Corps Directors

[Stu]

Cowtown: Many DCI folks hate the movie Drumline; I mean hate. However I am not one of them, and here is why: At the beginning of the movie there is a white kid on the bus and he is asked why he is there. He replies that he does not like the corps style but loves the show band style. When the movie is looked at in that light, things are in proper perspective. To specifically recruit whites, Show Bands would have to change their cultural style. And to specifically recruit minorities, DCI would have to change its cultural style. And all that would accomplish would be to homogenize the two activities thereby eliminating diversity on a macro level. So, IMO, Show Bands should not change their cultural style to appeal to more white people, but the few whites who like that style should be gladly accepted into the program. As it applies to drum corps, DCI should not change its style just to bring in more minorities, but should accept the minorities with open arms if they want to interact in the corps style. Otherwise we will move into the world of making decisions based 'solely' on race and gender; which does absolutely nothing to improve relationships amongst all people, but actually drives a wedge between them even deeper.

[bluecoats88]

the corps I marched in Had African Americans, Women, and Gays along with the standard straight white male in all capacities, Members, Staff, Support, & Administrative, and I believe they still do.

Don't know what issue you seem to see here.

[Jeff Ream]

There is no blatant discrimination in drum corps.

think back...go grab your DCW history of drumc orps books.....the activity started out as predominately male. it slowly opened up to allow females, faster on the junior side than the senior side. As corps became less and less locally based, you saw less and less people of other races participating. As it became more expensive it also had kids from certain economic demographics shy away from participating.

Guess what....that wasn't done intentionally.

I mentioned earlier that I remember one...one snare drummer in a DCi corps in the 80's. Now several corps have them. I remember in the 80's even the pit staffs were all male. Now as I look around DCi and DCA, i see more and more female pit staff members.

here is something else to chew on...if you look back 20 years ago, excluding 2 corps. 90% or more of the color guard world was female. Now it's at best 60/40 female. It wasn't done by any grand design...corps wanted guys in the guards.

Really, drum corps has a lot of more important issues to worry about right now than forcing quotas on the corps of any type, be it members, staff, or admin.

Let's focus on those and not make an issue out of what's really a non issue.

quoted because it seems a large truth in here has been overlooked

[soccerguy315]

I guess you didnt read what I wrote either....

perhaps you should articulate your view better. You said that marching bands are more diverse than drum corps. In response, I said that the top marching bands are most likely (and I admitted I was not sure) not more diverse than drum corps.

I did notice that you did not choose to respond to my statement that you have not yet proved there is a problem, yet you are trying to solve this imaginary problem that you have made up by enacting changes in DCI.

Edited September 10, 2010 by soccerguy315

[FHdork]

<not sure about directors, but many corps have female staff members>

Yes - you are correct - but most of the women are teching (some are designing...though probably only a few) in the guard caption. Far fewer in M&M...fewer still in music.

Why? I have no idea, except for all the great ideas expressed in this interesting...though somehow prickly thread.

I think drum corps IS predominantly white males...so the fact that the vast majority of instructors 'look' like the members should not be surprising.

[tomgolf8]

<not sure about directors, but many corps have female staff members>

Yes - you are correct - but most of the women are teching (some are designing...though probably only a few) in the guard caption. Far fewer in M&M...fewer still in music.

Why? I have no idea, except for all the great ideas expressed in this interesting...though somehow prickly thread.

I think drum corps IS predominantly white males...so the fact that the vast majority of instructors 'look' like the members should not be surprising.

Another thing nobody seems to want to address is:

Are there minorities out there TRYING to get into these positions. If there are no African Americans, Women, Hispanic, Klingons or whatever trying to become Corps Directors, then there isn't a shortage of them in those positions is there?

[Big Bad Bari]

the corps I marched in Had African Americans, Women, and Gays along with the standard straight white male in all capacities, Members, Staff, Support, & Administrative, and I believe they still do.

Don't know what issue you seem to see here.

Well at the time I didn't notice it because we were all in the same boat together as brothers and sisters but... The above post I guess sums up my drum corps experience too!

[Tom Brace]

no offense Tom, but you do go out of your way to take shots at DCA over here, while NEVER going to the DCA forums to ask your questions.

Fair enough and for that...I apologize.

[skywhopper]

in my opinion, you have yet to prove your fundamental point, which is that demographics of the leadership and senior staff doesn't match that of the corps. You are trying to get people to work on fixing a problem, but it has not been established that there is a problem needing to be fixed.

Back on an earlier page I posted a summary of percentage of women on staff and on boards, and someone else dug up the details on how many corps directors were minorities and women. It's probably impossible to gather useful numbers on minorities, so I'll stick to women/men.

DCI says 33% of marchers are women. My count of posted staff members of world class corps and posted board of directors of world class corps showed that about 16-17% of both of those groups were women. Of world class directors, zero are women. If you count open class, 3 out of 46 are women, that's 7%. Caption heads might also be a number to count, but I have not done so.

I would guess that participation by women has gone up since DCI began, but not by a lot, given that most guards used to be all women. Is it fair to assume that 20% of marchers were women in the 70s and 25% in the 80s?

I'm can't say for sure what the backgrounds of the current directors are, but I don't have time to do the research at the moment. My guess is that most of them are corps alums and the majority of them probably marched in the 70s or 80s. Assuming a system that was 100% fair to everyone in which men and women are equally talented, and the most talented are promoted, and everyone who's talented is equally likely to aspire to ultimately be a corps director, then you'd expect 20% to 25% of the directors to be women.

Well, I put a lot of assumptions into my model, so feel free to shoot it full of holes. But once you have, my question then is, what explains the disparity between the ideal case and reality?

[skywhopper]

First, I just want to thank everyone who has taken all my thoughts and questions seriously, especially tomgolf8 who clearly disagrees with me, but has been willing to discuss my crazy ideas anyway.

How can we identify "unintentional" barriers. Seriously? If they are unintentional, then that organization probably won't even know they exist. If that be the case, how would someone from outside the organization know they exist?

Yeah, this is the hard part. I think the best answer is just making a point of being aware of the whole idea, and if there's evidence that something might be out of kilter, be willing to try to figure out what that might be.

I think you can start with the boards. We know that corps boards of directors are overwhelmingly male. On the boards that have some or all appointed board members, often serving three year terms, maybe they should make a point of seeking out interested women and minorities to serve. I'm sure there are any number of band directors, arts organization leaders, business leaders, parents of former members who are women and/or minorities who would be happy to serve and well-qualified. I suppose some people would say that's "affirmative action" to let yourself consider their sex or race, but I disagree. In any case, this is a great place to start because those folks are going to be more likely, once the become familiar with the organization, to see these "unintentional" barriers, because they've been through them themselves.

Beyond that, it has everything to do with the inner workings of hiring processes, recruitment for lower-level staff, etc, which I don't know anything about how those things actually work.

I'm starting with the assumption that if leadership diversity doesn't match membership diversity, that something *must* be wrong, unless it's somehow the case that white males are just better suited to running drum corps, or that women and non-whites just aren't as interested on the whole. I really doubt those are true, but maybe I'm wrong!

I think you've mentioned that we have no evidence that there are women and minorities applying for positions and getting rejected. That's true, and if it's true that women and minorities are less likely to apply to be on drum corps staff than they are to participate in it as marchers, well, to me that says we need to figure out why they aren't applying. I guess you can't call that a "barrier" per se, but if the profile of applicants for jobs is out of whack with corps membership, then corps should be asking themselves how they can encourage more women and minorities to apply, especially for entry-level positions. It's not about using race or sex as a factor in the final decision as it is just about making sure you have a wide variety of applicants so you can be sure you're finding the best people.

Plus, yes I think diversity in and of itself is an undervalued asset. I think in general that organizations that have a wide diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints and experiences will make better decisions and do better things. We talk a lot about hiring "the best person", but when you look at your overall staff, if they are all the best players or teachers you could find, but they all have basically the same background, you're still missing something.

Secondly, how or who would legislate how that would be handled? DCI, Federal Government?

I kind of get where your going with this, sort of. But would you care to peel that onion a bit deeper?

No, I don't think the government can or should address anything other than explicit discrimination. If a corps was excluding African Americans or Jews solely because of those traits--I am not a lawyer--but I believe current law would allow those folks who were discriminated against to sue the offending corps unless there was a defensible reason for the discrimination (which would be hard to come up with in those cases). And as we've already covered, drum corps does not have this kind of problem.

Maybe DCI has some role to play, but not a big one. I think really the only useful way to approach this is to convince the corps leadership itself. And you know, maybe you're right and there's not really any problem. My purpose in continuing to jabber in this thread is to try to convince other people on DCP that there *might* be something better we could do. Maybe that idea will spread. Or maybe I'm just a nut and it will go away once I give up on posting to this thread every day.