Anyone who’s had to suffer through piano lessons as a child remembers the challenging first step of learning to read music. Mercifully, beginner’s sheet music keeps it simple, starting you out in the key of C to avoid sharps and flats. If you memorize about 20 or so ‘line and space notes,’ you could learn simple songs, before having to deal with extra complexity.
That could all change, if Professor Sheila Burkbee has anything to say about it. Her reason? "Too many white keys."
"Children are susceptible to all sorts of social shaping cues at a young age. Some are easy to detect, but others are much more subtle," explains Dr. Burkbee, Professor of Humanities at a prominent New England university, who teaches starter piano lessons in her spare time.
"All beginners’ piano books start you out in the key of C-major, where the entire ‘do-ray-mi’ scale consists of white keys. It’s easier to read and play—no sharps or flats to contend with. But, it also excludes black keys in the process. Where’s the diversity in that?"
"This has to be nipped in the bud if we expect any social justice going forward," she continues. "One day, you’re a little kid avoiding black piano keys, and the next thing you know, you’re all grown up and burning a cross on someone’s lawn."
Dr. Burkbee has taken the initiative of transposing familiar children’s piano songs to include lots of black keys. Her collection of tunes, Woke Beginner’s Piano: Experiencing Keys Of Color debuted to mixed reviews. "Sure, it’s a struggle to get through ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ in D-flat, or ‘Happy Birthday’ in F-sharp, but there’s a higher purpose here. Either we’re serious about diversity or we’re not," she maintains.
Dr. Burkbee’s crusade to stamp out systemic piano racism has encountered some push back, even from like-minded colleagues, who suggest she strike a compromise by using keys like F or G, with one flat or one sharp. Dr. Burkbee is having none of it. "I know tokenism when I see it," she replies dismissively.
"Admittedly, I’ve seen some attrition among my student group," which fell over 85% within a week of having to deal with the new approach. "But, they’re just gonna have to take one for the team."
Dr. Burkbee’s enlightenment is apparently infectious. Assistant Professor of Mathematics and master-level chess player, Anthony Numerate, wants to change a fundamental rule in the millennia-old board game.
"In chess, white moves first. If I have to spell out why this is symbolically racist, brother, you’ve been asleep for the last few decades!"
Professor Numerate also takes issue with substituting a coin toss to decide who goes first. "All a coin toss is going to do is maintain the status quo. It doesn’t compensate for hundreds of years of racial injustice." Instead, the professor has laid out a more "affirmative" solution. "Each player is assigned a score from one to five, based on their skin tone; one for white, two for yellow, three for brown, four for red and five for black. The player with the highest score goes first. Easy-peezy."
"If there’s a skin tone tie between the two players, okay, then we can go with a coin toss," Professor Numerate continued. "I considered layering in a second-tier determiner, like household income, education attainment, net worth or something like that, but that seemed a little ridiculous."
