I grew up Greek. I didn’t grow up White, or American, I grew up Greek. Other people understand what I mean by this; they are usually people who have grown up as immigrants or first-generation children. The second generation has it easier. We first generation-ers do all the fighting for the balance between the ways of the “old country” and the “evils” (freedoms) of the new. In this respect, I grew up listening to music and identifying it as either American or Foreign. The distinction is pretty obvious. But beyond that, I never saw any reason to differentiate.
No matter how many times it is presented to me, no matter the context, it amazes me how much progress our society has made it terms of equality and how far we still have to go. It is disturbing that something as transcendent and universal as music, something that should unify people, continues to be marketed and stereotyped according to race and any other way possible. Teaching in the inner city, my students are always asking me if I am familiar with this rapper or this hip hop artist. Usually I’m not. I listen to a very select breadth of hip hop artists, none of which they have heard of. Likewise, they are usually unfamiliar with my favorite artists and it is almost always because they have never been exposed to them, apparently because they are “white” music. To me, they have always been “fight for what you think is right” and “you have the right to question” music.
Reading over the articles and listening to the lecture today, I started wondering when exactly does the shift occur? When does a teenager cross over into the adult bracket and is no longer considered a part of the target market? When we are too old to know what a hit single is, but are old enough to change the world by voting for same-sex marriages and a woman’s right to choose?
-- Andronike Giannopoulos
