Ok so I’ve been playing for 18 years and i’m a string teacher. Can i just say how IMPORTANT it is for young kids to see a BLACK, MALE-PRESENTING PERSON playing, nae, SHREDDING on a violin? I’ve know maybe 5 black people who played stringed instruments throughout my schooling and teaching (predumably because i’m an upper middle class white woman). In districts where the population is predominantly black, funding is always low, so the instruments are crappy. Kids quit, or the program is dismantled. I’ve seen very few professional string players who are black.
Obviously there are black string players. We just don’t see them because they “don’t look like” string players.
This person is the real deal. They were clearly classically trained, and seems to have some fiddle training as well. How cool is that?
I love it when people try to claim representation in fiction is being taken “too far” to the point where it’s no believable. They’re like:
“What’s next, a mixed-race immigrant on the autism spectrum?” Hi, my name is Rachel, also known as Rachna, and I’m a mixed-race immigrant on the autism spectrum.
“What’s next, a transgender Latino man with chronic pain?” What, you mean my former colleague, Marco?
“What’s next, a Black Jewish lesbian?” Bitch, I know I three Black Jewish lesbians, WHAT’S YOUR FUCKING POINT?
im so tired of the argument being “what’s next? a feasible combination of human conditions other than straight white cis able-bodied dude? that can’t possibly happen!”
Remember how that picture of a drag queen next to a woman in a niqab on the subway got memed by conservatives as “the future liberals want”, when it was… literally a photograph of people just fuckin riding public transit in the present day….
I was at Disneyland yesterday and when I walked into the Princess Fantasy Faire I welled up with tears as I witnessed a magical moment with the newest princess Elena of Avalor speaking in full Spanish to a small princess visiting from Latin America.
Steel Phoenix Studios 