InvasiveThoughts.com

That's a short roll call of my some of my all-time favorite artists. I have been drawn to the African American culture as long as I can remember. When I was a small child, I was aware of racism in our country and I tried to dissect it and understand it. Perhaps my "curiosity" about black culture started in defiance to what I was always aware of as the ignorance of conventional thought.

I have a memory of riding in the backseat of a car with my friend as her mother drove us to a doctor's appointment with her. I believe I was about six years old. She told us that we were driving through the "bad" part of town. While stopped at a red light, a black man smiled and waved at me from his car. I waved back. When my friend's mom saw me waving at this man, she snapped, "Brooke, don't wave at people." Something in me knew that it was his race, or his perceived class, that had caused her to react as she did. And something in me also knew that this man was harmless, that he was simply making a genuine gesture of friendliness toward a child.

Perhaps that is when I began to be curious about boundaries, between us and them, them and us. Why did this separation exist? Because I could never comprehend anything superior about Caucasians, and perhaps because my own "weird" sense of style growing up had set me apart from the same judgmental white masses around me, I imagined that there must be something special about black people in our country that should set them apart.

As an adult, I now know that some people might label my feelings of preoccupation with black culture as a product of "white guilt", or as a misguided romanticism of the "exotic other." Those labels only justify the divide, the boundaries. It isn't natural for one race to desire closeness with another race, so it must be the force of some definable sociological phenomenon. I say that's a sack of shit. I am aware of the fact that I grew up privileged, and that my race plays a big part in that reality, but it?s not guilt that compels me to enjoy a particular type of music or to be intrigued by a certain viewpoint.

Exposure could be another possible explanation for my black leanings. Being open-minded people, my parents enrolled me in the controversial and experimental magnet school program when it began in Kansas City at the start of my introduction to middle school. In an attempt to desegregate and in turn bring much-needed and long-overdue tax dollars to crumbling inner-city schools, the magnet program bussed white kids from the suburbs into the city schools. I joined the program in the 6^th grade (yes, I was one of those suburban white kids, but am happy to say that my family finally moved away from that strip-mall hell and joined the real urban life during my school years) and followed through until my high-school graduation in 1995. My school experience was unique, obviously, and it allowed an escape from the bullshit that seems to accompany most middle-class American public schools. We didn't?t have popularity cliques based on social status. We were never judged each other by our belongings or our style of clothing. There was definitely a struggle those first couple years as the blacks became adjusted to the whites and vice versa. But opposite typical U.S. cultural experience, the whites at my school had to assimilate to the black culture in order to be accepted. This assimilation process was easier for some than others; one had to be secure in themselves to take that risk and get on the dance floor at school dances. But by high school we'd all pretty much made it through the initial mistrust and discomfort and though a self-imposed segregation still took place to some extent, we were all mostly comfortable being together. And we learned a lot from this day-to-day proximity.During these years I was overwhelmed with black culture. I could theorize that it was simply over exposure that sunk into my blood, like the way a pop song that is mediocre at best becomes our preoccupation after it's been successfully lodged into our brains and psyches. But if this were true, wouldn't every white kid who went to the magnet school have a similar outlook as I have today? More commonly this exposure lost its novelty by the time we got to high school and most white kids were back to hangin' with the other white kids. I, too, had more white than black friends in high school, but my appreciation for black culture both preceded and outlived my school years. While I took it as a compliment when in middle school a girl at the cafeteria table I was eating lunch with said that I was the blackest white girl she'd ever known, I still don't think it's the status as the "accepted one" that is the cause of my appeal. Maybe I have some African blood in my soul. Maybe I am drawn to what I admire and perceive as being different from the majority and strong enough to rise above the conventions and boundaries put in place by the majority. Maybe I don't need an answer, a justification. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that all my heroes are black. Whatever the reason, I love black musicians, black writers, black artists and their contributions will likely inspire me throughout the rest of my life to place myself outside the comfort zone of my surroundings (unfortunately, most of the rest of life is not as integrated as the magnet school I attended growing up) and cross the barriers that keep some feeling guilty and others feeling exotic.