Heavy Metal Is Exactly Her Color

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.

Now let’s reverse roles. What if you heard a black person listening to rock or country? Or a Latino or Asian person?

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 who 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?” I always wondered, why pick on me? What did I do?

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 [the hard-rock format of KQLZ- from 1989 until 1993. It is now easy listening] first came out with its mostly metal format. I thought it was so cool. But I made the mistake of humming 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.

This answer was always followed with the 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?

But to avoid things like this, I shut myself up. The less I said, the less likely I would be teased. I tried to do and be what my friends thought was acceptable.

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 other “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.

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.

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 slacks from the 70s.

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 “sellout.” 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 saying that blacks should listen to their own music and people who did otherwise were “Oreos.”

“White people can’t listen to rap because they have no rhythm,” someone said.

Rock is satanic, another student said.

I could tell that they didn’t all think that way, but the ones who thought differently were too scared to speak up.

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.