After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, conservatories and music colleges across the United Stated jumped on the trend of issuing statements condemning racism. Like corporations, universities, and other businesses forced to respond to the dual epidemics of COVID-19 and racist violence, the music profession devised antiracist policies and engaged in critical dialogues about whiteness and Eurocentrism in music pedagogy, curriculum, and performance. These emergent responses to the ongoing crisis of systemic racism are well intended, but by focusing exclusively on macro-level policies and failing to address the everyday racism and race-related trauma that students and teachers of color experience at the micro level, they fall well short of the racial reckoning that music education needs. In this article, Tammy Yi's hope is to offer some reflections and suggestions for how to effect meaningful and long-lasting antiracist change in music education beyond solidarity statements. Sections include: (1) Mental and Physical Consequences of Racism;(2) Healing Our Hidden Wounds;and (3) The Cost of Racism. Yi concludes that to commit themselves to antiracism, teachers must reinvent music spaces with a racial equity lens. They will begin to see progress toward music diversity when they acknowledge the relationships among psychological, cultural, and aesthetic environments. Educators must begin with a critical assessment of their own positionality as they seek to implement pedagogy that empowers students to become agents of change and, in that process, to heal from race-related trauma. There are no more excuses for failing to act to change curriculum and policies.
Confronting Racial Trauma in the Music Classroom: A Call to Action