On Co-Conspiratorship & Expanding Consciousness

Decolonizing the Music Room centers and amplifies Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian people in Music Education and Performance. And alongside this, co-conspiring means understanding existing systems to leverage the privileges we are afforded. In this final post of the Summer Kitchen Table Series, Connection & Community, you’ll read two music educators’ awareness of co-conspiratorship within the context of their positionalities outside of, but in community with Blackness, and then read a real world application of co-conspiratorship from a music educator. DTMR firmly believes in uplifting BBIA folks and naming systemic injustice and acknowledges that there is space where white teachers can use their privilege to support this.

Please note a content warning about police violence in the entry following Jesse’s blog. A second warning will immediately precede the entry.

Dismantling Internal Systemic Inequities

By Lorelei Batisla-ong

Inequity is not a problem that requires solutions from the people who experience the harms of inequity. To ask minoritized folks to “fix things” is not only misdirected (asking those who are harmed to fix the problem, rather than those who are doing the harm), but may also put racialized folks in more danger. And yet there are racially minoritized people in these spaces, specifically Black and African American folks, who do carry that emotional labor and the threat of physical and emotional harm. My personal directive is to listen to them regardlessespecially when I feel defensive.

Who better understands harmful systems than the people who are affected by it? They know those evils intimately. So I listen to those who speak truth to power, for they have insight into systems in ways I may not recognize immediately. I accept it is my nature to seek the path of least resistance, the most familiar way, the words and deeds that do not ruffle feathers – and so when I reflect on my emotional state before I react, I proactively identify my possible complicitness in inequitable systems, and I am able to act deliberately – in a way that honors my values and beliefs rather than speaking empty words. I see this not only in how I set up the processes of a classroom, but it extends into how I exist as a member of my community.

Observable activism is important, but for the sake of a focused blog, I want to speak to aspects of an inner-process, my thinking that propels my action, that goes beyond an isolated observable response to informing my baseline way of being. I start with myself because I recognize without awareness and direct intention I can be an agent of inequity, even as the words I speak rail against it. I acknowledge the harm that internalized Model Minority Myth enacts. As Ok (2018) states, it “falsely perpetuates that Asian Americans have managed to achieve socioeconomic success in the face of racial and economic inequity by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps without the help of government aid or need to speak out and protest against structural and institutional racism” (pg. 64). In addition to oversimplifying the vastly different experiences of Asian Americans, the Model Minority Myth pits Asian Americans against other racially minoritized communities for the benefit of white supremacy, and negatively affects coalition-building and community.

I encourage reflection from others, but I do not expect other racially minoritized folks in the US (specifically those outside of the Asian diaspora) to apply the same pressure I apply to myself, especially when they have historically been oppressed by inequitable systems in ways I have not experienced. But acknowledging what I do have control over alongside my responsibility as an educator, I recognize that my positionality requires I am aware of when I may fall into complicity that builds barriers to connection and community. My positionality and the privileges that are afforded by my positionality require that I examine my own motivations and behavior that perpetuate inequity so I can dismantle them before I act. 

For me, this work is silent. For me, there is no cure-all, panacea checklist of things to do. I stop. I breathe. I think about what I am about to say or do and how that affects others. If I do this effectively then the reflection might not even be percievable – but the reflection is constant. I prefer to live in my actions, and for my actions to speak my intention.

References

Ok, J. H. (2018). Myth of Model Minority. In H. J. Lee (Ed.), Intersecting realities: Race, identity, and culture in the spiritual-moral life of young asian americans (pp. 63-75). Cascade Books.

Positionality and Expanding One’s Consciousness

By Jesse Rathgeber

When Amy [Lewis] asked me to join this project, I said “yes,” but I was a little worried I might not have much to bring to the discussion that would add to what my colleagues would share. I knew that Amy, Adrian, and Lorenzo would bring such important stories and messages. For the event, I was set to facilitate one of the breakout groups. At the actual event, I found myself listening far more than speaking, facilitating, or leading. I listened to others discuss their experiences and fears related to ICE. They discussed their worries about new and reinforced oppressive systems that were having tangible impacts upon them, their students, and their communities. I realized one thing I could bring was myself: being present to bear witness to the teachers' stories. This witness could better inform my actions, keeping them in line with the teachers’ stated needs and concerns.

Let me zoom out a bit and discuss the importance of positionality. I’m a white, English-speaking, heterosexual, cisgender male who has recently found myself in the upper middle class–among other identities. I come from a rural area in central Illinois, where most people shared a similar positionality. I grew up with stories, news reports, and experiences that centered this positionality. Because of this, I rarely encountered perspectives beyond my own in my day-to-day life. It became easy to miss and/or misinterpret stories, experiences, and perspectives of people from different positionalities. Early in my teaching career, I saw my positionality as the default one, and it informed how I thought, planned, taught, and interacted with students and the community. My positionality enabled me to identify issues and resolve them quickly, often on my own. I was “efficient and effective,” except, of course, when I was not.

I recall times when my drive to diversify class repertoire exposed essentialist and racist assumptions in my own perspective. I thought presenting music I believed reflected my students' backgrounds was enough to be culturally responsive, overlooking the realities of their backgrounds and foreclosing opportunities to identify and learn music together. I remember situations when I felt so confident in my “classroom management” that I found myself eagerly imposing upon my students conceptions of “expected behavior” and “correct communication” that were more rooted in whiteness and ableness than in concerns over our class’ or students’ safety, community, and wellbeing. I also recollect times when students forced me to reconsider my perspective, including both when I learned from them in the moment and moments when I learned from them much later than I’d like to admit.

One’s positionalities, their backgrounds, all that they experience comprise their consciousness. We act upon the contents of our consciousness. Consciousness can be expanded, both indirectly and intentionally. Jewish philosopher and educator Martin Buber (1957) spoke to the importance of engaging with others and the way it could expand one’s consciousness. He encouraged people, especially teachers, to meet others in ways that allowed each to expand their consciousness of one another and the world itself, stating: “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings" (p. 27). Edith Stein (1917/1989), later known as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was a philosopher and nun martyred in the gas chambers of Birkenau who passionately discussed how engaging with others, either directly or through shared stories, could expand one’s consciousness and deepen one’s empathy for others.

I encountered the works of Buber and Stein at a pivotal moment of my own development as a teacher and activist. Their work has made me realize the power of expanding one’s consciousness in becoming a more inclusive and empathetic person. Learning from them, I find myself constantly seeking to expand my consciousness and deepen my empathy so that I no longer operate only from my own background, my own positionality. I plan, I move, I act in communion with the other beings who have come into my consciousness. I must no longer act alone, but rather, always in communion with others. So, it should not have been a surprise to me that bearing witness and working to support others on their own terms stood out to me early in this project.But, bearing witness is only a beginning. This next stage for people who have been born into privileged positionalities requires stepping up and using those privileges to take action with and for those who are targets of unjust systems. This means putting personal “skin” in the game and taking risks. This requires advocacy, action, and collaboration guided by those most impacted to work toward toppling structures that ground spaces, policies, and practices where not all beings can thrive, belong, or seek fulfillment.

So, I leave you, especially readers who share similar privileged positionalities as I, with these questions upon which to reflect:

1) What might you need to bear witness to to expand your consciousness regarding human flourishing and suffering?

2) What risks will you take to work toward justice?

Endnote

I minimize much of the nuance regarding consciousness, phenomenology, and “the problem of empathy” in this post to avoid getting lost in philosophical jargon. I encourage you to read the works of Buber, Stein, and other phenomenologists for a more specific discussion of these. concepts. I discuss these works in relation to disability and music education in my 2019 dissertation, as well.

References

Buber, M. (1957). Pointing the way: Collected essays (M. Friedman, Trans.). Harper.

Rathgeber, J. (2019). Troubling disability: Experiences of disability in, through, and around music [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Arizona State University.

Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy [1917]. ICS Publication.

Content Warning: Police violence

Following the initial February Zoom gathering of this series, police violence continued in the city of Madison, WI. What follows is a music teacher’s open letter to the city council following the police killing of Corey Ruiz. DTMR shares this not because the organization has a local standing on Madison's specific policy fights, but because of the pattern this teacher names. The gap between how a community's white residents and its Black and Brown residents experience the same institutions is one that can be seen in any town and affects the young people we work with in schools. Co-conspiring includes paying attention beyond our own zip code and naming patterns. We invite you to read it, sit with it, and consider: Where does this pattern show up in your own city? (Shabankareh, 2026).

Hello. My name is Rachel Linsmeier. I am a Madison resident and I have been a teacher in the Madison Metropolitan School District for eight years. I registered to speak at the city council meeting last night, but could not stay up late enough to hear my name called. Before I turned in at 11pm, I did hear at least 100 community members raise their voices in condemnation of Madison Police for the murder of Corey Ruiz. I stand with them and wish to add to their sentiment. Regarding the future of the Office of Independent Monitor and police oversight in our city, my statements follow:

We have a problem. This supposed, “best American city for quality of life”, is only so - for white people. Madison ranks NUMBER ONE among 35 major U.S. cities for racial disparities in traffic stops, according to research from Stanford University (Pierson et al, 2020). Black residents are involved in 43 to 57 percent of all MPD use of force incidents. They are nine percent of Madison’s population.

In 2017 just two blocks away from where MPD took Corey Ruiz’s life, Tony Robinson was a teenager having a mental health crisis. His desperate parents called for help and, instead of calming the situation, the Madison Police Department murdered their child. Matthew Kenny, the officer who killed him, is still an armed and active member of the MPD today.

In 2026 we are here again in nearly the exact same physical space, this time with an unhoused, unsupported, young Black and Latino man in crisis. He was chased, tackled off his bike, brought to his knees by four officers, kicked, tased, and shot three times at close range in the head. In broad daylight, in a busy intersection, and on film. 

I have been a public school teacher for 15 years. For the past eight years I have worked with Madison’s youth, including teaching the brilliant Black kids experiencing the trauma of systemic violence that comes with growing up Black in Dane County. Teachers, like the police, regularly come face to face with people in mental health crises. Every teacher who works with our community’s children is trained in de-escalation tactics and nonviolent crisis intervention.  We can, and in fact we are legally and professionally required to calmly deescalate tense and sometimes violent situations. We do this daily without causing harm and certainly without killing the people we are called to serve.

As a white resident of Madison, I have never interacted personally with the MPD – not a coincidence. I have, however, been witness to far too many experiences involving my Black and Latino friends and neighbors. Our cops regularly show up shouting orders with guns drawn, clearly high on power and looking to exert control. Our police check every box of what we’re trained NOT to do when presented with a high stakes interaction. 

If teachers can calmly deescalate tensions among the sons and daughters of the same people being brutalized in our streets, if ER nurses and medical care teams can deescalate without pulling a weapon, if mental healthcare teams can do it without killing the people they serve, our local police force should be able to handle it too. The problem is a culture of violent control instead of community care. The numbers and data speak clearly where your empathy fails. What we have in Madison is an overtly racist, violent group of individuals, armed, and set loose on our streets with the goal of domination. As it stands, they are given total immunity. There is another way. It is a better way. And it starts with real community oversight over the armed officers we pay to patrol our streets.

The bare minimum we are asking of our elected officials:

• Fully fund the Office of the Independent Monitor at $1.3 million/year and give Monitor Glass full access to all investigative material immediately.

• Reinstate full power to the Police Civilian Oversight Board as was intended upon its creation. 

• Mayor Rhodes-Conway: resign. You are a coward and Madison’s community deserves better. 

Black lives matter. It’s way past time that Madison started acting like it.

References

Pierson, E., Simoiu, C., Overgoor, J., et al (2020). A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(7), 736–745. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0858-1