I don’t just fail at bread.

The best-laid plans…

On May 21, 2020, I wrote here that I planned to kick off a Medium article series to highlight Superfans and how what I wrote in my book (completed in January and published in April) has changed due to the pandemic.

On May 25th, 2020, in Minneapolis, MN, George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin. Since then, I’ve wrestled with the idea of promoting my book. I can’t imagine promoting much of anything other than information that could potentially lift up BIPOC voices or help fight for racial justice and equity, such as:

• information about Black Lives Matter and ways to donate to keep protestors safe,
• petitions calling for justice for Breonna Taylor (or also this one, or also this site),
• ways to contact your lawmakers about criminal justice reform (like using Resistbot which takes minutes to auto-generate issue-specific letters to your lawmakers),
• petitions to defund the police (← from this op-ed: “We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.”),
• calls to register to vote and then to go vote for change (and to vote in local elections, too), and
• spreadsheets and lists of black-owned restaurants and stores so we can support black-owned businesses (this one is for Boston, but Google your city to find similar resources, like this one for DC or this one for Chicago).

I’ve also had tough conversations with friends, family, and co-workers, shared articles across my social networks, and have posted things like, “wear your damn mask,” but to the public, I’ve been mostly silent on anything else. I don’t need you to see a picture of the bread I failed to bake on Instagram if I can reduce the number of posts or stories in your feed that aren’t telling you that Black Lives Matter by not posting it. I stand by that choice, but I also don’t judge those who have chosen to continue to post pictures of bread while learning about how to be antiracist in the background. I also don’t need to defend my actions or resolve any guilt here - I don’t need or want you to say that I did the right things.

However, I do care if you click those links, read those articles, sign those petitions, and donate your money to help the BLM movement. I don’t want BLM to be just a trend — I want real change in our country (and our world).

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR BOOK?

I now want to use this forum to address a few things about my book and the music industry as it relates to racism in America.

There are very few people mentioned in my book who don’t look just like me (and if you don’t know, I’m a very average white woman from New England). I didn’t realize it until May 25th, and when I did, I knew I needed to step back and educate myself. I think what made this worse for me was that by May 25th, several people had read my book, and none of them had noticed this inequity either. I wished someone had called me out — we need to call each other out. Feedback is hard to give; good feedback is a gift (“good” being actionable and insightful not giving a pat on the back).

I intentionally tried to lift female voices up as much as possible because there are major gender inequality and sexual assault issues (two big examples: Kesha’s case against Dr. Luke and Taylor Swift’s case) in the music industry; as a sexual assault survivor and a woman in the tech industry (which has had its fair share of problems), these issues were very personal to me and my book is also very personal.

I did not intentionally unequally represent different races in my book, but I think the fact that I did without thinking about it is an example of how we must change. I did reach out to a number of artists from very diverse backgrounds who declined to be interviewed, but I did not try harder to make sure those voices were included in my stories once they declined (and I have been asking myself why they declined or what I could have done better in my outreach to them). There are a number of excuses for this lack of additional effort from time and deadlines to the difficulty of getting interviews in the first place, but it’s ultimately inexcusable and for that, I take responsibility and it’s long overdue, but I apologize.

OKAY, SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

First, I have been talking to my network and trying to learn the best ways to lift up BIPOC voices and support causes that make real change in my everyday life.

Second, I want to shift this Medium series away from my book and towards the outcome that my book was meant to achieve in the first place: change in the music industry through actions taken by fans. I will do my best to educate myself and share information here about how you can support equity in the music industry to make a difference. I’m still learning so I don’t feel ready to write that yet, but I felt it was past due to address the inequity in my book.

Finally, I don’t know if I will be able to do this effectively but I am trying to find a way to conduct panel interviews with BIPOC artists and industry folks in order to lift up those voices and share their stories within this lens of change in the music industry (however, if we’re in a panel discussion, and someone wants to talk about defunding the police, I will not stop them). If you have ideas, please reach out to me.

One note here about royalties: I discussed the idea of donating all royalties from the sales of my books to the causes I’ve mentioned here. However, these causes need our help now and royalties are paid out 90 days after the sales of the book, so any sales today would not have an impact today. In effect, I have already donated all of the money I’ve made from royalties (and then some) to black political candidates like Jaime Harrison, to the MN NAACP to fund supplies for protestors like protective masks and water, and to the ACLU, and I will continue to do so, but I do not want to tie the sales of my book to these since the impact would be delayed. If you think of different/efficient ways I can donate royalties from my book to these causes, please let me know!

WHAT CAN I DO TO CHANGE?

In my next Medium article, I will get into the weeds about what fans can do to help make the music industry a more equitable place for black artists. In the meantime, since artists are not playing live music which is where most of their income comes from, you can support them directly or through various funds (Sofar Sounds has posted a bunch of excellent articles on their blog about this like this one). The methods I discuss in my book still hold true in some cases:

• buy merchandise and music directly from the artists’ websites or stores (or kill two birds with one stone and buy this shirt from MisterWives that supports Color of Change)
• stream music on platforms that pay more in royalties (aka avoid using YouTube to listen to music)
• support artists on social media — repost their releases, follow them, send them kind notes

I also hope this goes without saying but given the response to Festive Owl’s tweet here, I’m not sure it does: music will never go away, but the music industry is falling apart in this pandemic, which does impact independent labels/venues/etc. and artists. AEG and LiveNation let a ton of people go but it’ll probably come out unscathed, whereas small venues that give new artists a chance, like The Great Scott in Allston, are closing permanently, and newer artists who normally have side hustles to help pay for studio time to supplement their income from live shows are making nothing from either with the closures/lack of Uber usage, etc. Artists need their fans now more than ever.

CALLS TO ACTION:

• Donate the $14.99-ish you might spend on my book to any of the places linked above, or to BLM, NAACP, ACLU, these black candidates running for office, or buy How to Be an Antiracist instead.
• Continue to educate yourself about racism and how to be antiracist (it is not enough to just not be racist).
• Register to vote, then actually go vote.
• Buy a stamp or two and save the USPS so we can vote safely by mail this fall.
• Listen to black artists!