The Black Friend

by Frederick Joseph

  If you call a white person “mayonnaise” or “mayo,” many of them will lose it. But there is nothing more intense (or funnier, assuming you’re at a safe distance) than seeing a white person lose their damn mind about being called a “cracker.” I’ve literally seen white people argue that it is a direct parallel to a Black person being called the n-word. Which is obviously idiotic in many ways.

  If you don’t know why it’s idiotic, you may need to skip to chapter 10 right now and learn about things you can’t say.

  It really wouldn’t have mattered whether they called us Oreos or something nice like “unicorns” or “special,” because none of it ever made sense. There wasn’t anything different about me or the other kids who had these labels. Every person of color I knew was into all sorts of interesting and random things. Because they were individuals.

  I remember sitting in class once and talking about the upcoming Star Wars movie with a friend. I was extremely excited because I was and am a huge fan, as is my mom, as is my uncle, and my younger brother, and most people in my family. The love for Chewbacca and Darth Vader has been passed down for generations.

  As I was telling my friend about what I was hoping would happen in the new movie, my teacher overheard us and said, “You’re a Star Wars fan?” I replied, “Yeah, I’m going to see it this weekend.” He said, “Oh, that’s surprising. I didn’t know Black people liked Star Wars.”

  Now, this may not seem like an issue to many of you, but it’s deeply problematic that a teacher would assume that someone wouldn’t watch arguably the most popular movie series in history simply because they are Black. Not only does this assume that all Black people like or dislike the same things—another example of stereotyping, which you should have already read about!—but it also implies that the Star Wars movies are made specifically for white people. And that’s just plain racist. And ignorant. (Funny how often those two things go hand in hand.)

  Honestly, I can’t recall how I ended up replying to that teacher or whether I did at all. But as I sit here, I wish I had gotten his racist ass fired. I remember his name, but he isn’t worth the paper.

  But where did this idea come from, that people of color could only like certain things? Growing up, I knew Black kids who were into anime, Asian kids who were into hip-hop, Latinx kids who were into theater, Arab kids who were into salsa, and so on. The people of color I knew were into all sorts of things. None of us was “special”—and none of us was any type of cookie. We were just ourselves.

  I started understanding it as I got older. Some white people don’t assume people of color to be dynamic or layered, because many white people have never had to be dynamic or layered themselves.

  Now, I can already hear you white readers saying, “What are you talking about, Fred? I have all kinds of interests. I like Beyoncé! I’m layered!” And sure, maybe you like a variety of things. But how many of those things are from white culture? Most of them? All of them? If the majority of your interests are from a single culture, from the mainstream culture, then I hate to break it to you, but: you’re not layered.

  But it’s not necessarily white people’s fault that so many of them have a lack of awareness about other cultures. Many white people don’t know any better.

  A large part of white privilege is that it steers white people toward their cultural comfort zones. In countries like America, where most aspects of culture are controlled by white people, their culture has become the norm or mainstream.

  In America, almost everything you can think of has been created to be comfortable and familiar for white people, and everything else is usually “other,” “diverse,” or “different.”

  Whether it’s food, music, movies, clothes, or other aspects of culture, “the norm” is usually based on what white people know and enjoy. Like with anything, not stepping outside of what you’re accustomed to creates a level of ignorance.

  In the case of assuming that people of color can’t or shouldn’t be dynamic, and calling them things such as Oreos, it can also create a level of arrogance.

  In a way, white privilege is actually part of the reason that many people of color are so dynamic. Since much of mainstream culture is rooted in whiteness, we grow up learning, knowing, and even loving many things that aren’t rooted in our culture.

  For instance, there are very few people who haven’t seen or don’t know about the shows Sex and the City and Friends, two shows starring all-white casts with characters who have adventures, experiences, and privileges that most people of color simply can’t relate to. So, then, why do we all know about these shows? Because they were everywhere, and still are.

  Entertainment that centers white people and their experiences isn’t just ingrained in American culture and values; it is American culture and values. So much so that Netflix spent $100 million to keep Friends on its platform in 2018. (If you’ve never seen the show, trust me, it’s not worth nearly that.)

  Around the same time that Friends and Sex and the City were on television, so were the shows Living Single and Girlfriends. They both had similar premises to the other two shows, except they had all-Black casts. Both are considered classics in the Black community.

  But if you ask most white people if they’ve seen them, the answer is going to be no. Trust me, I know, because I’ve been asking white people for years, and I’m deeply annoyed almost every time I get an answer.

  The issue isn’t simply that white people haven’t seen the shows; the issue is that they haven’t even heard of them. Which says a lot about not only what entertainment is platformed but also the level of interest among white people in entertainment by people of color that doesn’t have mainstream appeal, which again is another way of saying white appeal.

  You can point to the same results with almost anything that has cultural or racial relevance. Music is possibly the best example, as most modern music has roots in music originated by people of color, and yet mainstream music is largely white music.

  To prove my point, I ran a little experiment before writing this book.

  I had a party, and I made sure the attendees were pretty diverse. It was basically the United Nations in my house: There were Black people, brown people, white people, Asians, Latinxs—we even had some representation from the Pacific Islands.

  The goal was to make sure I was getting a wide spectrum of people to help prove the point of this chapter and make my case to all of you.

  (For those of you who are thinking that I probably stacked the deck by choosing people who don’t know a lot of music, or that I simply have friends who aren’t very cultured, rest assured that I made sure to invite all of my friends who either work in the music industry or are musicians. These people are supposed to know music.)

  As everyone arrived, I played top radio hits that I was sure people had heard, at least in passing, over the past few years. And I was right: Everyone either sang along, danced, or bopped familiarly to the various songs I played.

  Now that they were warmed up, I told the group that we were going to test everyone’s musical knowledge. Over the next hour, I played a random assortment of music from all different genres, time periods, and cultures. The one thing all of the songs had in common was that at one point or another they were very popular.

  Whether it was Ariana Grande, the Jonas Brothers, Katy Perry, or Maroon 5, if the songs were mainstream hits by white artists, everyone in the room would say that they’d heard them before.

  And not only did people in the room know the songs and the artists, for the most part they also knew deeper information about them, such as other songs of theirs, people the artists had dated, or when the artists had become popular.

  Remember, it wasn’t just the white people in the group who knew these things; it was everyone.

  Well, except me. I personally don’t care about how many people Ariana Grande has dated or how long her ponytail is. But it would seem that I’m in the minority on that.

  The point is, across the board, pe
ople from various backgrounds had a great sense of who the artists were and what their music was all about. This didn’t surprise me; as I mentioned, everyone there was involved in music in one way or another.

  Next, I decided to play songs that were extremely popular based on listens and views streaming but that weren’t by white artists. This is where things got interesting.

  I thought the first song should be easy, so I played “Ms. Jackson” by OutKast. As soon as the beat dropped, people started moving and then rapping along with the song. I knew I had picked the right song—until I looked at the white people in the group.

  Of the six white people in the room, only one of them even seemed to know what was on. I was deeply confused. So I asked the other five white people if they knew the song. Not only did they not know the song; they didn’t even know the group.

  I almost passed out! I couldn’t believe that they didn’t know the song, let alone recognize the voices of André 3000 and Big Boi. OutKast was hardly some little-known group; they were actually one of the highest-selling groups of all time.

  Their last album went diamond. I mean, as of this writing, only 122 albums have ever gone diamond. EVER!

  After that, I needed a moment, so I gave the aux to other people at the party to see what people knew. We played all sorts of genres, from hip-hop to bachata, and generally all of the people of color had a familiarity with the music, even if it didn’t belong to their culture. As I said before, knowing or liking things that are rooted in other communities has always been normal for the people of color that I know. But song after song, genre after genre, if it wasn’t an artist or song that had crossed over into mainstream whiteness, my white guests didn’t all know it.

  Before everyone left, I decided to give the game one last try. First I played a few songs I was absolutely sure everyone in attendance would know.

  I played “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi, the quintessential white anthem. Every single person in the room sang along. I followed up with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana and “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey, to the same results.

  Everyone was singing along, and my house sounded like a crappy college bar.

  Next, I played “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee, and people started laughing, because that song is laughable. I expected to look around and see everyone singing along, but only two of the white people knew it.

  For my final song I decided to play “Hot in Herre” (don’t look at me; Nelly decided to spell it that way) by Nelly, and everyone knew it. I was wonderfully pleased that at least everyone knew one of Nelly’s worst songs.

  As people were preparing to leave, one of my friends said, “You can’t have the last song of the night be one of those terrible Nelly songs.” He wasn’t wrong, so I jumped back on the aux and told everyone I was going to play another Nelly song. A second later I threw on “Flap Your Wings,” a classic and a staple for many. Everyone was hyped. Well, almost everyone.

  I looked at my white friends, and they looked confused. I asked one of them what was wrong. She said, “I thought you were going to play Nelly.”

  I stared at her for a second, then said, “This is Nelly playing right now.” She said, “Oh, wow! Never heard it!”

  I proceeded to kick everyone out immediately.

  Maybe you’re thinking that my white friends—who, let me remind you, work in the music industry or are musicians themselves—just happen to be unusually ignorant when it comes to music. But you’d be wrong. And my conversation with Naima Cochrane proves it.

  Naima’s musical knowledge and passion have garnered her a large social-media platform. Fun fact: she’s named after the John Coltrane song “Naima,” so you could say she was born into music.

  I’m sure many of you don’t know who John Coltrane is, because life is unfair. I don’t blame you, but go listen to “Naima” by Coltrane right now. Just know that if we meet and you haven’t listened to any Coltrane songs, we are going to have an issue!

  I figured she was the perfect person to ask about her experiences in the industry, since she is a person of color with varying interests in and knowledge about music and entertainment that rival those of her white counterparts.

  While she was growing up, Naima’s parents played all types of “Black music,” so her understanding of the spectrum of what Black people supposedly did and didn’t listen to was shaped from a young age.

  NAIMA: My parents were into the Nigerian singer Fela, jazz, and Santana, in addition to soul and stuff like that. But they didn’t necessarily listen to contemporary R&B aside from, like, Luther [Vandross], and Janet [Jackson], and then Sade. I had a very global understanding of my Blackness, not a super-defined and rigid cultural understanding of my Blackness.

  This was similar to my own musical upbringing, which was very diverse and dynamic as well. Which is part of the reason why, as a teenager, I didn’t understand why so many of the white people I met thought people of color enjoy only certain things.

  NAIMA: During elementary school and the first half of middle school, I went to a predominantly white school, and specifically a predominantly country white school. I was listening to the pop stations. I was listening to Guns N’ Roses, and I was listening to the little bubble-gum pop music or whatever. In high school, I had to catch up on some of this early hip-hop. I had to catch up on Salt-N-Pepa. I had to catch up on the first N.W.A. album.

  Because of how I grew up, during my career, I didn’t just have opinions on the Black music. I had opinions on the alternative music, and the white music, and the straight-up pop music, and informed opinions, since I could tell you if I liked it or if I didn’t like it, and why. It made me a better marketer, because I was pulling from broader experience. I remember we were doing something for Foster the People when I was at Columbia, and I mentioned something about Hacky Sack because I remember watching kids at school play Hacky Sack. The band members were surprised, because they figured that’s not a reference that a lot of Black kids are going to throw out, or that a lot of Black people are going to throw out.

  While it has always bothered me how many white people view people of color and our ability to be dynamic, it actually confuses me when it comes to Black people and music. As I said earlier, most popular music in America is rooted in Black music and culture—a point that Naima addressed at length.

  NAIMA: Well, first of all, from a historical standpoint, Black music is the foundation for so many other genres of music. Or if not Black music being the foundation, Black artists inspired trends. Black music, rhythm and blues, true rhythm and blues, and some gospel is the basis for country western.

  If you take the lyrics from country songs and just change a couple of little things, change it from a truck to a Cadillac or something, and put it under a different beat, it’s an R&B song, right? And there is a Black woman, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who inspired some huge country and rock and roll guitarists. So there’s that. Gospel and blues also served to inspire, obviously, rock and roll. Ike Turner is credited by most people for having the first rock and roll song. And jazz is the basis for so many other art forms. It’s the basis for electronic, and techno, and house. So much is built off of things that were pioneered during the jazz era. So I just think that our music, our rhythm, our syncopation, our different use of style, call and response—all of that comes from Black people.

  Black music is the foundation of American music, period. We created this sh*t, basically.

  I may get that last line on a T-shirt. “We created this sh*t, basically.” Preach, pastor Naima!

  Naima next spoke about her experiences in the music industry, which weren’t all that different from my experiences at the party I hosted to make my point for this chapter—the one in which I had to kick everyone out because of that Nelly nonsense.

  NAIMA: So, you mentioned earlier that Black people often make better marketers because we have to be aware of everything, right? We can’t just know our own sh*t. We also have to know the mainstream stuff
in pop culture, in marketing trends, in retail—whatever area we work in, we still have to know. So, even if I worked in urban marketing, if I don’t know what the top ten are—all Top 10 songs on the Hot 100—they’re going to look at me like I’m crazy. But nobody who is white and works in the pop department has to know all ten songs on the Hot R&B and rap charts. They don’t have to know that, but I need to know everything that’s on the Hot 100 and Top 40 chart. Right? So there’s always been that double standard that I don’t even think white people are aware of culturally. And I’ve tried to bring that to people’s attention.

  In my career, it’s been surprising to some people how much I can speak to. I kind of like catching people off guard like that. There was a time when I had a [white] boss with me at an industry event and they played “Before I Let Go,” and he was like, “How does everybody know this song?”

  You may have heard the cover of “Before I Let Go” because Beyoncé released it with her Homecoming docufilm. SHE IS NOT THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS SONG! Black people have been listening to it for decades. It’s by Frankie Beverly and Maze, and they have many other amazing songs. If you haven’t heard it, go listen. That is all; back to our scheduled programming.

  NAIMA: And I was like, “This is . . . Every Black person in America knows this song.” Every Black person in the world might know this song. This was like the unofficial Black national anthem. He had no idea who Frankie Beverly and Maze was; he had never heard the song before.

  And when, you know, the DJ cuts the music out so everybody can go [singing], his mind was blown, because it was literally everybody in the whole entire space.

  We started singing the song lightly and laughing on the phone.

  NAIMA: And I was like, “This is us. We would know ‘Sweet Caroline.’ We would know ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ We would know the Joints. But you guys don’t know ‘Before I Let Go.’” I’ve tried to use my position to educate where I can. It takes some patience, and not everybody has the patience to do that.