It was an absolute honor to teach at the Ithaca Virtual Suzuki Experience (IVSE) this summer. Hosted by Ithaca Talent Education and Ithaca College, was one of the few summer Suzuki programs for students to even happen.

As you can imagine, a transition from an in person institute to a virtual one required an epic feat of organization, creativity and courage. Faculty members and families alike were stunned by the incredible preparation done by directors Carrie Reuning-Hummel, Natalie Coots, and Sarah Cummings as well as other members of the staff support team.

IVSE included master classes (lessons), repertoire classes (groups), elective classes, play ins, parent talks, student recitals, guest recitals, a convocation and a final concert. No twinklers were in attendance, but everyone else was! We saw students from Book 1 through Book 10 and beyond, with ages ranging from 5 to 18.

It was a complete success. I want to unpack WHY it was such a success.

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It is hard to write something on this site right now that feels worthy of saying. In the time of global pandemic and racial protest it is difficult as a healthy, young white person to even feel worthy of saying anything at all.

I was trained from a young age, as a white girl in America, to speak up, raise my hand, and stand out.

By the time I moved through grade school, the narrative of white girl oppressed by white boy or man was dominant enough that I was liberated to be as good as I felt like proving I was.

Swing, like a girl.
Kick the soccer ball, like a girl.
Answer the question, like a girl.
Get perfect grades, like a girl.

If a boy was top of the class, or fastest on the field, it was because he was naturally outfitted to win, but if a girl was the top of her class, or fastest on the field, it was because she had shed the story of her inferiority and overcome oppression. A boy winning was either nothing special, or in some ways an uncomfortable disappointment. A girl winning was something to celebrate.

Things became complicated, of course, when I began to understand myself not as a girl or a boy. Not a man or a woman.

Moving through the world as a non-binary person I began to check myself in class, conversation, and competition. If I’ve chosen to embrace masculinity I’m now receiving privilege, taking up space, and stealing the spotlight deserving women should have. If I’m choosing to spread my legs in public, buzz my hair, persuade my voice to inch deeper, I have to second guess if my success is my own or the product of a rigged social system.

To be a well informed, progressive, acceptable man in our society is to second guess every opportunity, every win. Whereas women of my generation were taught the world was theirs for the taking, men were taught (in certain kinds of aware societies) to be careful, not to take advantage, not to crowd the field, not to say the wrong thing.

In no way am I victimizing men here. As I’ve embraced the masculine side of myself I’ve come to believe even more in this sort of careful calculus. Men should be careful, but women, white women, should too.

As the world around us struggles to process the horrific killing of George Floyd and rises up in protest of racial inequity and police brutality, those of us who were raised as white women have been confronted with an undeniable fact. The world that was laid out before us, the one we were encouraged to seize and make our own, was being offered on the backs of oppressed communities.

And now in 2020, after being taught our whole lives that to succeed in any endeavor is cause for celebration, we are told that we are the ones who need to be careful, we can’t take advantage anymore, we should no longer crowd the field, and we can never say the wrong thing.

White women are falling twice as hard. But that’s okay. Not only do we deserve it, but we can handle it and it’s about time we face some struggle (let go of the narrative that life for you has been exceptionally hard).

The system we have benefited from (being raised as white women) has inarguably raised us to be racist. This isn’t up for debate anymore. It’s just a fact. Many think children only become racist if they are taught to be, but in fact research shows the opposite. If we don’t talk about and acknowledge race, prejudice can develop as early as age 6.

Our field of Suzuki talent education is dominated by white women.

We were taught that everything we do/did/have done is right. Now, through these new lenses, we can see that is no longer correct. We too have benefitted from a rigged social system. So where does the leave us? It leaves us attempting to do the ‘right’ thing, doing what we’ve been trained to do. To stay ‘right.’

But I think now is a time to embrace being wrong. Everything we do, say, and think is wrong. We are racist. We are prejudiced. We do live in a racist society and we do benefit from racist systems.

It is okay to feel wrong. It is okay to live in the messy, uncomfortable space where your identity is considered wrong and out of place. It is okay to feel what I assume BIPOC have experienced for centuries: that they were somehow inherently wrong.

To try to push out of this uncomfortable ‘wrongness’ into a zone of correct, ‘say the right thing’ comfort is to ignore the real issues.

So I offer this post as an acknowledgement that all future writing on this blog can be viewed through the lens of ‘wrongness.’ I know I don’t have much to say or speculate, and I know that whatever I publish will be wrong. The privilege I was born with, and then trained to wield, is now the very thing that keeps me from writing anything fully inclusive, fully aware, fully just.

But I’m happy to pick up and wear this marker of ‘wrong.’ In a weird way it is more liberating than that counterfeit guarantee of unobstructed success ever was.