Beyond toleration - Facing the other

This essay seeks to integrate themes raised by the various contributors to this section of the Handbook. The central issue concerns the role played by music education in creating, perpetuating, or intensifying privilege and oppression. Intersectional considerations are used to show how chapters fit into a larger analysis of violence by exploring specific axes of oppression—for instance, race or gender—and how they relate to a larger situation of unjust social dominance. The concept of structural violence is crucial here, as much of the damage inflicted has direct physical and psychological consequences and either undermines or outright destroys the educational environment for those harmed by it. An essential related theme is the necessity for moral and political self-criticism—reflexivity—in struggling against oppression so that music education is not condemned to perpetuation. There are extraordinary possibilities for resistance available to reflexive music educators.