White noise, although it is taught to us as abstract, calm, passive, quiet, and sophisticated, is in reality something that is loud, destructive, and rebuilds off the backs of black and brown people. Black noise is a revolutionary act. Either seen as a distraction or destruction, when in reality it is loud. Black people exist as a signal of confounding constraints; we are constantly pushed down and attacked, yet we produce blackness and “black noise”, black art, black music, black culture. “Black noise” is the reality of vibrations that can crack and disrupt culture, and of the “placating”, evasive white noise. 

So why is black noise seen as destructive, loud, and harsh while white noise isn’t? Looking at apartheid South Africa, how do we justify the injustices and atrocities done to the black South Africans, and how do we speak on the continuous benefits and riches that white South Africans achieve even post apartheid, post the destruction, and rebuilding post the continuous deceit and death. Through culture, there are certain figures who are allowed to transcend the barriers between the white space and black space, the cultural walls between the two. Why are some, like David Bowie, allowed to cross over into other cultures and tiptoe the line between appropriation and appreciation? Why can he be allowed to speak on and exist within the black experience? Is it because of his basic acknowledgment of black people as human beings, or an appreciation of our culture more directly? Although he had an appreciation and was able to weave in and out of black culture, he was still a holder of white noise. He held within him the privilege of being able to exist in multiple languages.