How to Raise Hell in Three Steps: on RUN-D.M.C, Parliament, Blackness and Revolution Carvell Wallace (Ft. Parliament & Run–DMC)

1.
In 1987, in a small Southwestern Pennsylvania steel town, I was the only black kid I knew.

I was also the only kid with a copy of Run-D.M.C.’s Raising Hell. At the time those two facts seemed to be very much connected.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, being the only black kid in middle school is a little like having a disease that you don’t want to talk about and don’t want anyone else to talk about either. You feel ashamed. You feel guilty. When you get to the three or four paragraphs in your social studies book about slavery, you try to look so deeply engrossed in taking notes that you don’t even notice how many kids are stealing glances at you. And you don’t even take notes.

You feel like black is hateful. You feel like black makes people uncomfortable and unhappy. You feel like black is your fault. Because you are a kid.

So this weird thing happened with the Run-D.M.C. tape. Whenever I made copies of it for white kids whose parents wouldn’t let them have it, I always left off this one song.
It was called "Proud to Be Black":

"I’m proud to be black, y’all/ And that’s a fact, y’all/ And if you try to take what’s mine, I’ll take it back, y’all/ It’s like that."

That song bothered the ever loving shit out of me. The thought of the white kids that I went to school with listening to it made me cringe. Why did I have to have a song that made it ok to be who I was? Why did I have to be so lame, and so ridiculous, that Run-D.M.C. needed to devote the weakest, corniest track on an album full of bangers just to making me feel special? The problem wasn’t that I was black. The problem was that black was something so terrible that it needed a hip-hop PSA just to be alright. That was some embarrassing shit for an 11-year-old.
None of the white kids I knew needed that.

I didn’t want to need that.

So I just ignored the song entirely.

In a seemingly unrelated story, there was this one kid named Jason who liked to call me a nigger. A lot. Nigger this. Nigger that. How many niggers does it take. Did you hear about the nigger who. Hey nigger. Shut up nigger.

I wasn’t much of a fighter. I was more of a book reader and clarinet practicer. But Jason made me angry. More than angry. He made me seethe. That’s the word you use when you hate something so very deeply, but you feel that forces bigger than you are preventing you from doing anything about it.
Seethe.