Stand Up Straight and Sing! (16 page)

“Are you a guest of the hotel?” he asked confrontationally.

By that time, I’d been a guest of the hotel for five days. “Who are you?” I asked.

“Security.”

“Well,” I said with as little emotion as I could muster. “How do you think I would have gotten through the lobby dressed in a wet suit and wearing plastic and foam exercise boots, not to mention holding these handheld weights, if I were not a guest of the hotel? Obviously, I am a guest of the hotel.”

Think of this: a first-generation American, as demonstrated by his manner of speech, was comfortable in confronting and questioning a fourteenth-generation American as to her right to be in a hotel’s swimming pool!

In the end, I asked his name, completed my workout, and returned to my accommodations before engaging the general manager of the hotel in conversation by phone. I explained that I had not been pleased with that security guard’s questioning, and suggested that in order that the matter not escalate into something that would be even further distressing, perhaps he would consider making a contribution to a charitable organization of my choice. The contribution was made; the Casa Del Mar and I parted company forever.

Maybe there is just something about the nature of hotels, because that was not my only experience with racism in one. Such was the case when I was invited, sometime in the mid-1990s, to leave the cold, dark-too-soon-in-the-day February climes of the Northeast to give a series of recitals in Florida. One visit was to Naples, a city that, at the time, had a thriving chamber music series. As is always the case, I allowed time in my schedule for the adjustment to a change in climate, arriving three days prior to my first performance date. I checked in to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and did my usual ritual of unpacking: always the performance clothing first, so that any creases from the travel might fall away without any further attention required, and then the rest of my things. I do not tend to rush such matters, but it was the middle of the afternoon and I could hardly wait to take a walk on the beach. My gym shoes were at the ready, as was my Miyake two-piece outfit. And off we went.

The interior garden of the hotel was quite large, so it was a bit of a walk to find an exit that would take me to the beach. I came upon an open-air restaurant—“pretend rustic,” I call such places—and spotted a table at which a group of people sat, dressed for a winter conference in New York rather than a walk on a Florida beach. They were the sole table of guests there. I smiled to myself, thinking that I was the only one dressed for the premises.

No sooner had I begun to make my way around this restaurant and out toward a boardwalk to the beach than the skies changed suddenly. Rain looked imminent. Five or six others were standing in the same place, probably reconsidering their own beach-walking plans. I had been waiting only a few minutes when I noticed one of the wait staff pointing in our direction as she spoke with a man dressed in some sort of uniform. I did not pay close attention to this, as I was far more concerned with the rapid changes taking place in the sky. Moments later, this uniformed man came over to me, past the other people standing in the same place, and asked if I were a guest of the hotel. My response, apparently, was not good enough for him; he demanded that I show him my room key.

This was more than I was prepared to accept.

I asked to speak with the hotel manager, and soon found myself in the office of a Mr. Conway (or something similar), to whom I related my story. He insisted that there were no bad intentions on the part of the staff and that he was “sorry for the inconvenience.”

Inconvenience!

Seeking to make other accommodations in Naples for the remainder of my stay, I contacted the performance organizer. “You would not be happy with the other hotels in the area,” she insisted, adding that “hearing such things” had made her “sad.” And that seemed to be that, from her point of view.

Later that afternoon, an African American employee of the hotel was dispatched to my accommodations in an effort to “soothe things.” She wished me to understand that she “enjoyed” her job in the press office of the hotel and that there was surely no racism at the Ritz-Carlton. I thanked her for her visit and, as I really felt uncomfortable on her behalf, gave her permission to leave. I did not care to discuss the matter further, and surely not to hear explanations of the goodness of her employers.

I performed my recital in Naples that week. But I have never stayed in another Ritz-Carlton Hotel, other than the Hotel Arts Barcelona, which joined the Ritz-Carlton chain long after I had been staying there for years. I have a long relationship with that particular hotel, not to mention a long-standing love affair with Barcelona.

Racism is so pervasive in this country and in the world at large that it has, in many instances, become unconscious. It can slip into the daily discourse and go unrecognized, even by people who clearly ought to know better. Consider that in February 2013, a public school teacher in the South was so insensitive to racism and its painful past, she assigned her students “slave mathematics” questions: “A slave was whipped five times per day. How many times was the slave whipped in a month?” It is hard to believe that someone could be so oblivious to the effect of such misguided thinking, but such was the case. I have faced it myself in the course of my professional life.

Early in my performing life, I found myself in a situation that to this day astounds me on those rare occasions when it is recalled. In a piano rehearsal for an opera with a conductor and several other singers, the conductor complimented me on my Italian pronunciation. I responded that I had enjoyed performing in Italy that year at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, and took pleasure in listening to the Italian spoken around me, so much so that, while there, I had joined into conversation with much more confidence in my skill in the language. I had studied Italian, of course, but the visit to Florence had been only my fourth trip to Italy.

“Is your family from somewhere other than the United States?” the conductor went on to ask.

I told him that we were descendants of Africans, with, as is very often the case, some Native American blood. Without missing a beat, he responded: “I was sure you were no ordinary Negro.”

I excused myself from the rehearsal, citing its proximity to the orchestral rehearsal slot and reasoning that perhaps it would be wiser for me to rest my voice for an hour or two. My voice needed no rest, but my spirit most assuredly did. Pervasive racism sears.

Still another conductor would have a similarly inappropriate thing to say to me, this time during a discussion about the efficiency of the stagehands who were working on the very quick scene changes needed during one particular act of the opera in which I was performing. The conductor stated with glee: “Oh, those boys are working like blacks!”

On neither occasion did either of these supposedly educated, experienced “men of the world” apologize for their remarks. The racism was indeed unconscious.

Yet another example of this came a few years ago when I was invited to sing for the Queen’s birthday in England. Those responsible for planning the festivities programmed some of the music of Scott Joplin, the African American composer who helped create ragtime—a decision that surprised me. I was to lead the chorus of the Royal Opera House in singing “God Save the Queen,” as well as a rarer melody, “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.” I recognized that the Queen Mother’s birth (the mother of Queen Elizabeth II) would have overlapped with the musical career of Scott Joplin and that perhaps the organizers were making that connection, along with the obvious upbeat quality and spirit of the piece. Joplin’s “Marching Onward” from his opera
Treemonisha
would be performed. The evening would be guided by a well-known English conductor.

Our piano rehearsal went well until we happened upon the Joplin. The piece is composed in what is called a slow drag, a style with two beats to the bar. The conductor had obviously not spent much time reviewing this score, and was conducting it in four, while the rehearsal pianist struggled to accompany his beat and my singing. I could see how he could make the mistake. So after we rehearsed it in the wrong meter and after people cleared for their break and so as not to embarrass him—because there is never a reason, ever, to do that—I went up to the podium and, in confidence and with the utmost respect, said, “Excuse me, but a slow drag is in two.”

Instead of saying, “Oh my goodness, thank you very much,” he snapped: “Well, it’s
your
music. You
must
know.”

The insult was clear. I wasted no time stating, “I can also talk to you about the second movement of Schubert’s C Major Symphony, when you have time. Because I always prefer the second movement a little bit slower than conductors are doing it these days.”

For the rehearsal with the orchestra, the conductor found the correct meter for the Joplin and we proceeded in the performance as professionals should.

Certainly, this kind of insulting behavior is not reserved for the stage. I face a fair share of bad behavior, too, in just the normal course of business—behavior that reminds me that racism, more than anything, is about ignorance and misunderstanding. Consider that a major network thought it a fine idea to invite me to play a role in a sitcom pilot about three maids who take the bus to work in the suburbs of Chicago. It is important to note that at that moment, my stage work consisted of roles where the lead was that of a queen of a country, as Alceste, Dido, Jocasta, and so forth. The person who sent me this prospect surmised that “the hook that would spark my interest” would be that my character had a love interest, and that this “unusual relationship” would be the center of the story from time to time. Utter foolishness! And it’s the kind that never seems to end. More recently, I was asked to consider playing a maid in a Civil War–era stage play written for Broadway. I made it very clear that this would be a consideration only if the play would depict the Civil War from the point of view of the maid. This, as it turned out, was not the plan. Pervasive racism.

Some years ago I attended a holiday party only to find that the hostess, a record-company executive at the time, had invited music critics to the same gathering. I have never thought it sensible to fraternize with those whose jobs require them to judge the work of others, and I have therefore endeavored always to avoid such situations. One does not wish to give the impression of favoritism by social interaction with critics, or to present one’s self as being open to their ideas or influence. In any case, I was in the midst of a busy season and so my stay at this party was going to be relatively brief. After discovering that these particular guests were in attendance, I decided to take my leave even sooner than planned.

Before I could make my exit, however, I was confronted by one of these critics, who asked to speak with me about something. My curiosity got the better of me, so I assented. But the moment he broached his subject, I knew our conversation would not end well.

A colleague of mine had been in the news recently, not for artistic matters, but rather for what was described as behavior unbefitting that of a prized performer. Unable to stop himself, the critic blurted out, “The story going around is that you stated that someone needs to tell her she is black.” The story was bogus, of course, but the critic, in presenting himself this way, had revealed a mean-spiritedness that left no doubt in my mind as to his inability to witness a performance by an African American and present a measured, nonbiased assessment—not with this kind of foolishness floating around in his being. Was he implying that such behavior was acceptable for anyone
except
those of African descent? Would my having confirmed this story legitimized the implication in his mind?

Yes, there is a lot of prejudice and intolerance of all kinds in all disciplines, and if people think this is not the case in classical music, they are mistaken. Sadly mistaken. Remember, it was within my young life that the great Marian Anderson was invited, finally, in 1955, to perform with the Metropolitan Opera, after more than a quarter century of performing for kings and queens and dignitaries around the world.

At one point, I started keeping a journal of what I termed “racialism as she is spoke,” to document the language of racism that I encountered not only in the United States, but worldwide. I was paying particular attention to newspapers and television in England and Australia, countries in which I was performing over an extended period. In the case of Australia, the pervasiveness and normalization of racist language was evident during my first visit to that continent. In conversation with my “new friends” about their country and its amazing natural beauty, one of them actually referred to Native Australians as “jungle bunnies.” I had never heard this term before, but it took only a nanosecond for me to comprehend its meaning. The person who used the term did so flippantly, oblivious to any social breach.

Another “friend” in England complained that there were “only three white children, real English children,” in her child’s school class. “Oh, what should I do?” she worried.

“Do?”
I stammered. Why not help her child understand that the majority of people on the planet on which she resides are not of her skin color? Would that be a starting point?

I abandoned the journal after a few months, as it soon became thick with examples of such thoughtless, mindless discourse, and I thought I was doing a disservice to myself in rereading and rethinking them.

As we continue the search to find ways of helping our fellow humans to a place of respect and comfort for all, I am reminded of the words of Anna Julia Cooper. There are several quotations to be found in the pages of a U.S. passport, and one of these quotes is hers, this luminous African American scholar of the nineteenth century: “Freedom is not the cause of a race or sect, a party or class. It is the cause of humankind; the very birthright of humanity.”

For me, freedom is clothed in the understanding and recognition of the worth of every soul on this earth. Every soul is as full of value as one’s own.