Jazz Organizations, Gender Disparities, and the Stereotyping of Black Women

Jazz Organizations, Gender Disparities, and the Stereotyping of Black Women Jordannah Elizabeth With vulnerability, I write this piece: raw and unable to detach from an enforced vision of my nature as calculating, cold, abrasive, and mean. It is the plight of a Black woman leader. I have looked back time and time again wondering how I have come to be seen with such traits that I’ve never attributed to myself nor to my personal exchanges with others. In thinking of the perplexity, the navigation of the Black woman within jazz organizations and networks, I think of my own experiences with the slowly building, incremental, passive microaggressions in which I and other Black women are systematically made out to be aggressors. This so as not to undermine male supremacy and dominance in senior leadership and management positions. Black women are oftentimes emotionally and mentally belittled and accused of being a threat more than an asset. I have personally experienced a couple of instances in my mostly positive two-decade-long career, where I’ve been subject to microaggressions and ousting; they were not incredibly traumatizing, as I learned about patience and timing of assertion. I am lucky, as I am well liked by white colleagues, and have been able to fit in regarding realms of respectability. Many Black women with darker skin, fuller figures, dialect and accents, and names that do not hide their Blackness suffer more. Being from Baltimore and being able to communicate within different communities offered me more opportunities. I am, though, always concerned about Black women who work in their own communities and have limited professional options in jazz, as some towns can only accommodate so many professionals, there being only one university, or one or two specialized organizations, or institutions that desire only graduates of prestigious schools and conservatories. [End Page 96] For me, negativity began when I started to set and maintain clear boundaries. Of course, there are still many positive voices, but battles ensued at a scale I had not experienced before when I started saying “no.” These nos were not even hard rejections or the closing off of compromise. In retrospect, I remember I also began to prioritize my family and writing, cutting back on the overgiving of time, money, emotional support, and bandwidth to some social justice causes and friends. I chose to streamline my energy to a smaller pool of people, specifically for the several weeks I needed to finish a book. Seemingly in response to prioritizing my own well-being and career goals, I began being called aggressive, insane, mean, a bully, and controlling, when for many years prior to this I received very little condemnation or negative interactions aside from a normal amount of unavoidable conflict. Traits in Black women such as ambition, assertiveness, setting clear boundaries, and speaking the truth about injustice are often construed as confrontational and a source of conflict. Meanwhile, the overtime, the emotional labor, the team building, and the unique perspectives of Black women that create foundational solutions and organizational fixes are dismissed and skewed. Within jazz, Black women, women of color, and femme-centered nonbinary beings are discouraged to pursue certain training within education and leadership. For example, women are often redirected from studying composition, theory, brass instruments, and percussion. This limits the opportunities for Black women, and all women who, as they grow within their career, must self-educate, often lacking the mentors and professors available to male musicians, along with prestigious degrees. Just because organizations pivot toward inclusivity and diversity, however, does not mean they are healthy for Black women. They need to maintain the belief actively, consciously, and consistently in the competence of Black women. Our mental health, balance, and stability is not only the responsibility of Black women professionals, but the entire culture should work to create environments devoid of othering and fraught with passive, indirect communication. This benefits everyone. Black women and women of color (WOC) need emotional support reciprocated in these realms, as, culturally, these women offer emotional labor “regulating or managing emotional expressions with others as part of one’s professional work role.”1 It is the cornerstone of the invisible work Black women...