About Me
Hello! My name is Nina Brian-Smith, and I am the author and creator of this website. This project emerged as a culmination of my academic work as a master’s student in the Music Education program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While I identify professionally as a percussionist and a music educator, my values and interests are abundantly inter- and trans- disciplinary. Thus, the content of this website pulls from a variety of sources including social justice education, grassroots community organizing, Black, queer, and feminist thought, restorative justice, abolitionist movements, and more. What began as a personal pursuit of reconciling my personal political values with my work as a music educator has evolved into this project: a collaborative and generative space to build towards a more liberatory music education through anti-racist practices and resources.
Importantly, I do not consider myself, nor do I wish to be, an “authority” on this subject. Rather, I hope to use my resources and this platform to ask questions of myself and others, participate in and facilitate difficult conversations, build communities of resistance, critically assess our relationships to white supremacy, and ultimately envision a better world for our students. I invite you to engage with this content in ways that are authentic to you and welcome any feedback, criticisms, emotions, questions, or comments that arise. Thank you for showing up and for joining me in this work.
Positionality Statement
Recognizing that systems of power and oppression are often reinscribed through patterns of normalization and naturalization, it is important to note that we are all approaching this work from a social location that is historically, culturally, and politically contingent. As a white, U.S.-born, non-native, non-disabled, cis-gendered, middle-class scholar at a predominantly white institution, I experience unearned power and privilege that position me to do this work in a way that will often be viewed as neutral (Hess, 2017). Although I am committed to using this platform to challenge white supremacy, my ability to participate in anti-racist work freely simultaneously reproduces the systems of oppression I seek to dismantle. This is a contradiction that is inherent and that I hold with importance throughout my work.
“The issue, then, is not simply to challenge reproductive practices, but rather to locate ourselves within them, and in doing so de-naturalize these practices, and ourselves”
(Benedict & Schmidt, 2007, p. 32)