How I Came To The Work – Part 5: The Election

As the years passed, I slowly started getting more and more into diversity, equity, and inclusion work. I started doing more lessons and units that were directly focused on teaching about systems of oppression and social justice.

I kept a running list of ideas of projects and songs that I wanted to teach and figured I’d find time later to do. I knew that there was work to be done, but I didn’t feel a sense of urgency.

Because there was no way in my mind that Trump would win the election.

Hope combined with naivety and ignorance led me to believe that Trump would lose the presidential election. This is America. We don’t hire people who are openly racist, sexist, and misogynistic. People get fired for saying and doing the horrible things that Trump did during the election. No way Americans would vote for him. Well, even though he lost the popular vote enough Americans in the right districts, who were not hindered by voter suppression, voted for Trump and he did win.

In the days following the election, it started to all sink in. The expressed values of our country in popular mainstream culture were not shared by many people in the country. Even though a board might fire an executive for allegations of sexual misconduct, that doesn’t mean that ever person on the board actually thought that this person was worth losing over this issue, they were just making this move because they didn’t want to be held accountable for their chooses to the public. With voting being anonymous, and people felt free to vote for a morally reprehensible and incompetent candidate, and they did.

Along with these revelations other things started to come together in my brain. I started to see in our present issues I had learned about in our history. I started wondering about the pervasiveness of oppression of minority groups and stopped assuming that they were anomalies.

We had just elected a person who represented the worst of America. It was clear with his openly salvo of oppression, his Muslim ban that he was going to make America worse and make every effort to beat back the progress in our country. What was I waiting for?

In the days after the election, I sketched out plans for a presentation inspired by President Obama that had been on my mind for years. I took a question from a 5th grader about gender and developed it into a Women In Music unit and presentation. And I was determined that the curriculum that I would teach would no longer be dominated by white cis-gendered male composers and musicians.

I was, angry, and I felt let down by America, but doing this work, helped me feel productive, proud, and part of the solution. I was doing something, one lesson at a time, one student at a time, I was making a difference.

When I saw the email announcing that my school was adding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chairs as a position in my school, I didn’t really think it was for me. As I got deeper into the work, transforming my focus, and doing everything I could to make the future America one would reject Trump, I began to wonder.