An Individual Snowflake: The Joys & Pains of Finding One’s Identity
I guess some things in life are easier to explain than others. Why is grass green? Why does the moon shine while it produces no light of its own? Why do birds fly south for the winter? However, I don’t know why human beings have a uniqueness equitable to snowflakes that makes them so difficult to compartmentalize. I cannot speak on someone else’s existence, only my own. Even then, I often wonder if it’d be infinitely easier to explain someone else’s place in this world than my own. This is something that I often think about –especially as I get older – and a source of curiosity when I compare myself to others “similar” to myself – white, Anglo, Protestant, middle-class and male. Where do I fit in and why haven’t I been able to rest in a place that society has reserved for me?
My childhood was wonderful. I had two loving, American-born parents – a father who was a mix of English, German and Norwegian ancestry and a mother who was half Swedish and half Norwegian – who did everything possible to ensure my safety and future success. They gave me love and, above and beyond everything else, introduced me to many different destinations and people via travel. My dad traveled as a consultant for many years and that afforded us the opportunity to travel domestically and abroad. My mom was a stay-at-home mother who “held the fort down” while my dad was gone roughly five days a week virtually every week. Not just vacationing with my parents did I experience unique encounters, but there were many different ethnicities that I was introduced to in my suburban world just outside of Chicago. I had friends who had parents or grandparents that weren’t born here and that opened my eyes to customs from Germany, Italy, Poland, Mexico and Greece. One group missing from that equation, though, was Black people. Neighboring towns had a growing Black population, just not ours.
Racism wasn’t as overt in my home growing as it was in other households. There were certain phrases, however, that my parents used like “There’s a nigger in the woodpile” or explaining how “Blacks bring down properly values of neighbors.” They would cite all the examples of people who moved out of the “city (Chicago)” from neighborhoods like Pulman, Beverly or Roseland en masse via “white flight.” My parents tolerated, albeit initially difficult, Black boys as my friends. Keep in mind: my high school was predominantly “White” and by “White” I mean 99 percent! However, most of the Black males in that school were associates or friends of mine. I don’t know why I related to Black kids. My parents were “cool” with it as they’d come over to the house and we’d play basketball out front on the driveway. It’s not like I abandoned White kids either or tried to be something I wasn’t by way of some “How can I be down? personally instituted regimen. I was just being me, which I’d been comfortable doing for quite some time. It was like an exercise in integration, if you will, and my folks cautiously moved forward. College, on the other hand, was a time when I began to discover myself and, conversely, became the minority.
Attending Louisiana State University was something I had wanted to do since I was in 7th grade. As a family, we would go down to New Orleans and/or Baton Rouge every year and visit friends. To say that I became enamored with south Louisiana is an understatement. To this day, that unique region of the country occupies a special place in my heart and in my thoughts. As I applied to only one college, I knew this is where I wanted – needed – to be. The thrill of going out-of-state to college was a rush and I enjoyed being away from home making new friends who didn’t know all of my past; we all started with a clean slate. Also, I wasn’t burdened with having to work as my parents gave me spending money and they covered tuition and room and board.
Life was pretty relaxed as I settled into my new surroundings. I met students from all over Louisiana and Texas who, like myself, were there to get an education and have a little – or a lot of – fun along the way, too. As I noticed, most of my friends that I was making were “Black.” In a complete reversal to my high school days, my friends were 99 percent Black and they made up the majority! I didn’t think anything of it. We enjoyed the same foods, movies, taste in women and music and it didn’t occur to me –as it did my parents – why so many of the new people in my life were Black, not White. Interestingly enough, it was my White roommate who brought a job application to me that forever altered my trajectory. One day, Greg brought back an application to be a “dj” at the campus radio station, KLSU. I had never considered being a disc jockey or on-air personality before, but it was becoming a fast fact that I knew music, Hip Hop music specifically.
Let me digress for a moment and explain my affection for Hip Hop music. By the age of 18, to say that I was fond of Hip Hop is understating the obvious. I was first introduced to this great genre by way of a friend who had a Run-DMC Raising Hell cassette tape. We popped it in and the classic sample of Bob James’ “Take Me To The Mardi Gras” (foreshadowing my departure to LSU in the future, I guess) loop formed the backbone of the trio’s timeless classic, “Peter Piper.” I can’t explain it other than it was an utter euphoria that spread through every atom of my body. The sounds that emanated out of that GE tape recorder –not stereo or boombox– mark my burgeoning fondness of Hip Hop. With later records by LL Cool J and The Beastie Boys, local radio station WGCI’s “Rap Down” show every Saturday night with Frankie J, Ramonski Luv and Disco Dave, and the visuals provided by Yo!MTV Raps and The Source magazine, I was hooked.
Fast-forwarding the scenario through high school up to my employment at LSU Student Media allows me to see how infatuation turned into a passion. When I heard that my application –which looked like a mess in my opinion – was accepted, I was nervous to say the least. For starters, KLSU only played Hip Hop sporadically throughout the day and had no designated show as outlet for it. This was actually before Baton Rouge had a station that would play a majority of Hip Hop as well. Also, when I say I knew music, I knew Rap music. I considered myself a “B-Boy” and I didn’t know too much about Alternative Rock music, or most other genres for that matter. However, when I filled in for djs who were unable to do their shows for whatever reasons, I made the most of my three-hour slot. This was before play lists and automation dominated the airwaves. DJs were given freedom and that was an environment that I thrived in. Before I knew it, I was skipping class to fill-in for last minute call outs and was making relationships at the station that proved fortuitous.
Early in 1994 while still a freshman, the station manager gave me my own show called “Underground Sounds.” I was ecstatic! All the perseverance and persistence had finally paid off. Chris Moss became DJ Spanky, a name that many people call me affectionately today. This show grew into me promoting projects for record labels, working at a record store, promoting local clubs and making a name for myself around Baton Rouge. This was my element. I went from a out-of-state kid who was struggling, like most teenagers to find their way, to helping build a local Hip Hop movement. Simply knowing how some White people have used people of color in this country for centuries, I was aware that I had to pay my dues, too, and earn my way. I didn’t want to come off as a fake or someone that was exploiting Black folks for my personal gain. Aside from obvious arenas of atrocities like slavery and Jim Crow, the music industry resembled a plantation-like structure and was rife with malfeasance as well. However, my close circle was my crew and we had each other’s backs. Sure, as time has gone on many of us have lost touch with each other, but at that given moment –and even now -I felt like I was part of a fraternity of brothers like Alpha Phi Alpha or Phi Beta Sigma and was hazed in similar fashion.
It was God’s plan, I believe, that allowed me to be that way and not succumb to societal norms and feel that I must act “White” and reduce the number of Black friends I had if the ranks started to swell. My parents have never understood it and many of my childhood friends probably haven’t as well. Still, many people, I believe, love me because of what my experiences have made me. I’m Chris Moss and DJ Spanky; I’m a loving son and a loving husband; I’m White and I’m Black. One category doesn’t describe me and classifying one’s self by a color is debilitating. It’s my life’s experiences that makes we want to educate and empower young people. I can understand and sympathize with people who struggle with not being able to fit in to where they think others want them placed. It could be the homosexual that is struggling through society’s heteronormalcies; the youth of color who feels programmed to be a statistic because that is what he/she is exposed to on a daily basis; or, a young white kid that simply has “too many” Black friends for his family’s liking.
My story, I guess, is not so unique in retrospect. Spending almost 30 years in a South African gaol for a his vision of a more equitable society is something that wore on Nelson Mandela. Dr. King must have had initial reluctance and feelings of “Why me?” when he was chosen to be the face for the Civil Rights Movement. Marvin Gaye, although not of the same degree or level of backlash as the aforementioned references, challenged Berry Gordy’s pushback to put out his What’s Going On album, which went against the more upbeat, apolitical sound of Motown. In a twist of irony, it became one of the label’s all-time biggest selling albums.
These are just a few examples of “snowflakes” that fell to the earth and made an impact. It may not have been initially felt, but the influence and counter-cultural changes have reverberated globally in all of those iconoclastic examples. They illustrate to me that one’s life may not ever be completely understood by the individual, but the benefactors of that life understand it quite perfectly. Sure, it may be my grandiose thinking to put myself in the same category as Mandela, Martin and Marvin, but why not? My father always used a quote, “It takes the same amount of energy to think small as it does to think big.” I’ve decided to make mine a life of action and contribute to the work of the change agents that came before me. Regardless of the altering and fickle nature of people and their opinions, a person must face an inescapable fact: we are who we are and our life experiences refine and reshape our individuality.
Chris Moss - Teaching Portfolio 