Keeping it real wrong
My friend Abigail (who is Jamaican Canadian) calls me the "blackest white girl (she) knows."
Not only do I shake it to the hit hip-hop and R&B songs of the past 15 years, but I know the back-story on Tupac, Biggie, 50, Mary J. Blige, Snoop, R. Kelly, Jay Z and on and on.
Still, she and her (white) boyfriend laugh at me when I compare R. Kelly to Ray Charles.
I slip into ebonics from time to time in my personal life. Another girlfriend once laughed, "you're not black, Kim," when I told her that I didn't want to "axe," an ex-fling about his troubled past.
I watch BET because MuchMusic and MTV Canada play shows with annoying VJs instead of music I can groove to. My ringtone was the Snoop Dogg masterpiece "Drop it Like It's Hot," for more than a year. I love Dave Chappelle, even though he said on Oprah that he left his show because he heard a white person laughing too hard at a racially sensitive joke that he meant for his black audience.
But is there anything wrong with people like me enjoying what is considered to be black culture? I should mention that my mom's side of the family is from South Africa, and I am related to some black people, even though no one would guess that by looking at me.
What's interesting is that race is rarely talked about in my family. Due to interracial marriages and genetics, half of my family members look white and half look mixed (between black and white). We never bring up that we may not look related, but our relationship makes it obvious we are a loving, if sometimes dysfunctional family.
But back to the question of whether white people should like black culture. The hilarious Weird Al video for "White and Nerdy," now on YouTube, made me ponder this question. Funnier still was that I was a big fan of the Chamillionaire song that Weird Al is parodying. "I'm nerdy in the extreme, whiter than sour cream," Al raps. Do I look as ridiculous as he does, trying to "roll with the gangsters," while riding on his Segway?
Even though many people say they are colour blind and that race doesn't matter, it seems to matter a lot when it comes to white people becoming involved in black culture. It was an underlying theme in Eminem's movie 8 Mile, for instance.
There are some things that it seems silly for white people to do. J-Roc (played by Jonathan Torrens of Jonovision fame) on Trailer Park Boys illustrates this perfectly in one episode, when DVS, a black rapper whom the white trailer park rapper admires, comes to the park, wanting to start a beef during J-Roc's big show because J-Roc was "jackin' his tunes." DVS puts J-Roc in his place by simply saying "you're not black."
J-Roc starts crying, goes to his trailer and puts on his "white boy," clothing: a golf shirt and khakis. He drops his "blaccent." His mom has to console him, and gets DVS, (now subdued because he received royalties for his music) to encourage him to come back out and be himself.
The reverse of this phenomenon also exists. Black people who fit in to white culture are derogatively dubbed "Oreos, black on the outside, white on the inside."
Exhibits of this phenomenon: Oprah Winfrey, who, according to message board postings, talks differently when speaking to middle-class black people on her show than when she talks to white celebrities who might be closer in experience to her billionaire lifestyle. And there's Bill Cosby, who some hailed as creating a positive image of a black family in the '80s on The Cosby Show, but has been called out for making them seem too "white."
My interest in black music and culture only goes so far. It's not like I dress the part. You wouldn't see me wearing stereotypical "hootchie-mama," clothing, like chinchilla coats, over the top "bling-bling," and butt-baring low-rider jeans (not that I'm saying that all black women wear these types of clothing. But it is what you'll see at a hip-hop club).
However, if I wanted to wear this type of clothing, should the fact that I am a white twenty- something stop me? I guess the bigger question is, shouldn't we be allowed to like what we like without judgment?
Good music and art is good music and art. It shouldn't be related to your colour or the colour of the person who made it. Even though I might look silly dancing around to hip-hop music, I stopped caring a long time ago about what people might think or say about me. Segregation of any kind is a bad thing in a multicultural society. Aight?
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Kim Edwards is a freelance writer. Reach her at
kim@kim.edwards.ca.
10-24-2006, 07:59 AM
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