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Why do a lot of people automatically assume all black people are into rap?
or hip hop, or r&ab, or gospel. It makes no sense to me, and I find it offensive. Why couldn't they just first ask what I'm into, the project their assumption upon me? There's many types of music in the world. Then when I say I'm into rock, people are always in disbelief, and many even doubt the depth of my love and ties with it. I mean there's even assumptions about rock, like that it's only hard rock or metal. I'm really bad with genres, but I like a lot of quote on quote "indie" stuff, like shoegaze, punk, ambient, experimental, electronic, psychedelic, dream pop... music associated with such terms. Thanks to the Internet, I've learned I'm not the only one, cause it regularly feels like that in my day to day life. In my day to day life it's weird to listen to what I listen to period, much less on top of that also being black. I agree people are people and music is music but it's just troubling to see that people still have trouble moving past stereotypes. It just makes me wonder, what else do they assume about me, because of my skin color? I can't even imagine thinking that way, it's just not how I approach the world or view other people, but it's a reality I need to learn an accurate response to, other than just sweeping every little sting under the rug. Other people's negativity sometimes affects me, like with wondering whether I should really be going to a particular concert, should I really have my favorite artists' pictures on my wall, that sort of thing. how do I rationalize myself out of such toxic influences? And yes, I listen to more than just rock, but it's just the bulk of what I listen to on a regular basis. It's not about looks, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc it's about the quality of the music to me. Why am I expected to identify with songs about life in a ghetto or going to clubs or whatever when I've mainly lived in suburbia? My family isn't rich, but we're definitely comfortable. That doesn't mean I don't have struggles, but it doesn't mean I'll necessarily have the same struggles as someone else just cause we share the same skin color. *sigh*. Any advice will be appreciated.
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Maybe give some free advice about: Music?
You can thank media in part for this. When its bad news, they share stuff more about the black vs white people who robbed, killed, got arrested, etc... Its also in the movies, see a black person playing classical music enough in sitcoms and movies? No you don't. I'm white and I have to say, you're right, it really does seem stereotypical.
Add to it that of the many popular black singers out there, it seems I only hear more of those who do the 4 types of music you mentioned, played more often. If I try to think of lots of black singers that do some other kind of music, its hard. To me, I dont think of labels to music and love lots of music by black singers and heck, I never pay attention enough to learn who the singer is, no matter what the color of their skin. I just response to what I liked when I heard the music, like Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder. And then there's Chubby Checker with songs like "Do the twist" which to me is more an era music 'oldies, 50's music'. I guess this all is dating me. If it makes you feel any better, just by sound of voice, not type of music, I am surprised sometimes to look up the black singer of a song I heard that I like only to find out they're white and vice versa. Yes, we all tend to have these thoughts pop into our mind. I believe however, it's what I do next that really has an impact on whether I am racist or not. If I were to not purchase any music once I discovered the singer was black, then yeah, the label racist fits. I have a black brother in law I love as family. And yet I am not sorry to say, that he has a voice i term northern US black accent. There is east coast black accent as well as southern but I really love the UK black accent.
Whites tend to for most part sound different than blacks or even asians for that matter. Asians seem to sound the same no matter what region they live in. But whites pick up accents too like east coast, southern. I live on west coast and am told I have an accent and sound different to a person from the east coast for example. I have met whites with a certain sound to their voice and ask where they are from and each time I thought it sounded east coast, without saying so to them, they have said east coast. People tend to go with the majority of their experiences like my guessing the east coast accent. It's a lot like the conditioning a mouse or rat in a lab maze test. they run the maze to find a piece of cheese and after so many times, come to "expect" it to always be there so the one time you leave it out, they don't know what to do, they go back again and again looking for cheese thats not there. For a big part, that is also an issue of human nature, humans are so easily trained and conditioned. Just because we form habits and begin to expect something to be the same each time doesn't mean we can't adjust if the "cheese is a different flavor cheese". We might be temporarily surprised to find something or discover something that we weren't expecting but it's how we act and say after that matters. If pleasantly surprised and truly interested to know what types of music you like, then try not to fall into the same trap of 'expecting a white person to be a certain bad way towards blacks'. I haved learned to not take things so personally in life. I am half german and when in my twenties, twice when someone learned I was german, they called me a Nazi. I said nothing and smiled inwardly as the other half of me is Jewish, the people who were persecuted by Nazi's. Now on the other hand, if after their surprise, a person starts to grill you about why you aren't liking the music of your own kind...ah...then you have a person who is stereo-typing you and racist. A type of music doesn't just belong to any one race anymore, at least not in the US where we are a melting pot of so many races each bringing a little of their culture to mix and blend with so many others. We have variety. I hope this helps you hearing another perspective especially from a white older female who believes every single person should not be evaluated on their race or even on their past mistakes, just for who they are as an individual today and as one of Gods many colored children.
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