The purpose of this section is to provide resources and activities to critically assess our individual relationships to white supremacy and to consider the ways in which white supremacy limits us as music educators.
Reading List
Books for Anti-Racism
These books can support your unlearning of racism and healing from racial trauma. They were all written or edited relatively recently (2017-2021) and are not specific to music education.
- My Grandmothers Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway for Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem (2017)
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)
- Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum (2017)
- The Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, & Engage in Collective Healing by Anneliese Singh (2019)
- Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown (2019)
- How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi (2019)
- Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad & foreword by Robin DiAngelo (2020)
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander & foreword by Colonel West (2020)
- The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee (2021)
- Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall (2021)
Scholarly Articles
This collection contains recent (2017-2023) literature on racism and white supremacy in music education. These scholars are some of the primary leaders in the movement for an anti-racist and activist music education.
(Some of the articles are open access, others can be purchased or accessed through your local library.)
- “Critiquing the critical: The casualties and paradoxes of critical pedagogy in music education” (Hess, 2017a)
- “Equity and music education: Euphemisms, terminal naivety, and whiteness” (Hess, 2017b)
- “Race, class, gender, and rhymes: Hip-hop as critical pedagogy” (Karvelis, 2018)
- “Take a back seat: White music teachers engaging hip-hop in the classroom” (Kruse, 2020)
- “A pedagogy for living: Applying restorative, anti-racist pedagogy in the choral classroom” (Dungee, 2020)
- “Confronting racial trauma in the music classroom: A call to action” (Yi, 2021)
- “Revealing whiteness in preservice music teacher preparation” (VanDeusen, 2021)
- “Becoming an anti-racist music educator: Resisting whiteness in music education” (Hess, 2021)
- “White preservice music educators’ perceptions of teaching predominantly Black student populations in city schools” (Clauhs, 2021)
- “Theory as the “North Star”: An introduction to race theories for music education” (Hess, 2022)
- “What does critical race theory have to do with music education?” (Liu, 2022)
- “Equity in music education: Avoiding cultural appropriation in the music classroom” (Beveridge, 2022)
- “When the project is not understanding: Music education for the incomprehensible” (Hess, 2023)
Activities for Unlearning and Healing
These activities are intended to support your critical thinking about patterns of racial socialization and racial (dis)comfort. They are designed to be done individually, but are arguably more effective if they are also done in conversation with others.