Disrupting Racism in Music Education: Conceptualizing Admissions Processes Through the State and the War Machine

The college admissions process (application, audition, acceptance) serves as a crucial milestone for many aspiring music educators.It also functions as a barrier to accessing the profession for historically marginalized students.In this article, we employ anti-racism as a lens to critically examine the admissions process as it exists in many music education programs.Incorporating this with Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) theorization of the state and the war machine, we consider ways to disrupt the seemingly iron-clad system of music education collegiate admissions and advocate for changes that benefit marginalized students and the music education profession.