“Rather than using our trans identities as an excuse to opt out from racial transformation work, we are utilizing what we’ve learned from our trans journeys to actively work to liberate ourselves from the teachings and practices of a toxic and dysfunctional white culture and we are learning how to co-create a world based on different values.”

Phoenix, Colorado’s Trans Community Choir’s “More Than A Statement”

It’s been quite a while since I have posted here. But this moment, more than any time in recent history, calls for deep reflection on our practices, personal and social, that make up who we are and how that differs from who we like to believe ourselves to be, as well as who we aspire to be. 

We need to more accurately measure the distance between them. And for many of us, especially those who are white, if we are honest with ourselves, there is quite a distance.

As choruses, our missions and visions speak to a world in which all voices are respected. Indeed, the practice of choral musicking in its very form calls us to listen and tune with each other for the good of a more beautiful sound than any one of us could make alone. This practice has much to teach us about living well together should we choose to make that practice intentional, to be our best selves. 

What might a world in which Black and Brown voices and experiences and expressions received the same honor and respect as those of white people, such that whiteness no longer functioned as the norm, look, feel, sound like? We are so far from that place as to make it challenging to imagine. The insistent norming of whiteness blinds us at every attempt. Recognizing this norming process for what it is–racism at work in the foundational shaping of our sense of ourselves–is a first step.

Phoenix, Colorado’s Trans Community Choir’s “More Than A Statement” offers a model for choruses to consider. Not wanting to put out a token statement, they chose to dedicate themselves to actions that engage their understanding of trans oppression and apply the lens to themselves around race. They write:

“ … we are holding whiteness under scrutiny and exploring our dysfunctional white training and the ways that it limits us in our humanity, especially in our ability to take action to support and co-create with people of color. In Phoenix, we talk a lot about transgressing norms—which usually means gender and sexual norms. Transgressing norms is a big aspect of Phoenix culture. Currently we are doing the exciting work of recognizing, challenging, and breaking racial norms, encouraging ourselves to be as feisty and non-compliant in our relationship to the norms of whiteness as we are to the expectations of the gender binary. Rather than using our trans identities as an excuse to opt out from racial transformation work, we are utilizing what we’ve learned from our trans journeys to actively work to liberate ourselves from the teachings and practices of a toxic and dysfunctional white culture and we are learning how to co-create a world based on different values.”

Over the decades of queer choral musicking, choruses have variously worked to address all sorts of differences, mostly around sex/gender, among us. While that work still needs to happen, few choruses have found a way to address our whiteness in the ways that we would like others to address. Muse’s work on this score offers one example. But each group must find its own way, must plumb its own depths to envision their best practices in creating greater social justice. 

I look forward to the myriad ways that our largely white queer choruses will use our voices to own that racism is our mess and it’s our job to clean it up.