Guest Commentary by Aaron Dworkin
Founder & President
The Sphinx Organization*

"The deepest defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become." - Ashley Montagu

I have a bit of an unusual history.  My start might have made it challenging for anyone to determine what I might be capable of becoming. By any statistical norms, being born a bi-racial baby on September 11, 1970 to an un-wed white Irish Catholic mother and African-American Jehovah's Witness father in a small village of Monticello, NY, and being immediately given up for adoption did not necessarily set the stage for the highest expectations for my future capabilities. I was adopted, however, at the age of two weeks by a white Jewish couple, professors in neural and behavioral science at Rockefeller University, and given the too-rare gift of a fine education.

People ask me why I care so much about diversity and why I have dedicated my life to pursuits that further that end.  My response is: I am a Black, white Jewish, Irish Catholic Jehovah's Witness who plays the violin.  I am the definition of diversity.  I don't have a choice but to do what I do.

When I was five, my adoptive mother, who was an amateur violinist, inspired me to begin studying violin.  I remember sitting in Carnegie Hall at age 8, listening to Isaac Stern, and the impact that experience had on me.  However, I do not recollect seeing Sanford Allen around the same time.  Who, you might ask, is Sanford Allen?  In 1961, he was the first Black member of the New York Philharmonic in the orchestra's history.

As I continued to develop on my instrument, as the concertmaster of the Harrisburg Youth Symphony, student at the Interlochen Arts Academy, or concertmaster of the Penn State Philharmonic, I was either the only or one of less than a handful of minorities.