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