.

Music as a Platform for Integrated Learning

Integrated, interdisciplinary instruction is a teaching strategy that builds on the synergistic potential of combining knowledge of different disciplines as a catalyst for teaching across curriculums, yielding a clearer, broader, more thorough understanding of a discipline or disciplines. Through the integrated study of various disciplines, students learn to apply information learned in one area to challenges in another area. Education leaders recognize that the ability to think broadly across disciplines is becoming an increasingly critical component of a quality 21st-century education and are adjusting curriculums to reflect that reality. 

 Given these realities, rather than continuing to scale back or eliminate music educational opportunities and offerings, educational and community leaders should seriously reconsider the role that music can play in meeting this critical educational need. Simply put, due to the fact that music is the universal language, it may well be the most powerful and effective educational tool to meet the challenge of providing students with quality, integrated, interdisciplinary learning opportunities. 

For example, according to a 2009 study by Chorus America, 81 percent of teachers believe choruses can help students make better connections between disciplines, as learning a new piece of music often involves an amalgamation of language, art, history, geography, math, and more. (Chorus America, 2009, p. 15, 28) 

Music can also deepen understanding of various subject matters. The study of the civil rights movement in the United States can be vividly enhanced by incorporating the songs used by demonstrators. Teaching students and having them actually perform a civil rights song, such as “This Little Light of Mine” or “We Shall Overcome,” deepens students’ understanding of this era in American history. It brings the subject matter to life in a very vivid and participatory way.  

Another example is using songs and melodies to help teach reading. And yet another example is incorporating the music of a foreign culture into the study of that culture as a way to enhance understanding. Additionally, certain types of music instruction develop special reasoning and temporal reasoning skills, which are fundamental to understanding and using mathematical ideas and concepts. Finally, incorporating music into the broader curriculum through an integrated instructional approach can help create a school environment that is conducive to teacher and student success by fostering teacher innovation and a more positive and enjoyable professional culture.   

As explained on the website of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga’s Southeast Center for Education in the Arts. “Integrated arts lessons can be extremely rich and deeply layered learning experiences for students who experience them. Many teachers, parents, students, and administrators believe that integrating the arts makes classrooms better learning environments. The arts provide a window to understanding the connections among all subject areas.”  

Or, as Charles Fowler explains in his 1996 book Strong Arts, Strong Schools: The Promising Potential and Shortsighted Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling. “When used well, the arts are the cement that joins all the disparate curricular areas together. The arts are valued for their interdisciplinary potential, and the result is a more cohesive curriculum in which students explore relationships among disciplines. Truth and understanding are recognized as a composite of perspectives, not just one partial and tentative view.” (p. 55) 

As our schools face higher standards and expectations regarding the effectiveness with which they prepare children to succeed in the increasingly interrelated and complex global, knowledge-based economy and world community, the ability to think across disciplines, to incorporate sights, sounds, culture, and information from various sources and disciplines into a cogent, broad-based body of knowledge is vitally important.   When it comes to integrated, interdisciplinary curriculum instruction, music’s potential to contribute in meaningful ways to the educational and academic mission of our schools is enormous and will continue to grow. That being the case, educational and community leaders would be well served to consider music’s potential in this regard before scaling back music programs.