<< Front page Commentary December 5, 2003

Encouragement for diversity

To the Editors:

Since the 1800s, the Oberlin Conservatory has succeeded in granting tenure to just three blacks: Frances Walker-Slocum, Richard Anderson and Wendell Logan. With the first two retired, Wendell Logan is the only black holding tenure in the Con.

President Nancy Dye and Dean Robert Dodson are personally wholly committed to improving the Con’s rate of success, the Conservatory’s image and its musical quality even though they do not have the authority to act unilaterally under our governance system, a system that I support fully.

In the 1800s and for most of the 1900s, whites acted as though black was synonymous with inferior, that diversity definitely connoted something second rate. To counter that myopic and racist view, I would not advance the argument that now we must necessarily equate black with excellence and all things first-rate that view would be just as racist and pernicious.

I wish to put in bold relief, however, that with just a total of three blacks ever with tenure in the Con and only one there now, black adults shoulder a very unfair burden of trying to motivate black children to take music training very seriously.

We are early into the 21st century, white faculty members in the Con are ashamed of the views held by their predecessors almost 200 hundred years ago. Many are willing to work with President Dye, Dean Dodson and our Trustees to make sure that the Cons record of granting tenure to blacks changes for the better sooner rather than later. To all of them, a huge THANKS!

--Booker Peek
Professor of African American Studies

   

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