{"id":62139,"date":"2021-11-08T16:44:38","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T16:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62139"},"modified":"2021-11-11T16:35:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-11T16:35:29","slug":"theres-this-mental-discomfort-triggered-when-their-belief-im-a-fan-of-tom-tom-is-white-clashes-with-the-evidence-tom-says-hes-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62139","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s this mental discomfort triggered when their belief (\u201cI\u2019m a fan of Tom! Tom is white!\u201d) clashes with the evidence (\u201cTom says he\u2019s Black!\u201d). These people don\u2019t sleep well at night. And while I sincerely appreciate the good-hearted fans who chime in with, \u201cI don\u2019t see you as any color, Tom. I\u2019m colorblind. I just enjoy the music\u201d \u2014 thank you, but this is America, and you\u2019re missing the whole damn point."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>So, behold, there is a segment of my audience that freaks out whenever I refer to being Black. To them, I <em>must<\/em> be white. Music that sounds like <em>that<\/em> must be made by people who look like <em>them<\/em>. This cognitive dissonance has haunted me throughout my career. There\u2019s this mental discomfort triggered when their belief (\u201cI\u2019m a fan of Tom! Tom is white!\u201d) clashes with the evidence (\u201cTom says he\u2019s Black!\u201d). These people don\u2019t sleep well at night. And while I sincerely appreciate the good-hearted fans who chime in with, \u201cI don\u2019t see you as any color, Tom. I\u2019m colorblind. I just enjoy the music\u201d \u2014 thank you, but this is <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">America<\/a>, and you\u2019re missing the whole damn point. And so over the course of 20 albums and three decades I\u2019ve walked the tightrope of rock and race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Tom Morello, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62102\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Ghost of Hendrix, and Fans Who Think I\u2019m White<\/a>,\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, November 3, 2021. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2021\/11\/03\/opinion\/tom-morello-race-music.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2021\/11\/03\/opinion\/tom-morello-race-music.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, behold, there is a segment of my audience that freaks out whenever I refer to being Black. To them, I must be white. Music that sounds like that must be made by people who look like them. This cognitive dissonance has haunted me throughout my career. There\u2019s this mental discomfort triggered when their belief [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2640,2327,32290],"class_list":["post-62139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-tom-morello"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62172,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62139\/revisions\/62172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}