Yeah, I discovered this in college, especially in music. Imagine my surprise when the white people O met didn't know a single one of the artists or performers I'd grown up in the shadow of, people I thought were pretty damn famous, but were only what we later called BlackFamous! People like Luther Vandross, BB King, and even Prince.

They might have know who some of them were, but couldn't name a song, or didn't know the lyrics to songs we thought were pretty popular. I was more than a little frustrated and baffled by their ignorance because I had not been ignoring music performed by white people, like Madonna, Lauper, Bowie, Motörhead, and Def Leppard.


They only watched American Bandstand, we watched both that and Soul Train. They only watched Friends, we watched both Friends and Living Single. They didn't even know the names of famous actors, or movies we loved, but I knew all of theirs. I was always surprised to find that one lonely white personal who knew the lyrics to the Jeffersons themes song, or who knew the show What's Happening, had watched a Spike Lee film, or seen A Different World. I was surprised because it wasn't hard to know or watch these things, so I reached the conclusion that their lack of knowledge on anything outside of a middle class, straight, white bubble of entertainment was deliberate.