CVK
The Jewish Week profiles Aaron Dworkin, who has just received one of only 25 Macarthur fellowships this year. He is the founder of Sphinx Music, which he started in 1996 to increase the involvement of black and Latino youth in classical music — in music schools, orchestras and audiences. He’s also mixed and Jewish, and he talks quite a bit about his identity in the article:

When Aaron Dworkin walks into a room of potential funders “I really freak people out,” he tells The Jewish Week. “They see my last name and say ‘we were expecting someone old, white, balding and Jewish’ and I show up, young, black and seemingly not Jewish.”…

While in Manhattan, he saw race and skin color “just like eye and hair color,” as one bit of a person’s individuality. Then, in Hershey, where he was the only black person besides one other black family, “the world began to teach me about race,” he says.

He began to struggle with reconciling the parts of his identity. “When I came back from Europe I was exposed to the idea that blacks and Jews don’t get along. So one part of me is not supposed to get along with the other?”