There's no big accomplishment in acting white
(after being subjected to some third stream muzak)
1.
if a chamber orchestra / complete
w/tympani as percussion
plays a pentatonic scale
includes six and one half bars
of flute improvisation
& the tune was composed
by an intelligent moor
does that make it
black
music?
2.
does a dollop of musical melanin
make orchestral scores
something blood might
want to dance to
or squeeze lover flesh to
or fit to express
what we been through?
is acting
white
really more profound
than afrikan aesthetics?
more tragic more magic
more real more desirous
than soulful us jumping straight up
and being down, head thrown back
wailing into the blue, slightly off their key
but in our tune, blowing bodaciously
like there was no tomorrow
must we really
dot all our eyes
with fields of blue,
cross all our tee's with the deafening silence
of liberal-arts-degreed negroes demonstrating
they have arrived by sitting quiet
legs crossed and morosely
concentrating on deciphering
well modulated arias
which resist the tapping foot, still
the bobbing head and
reject the shaking of any entraced
body movements other than polite
and discreetly tepid applause
to indicate we're in the pocket?
must we make ourselves
into something our enemies love
to listen to
in order for us and our art
to be considered human?
3.
if you want to play compose and be respected
as a classical musician why not just do that
and not insist that there is anything culturally black
about such a quest except perhaps our skin
and a few references to your lynched
history thrown in
why not just openly embrace what they do
and be what you've been trained to do
there is nothing prohibiting you
or me or any of we
from acting white
except maybe our individual angst
constantly trying to justify
that there be something real
black about passing
over into the age-old truth
of negro life and history,
abjectly supplicating to white supremacy
with a sambo-colored shibboleth
on our lips: boss, i may not be quite your color,
but i've disciplined my black ass to be your kind
4.
acting like our bodies are not us
is one of the most frequent ways
educated blacks manifest
they are cultured
the denial of blackness
is petite bourgeois power
insisting
there is nothing wrong
with disappearing
into the tinkling
quiet
of a well composed
ode
to otherness
—kalamu ya salaam