“Have you ever been walking down the hallways of your school or even down the street and heard someone singing?
I know, it’s a stupid question. You probably hear music everywhere. But think about who’s singing the music for a second.
If you saw a white person singing rock or country, you wouldn’t think anything of it. You would just think that’s their music.
Well, you just put color on music. Not even thinking about it. You labeled music.
This happens every day everywhere. Now let’s reverse roles. What if you heard a black person listening to rock or country? Or a Latino or Asian person for example?
If that person was honey-brown like me, you might think to yourself, “Oreo.” That word has followed me around just because I have a preference for rock and metal music. And it seems like it’s always other black students that are saying it.
They have always made me feel different. At recess girls from higher grades would hassle me. It was like Pick-on-Leona Day. It could be really stupid things. I would be waiting for my turn to play handball or some other game and they would find something to say, like “Why are you wearing that?” or “What are you singing?”—anything that would bring attention to me. I always wondered, why pick on me? What did I do? I thought maybe their younger sisters made them.
Once a girl came up to me and said that she didn’t like me. I was so hurt, and what made it worse was the people who said they were my friends laughed at what the girl said.
I can also remember when Pirate Radio first came out with its mostly metal format. I thought it was so cool. But I made the mistake to hum one of the songs during class. At recess it seemed that I’d committed a sin. Everyone was like, How can you listen to that music? Leona, you’re so weird, why would you want to listen to that?
I’d say something like, my dad listens to it in the car or just my dad listens to it.
This answer was always followed with the same response, “Is your dad white?” as if whites were the only people who listen to rock. This always made me mad. My father isn’t white; he’s mixed. And if he was, what difference did it make?
I wanted to fit in
But to avoid things like this, I shut myself out. I tried not to let things slip. The less I said, the less likely I would be teased. I tried to do and be what my friends thought was acceptable. Eventually I was shutting out my feelings. I was like a robot. They put in their commands and I followed. I was devoid of any emotions of my own.
Now that I look back on it, I feel really bad for what I did. There was a time when I joined in and teased a girl I’d made friends with just because my “friends” were doing it. At the time I knew it was bad but I couldn’t stop because I didn’t want them to turn on me and my faults. To this day I feel bad about what I did.
It was like I’d hidden the real me to please others. Then one day I woke up after a very weird dream. I can’t remember the exact details of it but it showed me that I didn’t have to do this anymore. I could be whoever I wanted to be. I could be me.
My mom also influenced my decision when she gave up her career to take care of her invalid mother. My mom rearranged her entire life to do this even though others told her not to. She didn’t let others change her mind. She did what she felt was right and stuck to it.
I took this and applied it to me. I had to stop living for others. I had to do what was right for me. If I liked a different type of music, dressed a certain way, even if I didn’t talk like what others felt I should, nothing was wrong with me. I didn’t have to change who I was for others. I said to myself, “Do I always want to try to be accepted or do I want to be a leader?”
When I got to school that day, I had this Aerosmith song in my head and I was humming it.
This boy said, “What are you singing?”
“Aerosmith.”
“That’s weird.”
I went off on him.
And after that, I listened to whatever music I wanted. If other people didn’t like it, that was their problem.
In junior high, I’d go to school in my mom’s old clothes. Once I was wearing a pair of her old pants from the 70’s.
A girl came up to me and said, You know, your pants are too short.
I said, Thank you so much!
Then she left me alone.
I started talking more. Alice In Chains has this one song about how people bury their feelings because that’s what the world says you have to do. Songs like that helped me stop hiding myself, just because of what other people say.
The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Talking Heads, Fleetwood Mac—my dad introduced me to all his favorites, and I liked them too. I don’t see why I should feel ashamed for loving this music. If I was Latino or Asian, nobody would have a problem with it. But because I’m black, I’m a “sell-out.” I always hear this stuff about blacks sticking together and being a strong race, but they’re the ones who always tear me down.
I went out to interview some of the students at my school, Westchester High, and I found everybody was still in the “Oreo” mentality.
Shannon Verrett, a 10th grader, said blacks should listen to black music and whites should listen to their own. “We make the rap music. It’s what we’re known for. Other people try to take what we started. First we need to build ourselves as a community and people through music.”
Shavonne Webb, an 11th grader, told me that blacks who listen to rock are Oreos.
Pretty soon there was a whole bunch of students all around us, giving their opinions on music.
—Rock has no rhythm, someone said.
—White people can’t listen to rap because they have no rhythm, someone else said.
Then how come more white people buy rap than black people? I said, waiting to see what the answer would be to this.
—They’re just trying to be cool like us.
It’s the devil’s music
—Rock is satanic, one student said.
—Yeah, and if you go to one of their concerts, you get beat up. It’s all that devil-worshipping stuff.
I said I had been to a rock concert, and there were black people there, and I didn’t get beat up. They just got quiet. They had no answer to that.
They were going by little bits of things they heard who knows where. Who knows if they had even heard a rock song?
I wondered what made a song satanic? What made rock so bad?
Some of the students were like, “it’s because of the way it sounds. And the way they sing.” One student said it was “just loud and people screaming.”
Loud and people screaming? Does that mean if a song has a lot of guitar or even pretty pounding drums, then something is wrong with it?
I still wanted to know how was rock satanic and why were you a devil worshipper if you listened to it?
Most of the students gave responses like “it’s the way they dress.” If you wear black or you dye your hair green, or you have one too many earrings, does that make you a devil worshipper?
It made me sad because if white people told them they couldn’t listen to rock, they would be mad. But doesn’t that go both ways?
And I could tell, too, that they didn’t all think that way, but the ones who thought differently were too scared to speak up.
It was different when I talked to Christian Johnson, a white and Latino 10th grader. We became friends after he said to me in class one day, “You know, I can tell you are different from other black girls, no offense, but because of the way you dress.”
I was like, “What do you mean?”
“It’s the way you dress.”
“Well, all I have on are my old Converse, cut-offs and a top.”
“Exactly.”
We like the same type of music, except he’s more into that punky skater type music. Here is his view: “Even though there is a majority of white people that listen to rock music, it doesn’t make a difference if a person of different race listens to it. A majority of blacks listen to rap and R&B, it doesn’t mean that I couldn’t listen to it. None the less there is lots of discrimination, race to race and music to music.”
Anything that can be categorized can be colorized. Which is a sad but true thing. But one day this won’t matter anymore. Look how far we’ve come so far.
I go to school and still have to deal with snickers and laughs but I know it will never be the way it was. I’m finally free to do as I like. And I think that is the most important thing in the world.”