When you're a black kid growing up and going to school in a predominately white suburb of a predominately white city in a predominately white state ("There aren't any black people in Iowa!") identity is something not to be taken for granted.
Maybe your parents taught you not to speak so much slang. They brought you up speaking operative English and other black kids will say you "talk white" and well-meaning white people will say you "speak so well".
Chances are that other black kids will be used to more black people being around and will stick together. Chances are that they won't listen to much that's not rap, R&B, blues, or soul. Chances are that the only black rocker you knew of was Jimi Hendrix and you didn't hear a whole lot of him. Prince was Prince and somehow he didn't count as rock so much and he got a pass from black people for playing guitar without being in a blues band.
One day you see a video for a song called "Middle Man" and for some reason it doesn't click just then. Months later you see a video for a song called "Cult of Personality" and it blows your shit open.
That's when you learn – or maybe relearn – that black
people
can
rock.
Your older sister buys you Vivid on cassette for your birthday (along with Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back). That thoughtful, calculated act further encourages you, telling you that it's okay.
It's okay to have brown or near-black skin and to like guitars
and to listen to rock.
And you are taught once again that music is given significance by only two things: who's playing and who's listening; you're reminded that skin color doesn't mean shit if you can play your ass off and people enjoy it.
And you learn that the other black kids who measure blackness by a scale, litmus test, or checklist are just a new form of slave and you're just a little more free than you were before.
Maybe your parents taught you not to speak so much slang. They brought you up speaking operative English and other black kids will say you "talk white" and well-meaning white people will say you "speak so well".
Chances are that other black kids will be used to more black people being around and will stick together. Chances are that they won't listen to much that's not rap, R&B, blues, or soul. Chances are that the only black rocker you knew of was Jimi Hendrix and you didn't hear a whole lot of him. Prince was Prince and somehow he didn't count as rock so much and he got a pass from black people for playing guitar without being in a blues band.
One day you see a video for a song called "Middle Man" and for some reason it doesn't click just then. Months later you see a video for a song called "Cult of Personality" and it blows your shit open.
That's when you learn – or maybe relearn – that black
people
can
rock.
Your older sister buys you Vivid on cassette for your birthday (along with Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back). That thoughtful, calculated act further encourages you, telling you that it's okay.
It's okay to have brown or near-black skin and to like guitars
and to listen to rock.
And you are taught once again that music is given significance by only two things: who's playing and who's listening; you're reminded that skin color doesn't mean shit if you can play your ass off and people enjoy it.
And you learn that the other black kids who measure blackness by a scale, litmus test, or checklist are just a new form of slave and you're just a little more free than you were before.
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