Speak no evil: Talking race as an African American in music education

The goal of this chapter is to awaken the consciousness of the music education profession by sharing my own personal stories, illustrating how specific structures and social actors (i.e., professors, peers, and colleagues) in our profession perpetuate and “Legitimize an oppressive social order” (Brown & Jackson, 2013, p. 18). I believe these endorsements contribute to the social realities encountered by people of color, including negotiating institutionalized Whiteness (the practice of racism in social and political institutions), questioning one’s value and sense of belonging in the profession, and grappling with the probability of “selling out”-strading one’s experiential truth in exchange for social and professional acceptance.