How Hearing an AC/DC song in Africa Ended My Tokenism

Don’t Tell Me I’m Acting White

Like many, I resonated with Ramesh Nagarajah’s recent article “Reflections From a Token Black Friend.” I also grew up being one of the only Black students at every school I went to. So I know that when someone says, “I have a Black friend,” it says a lot more about the Black friend’s tolerance than it does the white persons. I also understand that merely existing in that kind of environment can lead to tolerating more than you should simply to avoid being labeled “the angry Black guy” or having to deal with being called “white” simply for fitting in in ways they didn’t expect.

I stopped catering to those concerns when I turned 18 and went from being one of the only Black students at a rural Virginia high school to volunteering in Southern Africa during the height of the AIDS pandemic. During my time there many experiences challenged my notions of culture, privilege and happiness, but one particular bus ride and my reaction to an AC/DC song redefined my notion of Blackness. Looking back on it now, more than twenty years later, I can now appreciate that this bus ride changed how I navigate being Black in white spaces, which continued on for me in law school. This bus ride is why I can today still say I have many white friends and have not had to compromise anything about myself…