Meet our new V-P for People Operations & Inclusion
NewsOpera Philadelphia has invented a new VP role. Not sure about the job spec. It sounds a bit surgical.
December 16, 2021: Opera Philadelphia announced today the appointment of award-winning activist, arts administrator, and bass-baritone Dr. Derrell Acon to the position of Vice President of People Operations & Inclusion. Currently the Associate Artistic Director & Chief Impact Officer at Long Beach Opera, where he has led equity and engagement efforts since 2018, Dr. Acon will join the senior management team at Opera Philadelphia on January 10, 2022.
A Fulbright scholar and co-founder of the Black Opera Alliance, Dr. Acon understands the power of the performing arts to foster human compassion and catalyze conversations on challenging subjects.
Just like we do at Slippedisc.com. We’d better appoint a V-P for PO&I.
We have to wait and see. Maybe all these new people will, in five years time, bring us to a better world, and we will thank them daily. Maybe they will be a colossal waste of money. Maybe they will lead to hari kari of the art form.
We don’t know, and their advances are now great enough that we can no longer pretend they are barbarians at the gate. They are within the temple!
PS. He uses the third person, singular, masculine pronoun on his web site. A sign for optimism.
As a founder of a company that excludes everyone except black people, he is qualified for a job that deals with “inclusion”. I have a feeling that his background as an “activist” is his strongest qualification.
I look forward to their all-white production of Porgy and Bess, perhaps set in the hills of Arkansas.
I really don’t understand why you use your platform to deride the inclusion efforts of these companies. Perhaps if you worked within the administration of one of these organizations you might understand why these roles are important instead of mocking from afar.
No, Giovanni, the hypocrisy of screaming “inclusion” while hiring exclusionists is well understood. Kudos to NL for again highlighting the ridiculous nature of these DEI hacks.
Pretty simple, really: the firestorms caused by these kinds of stories boost the number of clicks on the site. It’s just business.
I think these roles could be useful, except there is an agenda that in some cases works against the actual project (in this case presenting great opera). I have consistently argued that no opportunity should ever be closed to any candidate based upon anything other than professional qualifications, and I utterly believe that.
But when a company — in Scotland — — has to cancel Nixon in China, cast with with a black Nixon and a white Mao, I wonder what the agenda is. Whoever it was that complained about it said that casting a black as a white president was “progressive,” while casting a white singer as Mao was not. Excuse me, what is the difference? Their job was only to cast the best singers available.
Ever since affirmative action was introduced there have been grievances, many legitimate, that black candidates were selected over better-qualified whites. Blacks knew this, and many hate affirmative action, because they know many people think they are wherever they are because of it and not because of their own merit. That is in many, perhaps most, cases not true, but it is true enough in some to have made some of us wary of race-based anything — and that cuts both ways.
I know it used to be the other way round and “any white would do” over a black applicant for anything.This happened to other communities, too — the Irish, the Jews, the Asians, the Hispanics — but nothing is going to improve in race relations if it is just “other side up.”
Diversity means making damned sure that the black singers get a good hearing. It does not mean ignoring a better white singer only because s/he is white. Quality must not be the scapegoat of politics — that serves NOBODY.
Diversity means taking a good hard listen to work by black composers on black themes. And giving it a chance, if it is good enough (in the ragtag world of new music, I give it every chance). It does not mean, as a poster called Trina did in another thread, whingeing about the absence of blacks in Schindler’s List as a proof of Steven Spielberg’s white privilege. That is nonsensical.
This is an opera man, so presumably he has respect for the actual form, and is no keener than anyone else to put inadequate artists on the stage or in the pit at Opera Philadelphia. As I said elsewhere, there appears to be an open mind operating in OP already, so he may get a running start. Perhaps there are not enough opportunities being offered offstage or in admin, and that should and can be corrected.
As with all of these officers, only time will tell what he will accomplish. More important, possibly, is how he goes about it.
I’m all for “the power of the performing arts to foster human compassion and catalyze conversations on challenging subjects.” It directs my taste in movies, let alone the high arts.
But I am all too wary of these new officers, who seem to have — in some cases — some very dodgy ideas about the actual arts, and some misguided ones in terms of the fostering. And is some cases compassion only goes one way.
The most challenging subject is to get music education into schools. The next is to make sure the best artists — the BEST — are engaged for each opera.
Keep an eye on this one. He sounds like a live one.
Opera Philadelphia looks pretty diverse already. The Duke and Gilda in their forthcoming Rigoletto are both black. Two of the three principals in their concert version of Oedipus Rex are black. It’s on a double bill with George Walker’s Lilacs, where the soloist is black.
OP has shown already that there is no dearth of black talented musicians, and that they are producing black composers. This guy will not be facing the hardest row to hoe, it seems. And good: he can progress from there with maintaining (or achieving) artistic excellence and show a few others the way.
Sounds like ‘cultural appropriation’ to me. The Left dreams up these vicious monikers and, once adopted, they can be used by EVERYBODY!
No offence, NL, I don’t anticipate too many award-winning activists, arts administrators, and bass-baritones lining up to have you as their boss.
In the beginning we had here a group of Roma working on the grounds, and a woke inspector to make sure nobody was unjustly corrected, and in the end it was me being the only person at the estate being corrected all the time while they could do what they wanted. When I complained about it, I was being woked & patriarchically suppressed. Woke works well with weaklings but with a real personality it fails terribly! It should be cancelled!
Sally
“It’s better to have them inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”
-LBJ
Best to have they pissing elsewhere.
At least he has a background in music and specifically opera. This is more than many others recently hired by orchestras, music schools etc., to be in charge of diversity issues.
It’s also dangerous sometimes. The Tiahuanacu Chamber Ensemble in Mexico hired a Diversity Officer in 2013 who split the ensemble in such a way that no player wanted to work with any other player, all coming from different backgrounds, so they folded after only one season. But the diversity issue was saved, at least. All players went into different direction afterwards.
Where, oh where are Gilbert & Sullivan when so desperately needed???!!! Oh well, there’s always ‘South Park’!!
People Operations? Does this involve removing one’s gallbladder?
No, cutting out the heart of the classical music business model. With surgical precision.
The need to appoint a fulltime inclusion warrior with aggressive underwear seems to indicate a terrible continuous threat to the people working there.
I chortled! However, I agree that it is sad for anyone working at one of these organizations who isn’t willing to lick the woke boots of the newest DEI hire.
I love how he looks. Like an upper class rich whitey young-adult!
Plus he’s black, for extra bonus points.
I love it.
Norman, make sure you appoint a POC, to make it legitimate.
It’s simply Orwellian.
This does not go far enough. There also needs to be a Vice President of People Operations and Diversity.
As the self proclaimed “leaders of the free world”, it’s only right that the US invents jobs meant to shove human values down the throats of those who lack them, and make a big publicity stunt out of it. Although I am of the mindset that merritocracy without discrimination is a better way to go than “forced equality”, it’s nice to see that the US orchestras have to show to the world that they are more “equal” than others. Funny though that their worldwide most appreciated piece of culture was actually born in slavery (jazz)….
My fly on the wall tells me that the Andorra Orquesta da Camera, after seeing the success of branding through diversity measures, installed four Diversity Officers, only to find-out they had no budget for them so they fired half of the orchestral players. They renamed the band as Andorra Ensemble, but then two of the diversifyers quarreled over the concept of gender and had to be replaced by women. The next thing was that the women filed complaints against their collegues for verbal abuse, with the result that the burgermaster folded the whole institution. Be aware what you begin with diversity interventions.
What exactly is an “award-winning activist”?
Not sure. Maybe an activist awarded with a tenure?
I wonder where they found the money for this superfluous position. How long before this trend is forgotten?
Race or skin color aside, wearing that kind of shirt under a suit jacket promotes you as…a complete dingus.