At least, that's how I usually describe it, but in all honestly, the loving and hating are compounded by a general sense of ambivalence. Unless presented with what I believe to be an extreme on either side, I generally don't care about hip-hop. There is now, has always been, and will always be more music in the rock, R&B, and Soul genres in my media library than Hip-Hop and Rap combined, and while this surprises some people, it doesn't usually cause issues in my life.
But there's one situation in which it does: when I go to some sort of predominantly black party on campus, which isn't nearly as often as it was, say, freshman year. And I usually attribute that fact to the fact that I was a non-drinker when I was a freshman, and now I party on The Street, but in all honesty, that's not the whole story.
As much as it pains me to admit this, to a certain degree, I feel uncomfortable at black parties. I don't know most of the music, and as a first-time listener don't really appreciate much of it either. I feel uncomfortable when a group of people I know hear the first few notes of a song, yell something to the effect of, "Yo, this is my jawn!", and proceed to line up and all do the dance that goes to this song. I don't know how to dougie. My Asian best friend can jerk better than I can. While I can drop it low and back it up, I much prefer for the focus of any attention paid to my body to be on my 38Ds and not my pear-ish middle section, because noticing that I got a donk must be accompanied by noticing that I'm also just generally heavy in the stomach/butt/thighs area. I realize I am supposed to appreciate this as "thickness" in some measure, but...I don't like to draw attention to areas of my body that I don't necessarily like. I don't like that I am expected to devote time and energy to knowing and performing these dances on demand, but I also don't like feeling like I have to slink off to the sidelines when everyone else does these dances because I can't join in.
Long story short, I often feel like I am not black enough to be at a black party, and this pisses me the fuck off. I'm always the first one to voice the opinion/raise the concern that blackness is not homogeneous, that it comes in all shapes and sizes and colors and mixtures and genders and classes and religions and sexualities and hair textures and just about any other distinction that can be made amongst humans. I'm always the one to rally against generalizations about black people--even those that aren't inherently stereotypical--and to question the use of the term "the black community" in nearly every circumstance. I'm the one who became disenchanted with our "black community" at Princeton after seeing what a truly encompassing black community is like at Yale last year. I'm the one who became a much happier and more satisfied individual after branching out. But I am actively a black person, no longer a person who happens to be black. I am a black woman--not a black person who happens to be female or a woman who happens to be black, but a black woman. I identify as black, I am politically black, most of the time I am academically and scholastically black, and my most prevalent when I grow up fantasy at this point in life is to be a Black Panther. Who are you, friends and DJ at this party, to make me feel like I'm not black enough to be here? Who the hell are you to make me feel like a cultural outsider in a so-called community I have given immeasurable amounts of time and energy to strengthening? Who gave you the right to make me wonder if K felt as out of place as I did, and tell him I'm ready to leave whenever he is, and what part of his immediate exit was caused by everything I'm talking about now?
There was a white grad student there, and I remember wondering if he felt as out of place as I did. He looked as though he were having fun, and a little voice in the back of my head said, "Well, so do you. You're trying really hard to look like you're having fun." and that's when I knew it was time to go. Why does the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Multicultural Understanding throwing a formals afterparty constitute black people having a party, and why does not fitting into--or really even wanting to fit into--the cultural preferences of the overwhelming majority of a collection of black Princetonians make me feel like I'm not black? Who gives the crowd the right to define ME?
...oh wait, that's the whole basis behind life as social creatures, isn't it?
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