Rather than second-guessing myself I look to the Black artists onstage and wonder how they can be so unmoved by the legion of white fans shouting this polarizing pejorative back at them. The fact that everyone else seems to be enjoying the show just makes me feel worse. In situations like these, instead of enjoying the music and escaping into the experience, I end up consumed by my discomfort and patrolling the crowd for white people singing the n-word. But it’s become a common scene at shows by Black artists, and, as a Black woman in the audience of those shows, it always puts me on edge. Under any other circumstance, this would have been unacceptable. It was the sea of white fans singing “All my niggas in the whole wide world.” It wasn’t that I was disappointed in her performance. This summer, as Solange sauntered across the stage at WayHome to F.U.B.U., her mid-tempo ode to Black ownership, I couldn’t help but scowl.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |