Part 1 – Discovering the Tim

Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed when not to be receives reproach of being.

And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.

- William Shakespeare Sonnet 121

Chapter 1 – Considering The Source

In order to find truth, all sources of information need to be considered. In the case of this book, these include the sources I use for research, and myself as the author. My life experience without a doubt affects how I interpret and process information and in turn how I become a source myself. Without a doubt, my life experience affects how I interpret and process information and in turn how I become a source myself. While I do not know what it feels like to be black or a person of color in daily life activities such as walking down the street, getting a snack from a bodega, eating at a restaurant, going to the bank, and networking with white people, I do know what it feels like to be a minority when full time professionally playing and dancing to black music.

Music is the world I live and love in. I have always embraced it and it has always embraced and taken care of me. However, the fact that specifically American music, and even more specifically “black music” has taken care of me so well, has often left me contemplating what and who I am to deserve feeling this love, love and support I have received from people of all walks of life. In fact, I continue to contemplate how it has taken care of me, while learning where my role fits in within the context of American music, the industry and even the global economy.

In attempting to realize my full potential as a musician and entertainer, I have often found the role I have come to play quite limiting. Contemplating all these existential questions of being a white man in the world of “black” music has led me to finally ask why I have been blessed to have these passionate feelings towards music, and why I have felt like a minority in the creation of this music, while feeling like part of the majority in profiting from it. What is the source of this role?

On January 17, 2009, I played for the 2009 BET Honors Awards band as a member of the Chops Horns section, which was contracted by Ray Chew, the musical director of the Apollo. We backed up featured artists including Keyshia Cole, Ne-Yo, Anthony Hamilton, Anita Baker, Monica, Queen Latifah, Yolanda Adams, Joss Stone, Wyclef and the great Stevie Wonder. The honorees were B. Smith (Entrepreneur award), Magic Johnson (Corporate citizen award), Judith Jamison (Education award), Congressman James Clyburn (Public Service award), Mary J. Blige (Entertainment award), and Tyler Perry (Media award). The host of the show was Gabrielle Union, and the presenters of the awards included Terrence Howard, Hill Harper, Samuel Jackson, Angela Basset, P. Diddy, and Whitney Houston. The amount of talent and inspiration both onstage and in the audience was absolutely breathtaking.

I was inspired to write this first chapter by both what was said and what was not. I considered the source of my inspiration, the source responsible for both the show and my fortunate job opportunity, BET (Black Entertainment Television). The cable channel, BET, was founded by Robert Johnson in 1980, and sold to Viacom twenty years later in 2001, making Johnson the first African American billionaire in history, leaving BET’s future programming in the hands of the “video & audio communications” giant.

The taping of the show took place the weekend before the historic presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. There was excitement both inside the Warner Theater and surrounding streets of DC. An interesting process of taping an awards show is how the different speakers, whether they are the host, presenters, or recipients, relate to the teleprompter. The teleprompter was a large screen located in the middle of the theater (not shown on camera) that scrolled down the scripted speech each speaker that night was to read. The scripts were obviously written by BET writers, and not the speakers, because a few of the speakers had challenges reading the script from the prompter, revealing they were unfamiliar with what they were supposed to say, especially when a few were unable to attend rehearsals. Not attending these rehearsals, however, did not affect many of the older veterans of the biz.

Expectedly Obama’s name and family were referenced throughout the night to reflect on African-American history and to inspire a hopeful future, one that includes African-American empowerment and equality in society. The choice of words in the written speeches, the rhetoric relating Obama’s election to the turbulent African American history and a hopeful future, was quite striking to me. I considered the source of what was so striking. Perhaps it was not the language used, but how I was hearing the language. In this case, perhaps it was not the source of the language but the source of the listener interpreting the language, which in this case was me. Realizing my interpretation was mostly a result of being white I felt ever so slightly estranged when I heard so many empowering words preceded by the word “black”, a word that described the overwhelming majority of those onstage, in the audience, and BET viewers.

Most unsettling to me, was when the hostess Gabrielle Union, reading from the teleprompter script, referred to the universally empowering word “love”. In an uplifting segment referring to the election of Obama being a role model for relationships between men and women, Union went on to say that Obama and his family are role models transcending colors in the typical sense. Rather he and his family represent the new “color of love”, specifically “black love”. Union reads on further to define this “black love” as being the dedicated love between a strong black man and strong black woman, one that extends into a selfless love to their children, and goes on to say how Obama listens to his woman, meant to elicit chuckles from an audience (a joke cut when it was aired because of how it flopped).

Throughout the night, there was lip service to equality for all, with an emphasis on material empowerment of black people. Hence, the first award given out was one for entrepreneurship to B. Smith. Secondly, Magic Johnson was presented the “corporate citizen” award by Samuel Jackson who read a “play by play” analogy of Johnson bringing his basketball skills to the board room, and “assisting” a business hopeful. The first and, I believe, most important focus away from materialism was when Judith Jameson, the great Alvin Ailey choreographer/dancer, received the award for education. Before she walked onstage to receive the award, three dancers from her company danced while Anthony Hamilton sang to her “If It’s Magic” and “A Song for You”. In that arrangement, my favorite part was playing the low notes for the horn fanfare at the end of a Song For You. I got to use the F-attachment of my trombone and play a lip loosening low “C”.

Jameson’s message in her acceptance speech is a theme found throughout this book for solutions to our issues of division. She emphasized the importance of art, music, and dance in education, how it helps with giving youth outlets to find their identity, and more specifically encourage them to make “good” choices. She stressed the word “good”, a word not preceding “choices” in the original speech scrolling down on the teleprompter.. While she received marginal applause from the audience, I felt the important message of art in education became an afterthought after the incredibly stirring performances of Anita Baker, Monica, Yolanda Adams, Joss Stone, and Queen Latifah were dedicated to Mary J. Blige, Tyler Perry, and James Clyburn.

So here I am playing and sharing the stage with some of the most powerful and talented people in the world, yet I felt somewhat distanced from the apparent joy and pride these great African-Americans were expressing in the hugs and shaking of hands during and after the event, many of whom were obviously inspired by the imminent coming of our first African-American president, a savior providing the light of hope to a dimly forecasted American future. For some reason, I felt that what was inspiring about Obama’s election to me, was different from what was inspiring to the majority of people at the BET awards. We were having different experiences, both positive, but different. And the differences between these interpretations of what a prospective Obama administration symbolically meant was enough to feel a palpable amount of tension between myself as a white man, and others present, as black people. Nothing happened overtly. The obligatory polite expressions of gratitude were exchanged between myself as being a member of the band, and even superficial topics of conversation were brought up in passing, but what never happened and hardly ever happens is the overt addressing of these subtle tensions that exists between white people interacting with black people at a “black” event, this one being the BET Honors.

A specific example of such social dynamic tension is when a white person looks for acceptance in “soulful” situations around black people by being as wide-eyed and as agreeable as possible towards black people so as not to come off racist, or as having an agenda to oppress black people. And in my experience, African-Americans always sense this forced feeling and expression of openness and ingratiation, and have often received it with at best cautious optimism and at worst skeptic coldness. This is a dynamic I have experienced and witnessed countless times within the popular music industry. It happens less with fellow band members like my good friends in the Chops Horns, but every now and then a little tension sometimes rears its ugly head. To understand the source of this tension, all that needs to be done is to look at the history of relationships between African Americans and white people in America. Sounds simple enough.

Before making such attempts to explain the personal dynamics I felt at the BET Honors Awards, not to mention countless similar occasions prior and since, I need to use a word more freely without getting caught up in justifiable semantics. As of right now, as you read this sentence, I am going to use my very well-earned “ghetto pass” so that I can address all African Americans as “black people” throughout the rest of this book. The ghetto pass is a common term used to refer to the acceptance of white people to operate, socialize, and express freely within the black community. I realize that there are those within the black community who prefer the term “African-American”, but I also realize that many of these same people use the word “black” and even the “n” word when referring to each other and themselves within the same black community.

Also, since I have rarely taken issue of being labeled as white, referring to African-Americans as “black” feels equally justified. It is also shorter to say and write (one-syllable), and feels like the middle ground between the traumatizing “n” word and the word “African-American”, which in many instances has seemed like overly earnest attempts to show that a speaker never had the intention or even ever heard the “n” word before. In addition, when I refer to things such as music being “black”, it is all with the intention of empowering African Americans and people of color. I proudly sacrifice my ghetto pass, and future membership and acceptance within the black community, to express what I believe to be a broader and more empowering message for both African Americans and oppressed people all over the world. However, it should also be noted that “black” people in this book will not refer to those popularly defined as “Latinos”, “Asians” or “Indians”, who will be included in the category “people of color”. Black people will refer to the descendants of African slaves brought to the New World who ended up living their lives in the United States. I believe “white” is self-explanatory, referring to characteristics associated with Americans of European descent. Where these definitions fall short, the practicality of the terms, “black” and “white”, will be discussed clearly and more expansively in later chapters.

Certain people have financially profited from the separation of black and white people. Understanding the usage of the words “black” and “white” are essential to understanding the source of what polarizes separations between people - the system discussed in detail in Chapter 3. By separation, I refer to the different roles both white and black people have played and continue to play in society, from the separate roles of masters and slaves, to the separate roles of patrons and creators of popular entertainment. The system is the source that enables certain people to profit the most from these separations by controlling, marketing, and spreading symbolic imagery and sounds. Influenced by these symbols, divided people create and consume products the system sells to turn a profit for those select few. Obviously, black people have been striving to overcome this system that has oppressed them since the first black African was enslaved in America.

I was feeling conflicted during the sounds of language and music at the BET Honors. While I enjoyed the universal message of perseverance and overcoming inherent in black music, I felt guilty and frustrated with the fact that the inspirational messages inherent in black music were not, and are not originally created with people who look like myself in mind. From my high school and college education, I knew that black people, making up the majority of the theater, originally created black music so that they can overcome the hardships created by people who look like me. The oppressor’s color is inferred by black people’s use of words like “equality”, “rising up against”. Since those words are meant for empowering black people, it can be inferred that those words are referring to a collective group of white people. And the hardest challenge as a white artist and student of “black music” is hoping that the black people do not have me in mind as being part of the collective white oppressors. Yet the subtle tensions that I have felt over the years, especially when black people are unfamiliar with me, and even after becoming familiar, they often do associate me with the white oppressive collective. When black people do not know me, I feel a lack of trust in my presence and a questioning of my relationship with black music as being equally bonding, passionate, and dedicated.

Even with my understanding of the skepticism and cynicism directed towards me from certain black artists and musicians, I remain confused as to how black people strive for this empowering “equality” while continuing to express exclusive entitlement to all things “black”, and using subtle and not so subtle divisive language and inferences. In fact, I generally find the very act of having a separate “awards show” honoring black cultural juggernauts, the act of having a separate television channel geared towards black people, the act of redefining love as “black love” to apply to our first black president, to be actions counterintuitive to uplifting black people. It is counterintuitive, counterproductive, and even hypocritical to use the same system of separation to uplift black people as was used to oppress them in the first place. Even the term African-American, despite being politically correct, serves the same purpose to separate and profit from people of African decent. A rose by any other name smells just as sweet but may sell better with a cooler brand name.

The issues behind oppressing the black community are also used to empower them. As I have noted, the emphasis of the BET awards show was on empowerment through materialism, specifically gaining financial success defined by fame, business, and politics. While there have been financially well off black people in history, such success often seemed to come at a price of sacrificing some type of freedom, whether it was agreeing to be a house slave, being taken advantage by businessmen or state officials well versed in the exclusive and circumstantial language of American law and contracts, or by doing harm to other black people through conspiracy, theft, violence or any combination of those three.

The greatest challenge in my perspective for the black community is to reconcile this preoccupation with defining success through material privilege with holding onto traditions forged in the absence of privilege that have historically defined them. While much of today’s R&B and hip-hop infused pop music glorifies materialism, it rarely offers a hopeful alternative when these material ideals are not met, besides sexual love. It’s a lot of pressure to put on anybody from any walk of life.

It is understandable that black television’s purpose is to uplift black people by addressing their separate issues in order to directly inspire the black community to take action to become as equal as white people. This desire to separately address their issues is a product of America’s history with segregation, when black people were separate and unequal, treated as second-class citizens and worse. From programming like BET, the black community can have their issues equally addressed while remaining separate, unique, and culturally independent.

What most black people fail to recognize in this logic is that being “equal but separate” in this way is just a politically twisted version of the old Jim Crow’s “separate but equal” doctrine, the difference being that unlike Jim Crow this doctrine is openly embraced by the black community. It is surprising to me that collectively black people, who historically are gifted with word play and symbolism, have not recognized this signified version of oppression. The difference is that in the past when the system focused on separating black people to profit from exploiting their inequalities (separate but “equal”), today the system focuses on “equalizing” black people to profit from their separations from other races and cultures (equal but separate). No matter what order one puts equal and separate, the word “separate” always leads to some form of oppression. It’s a change in the emphasis of language, but ultimately has the same disenfranchising affects on the community, despite the success of a few token honorees representing false hope.

However, if it were not for a black owned station, arguably black issues would get lost or pushed aside by a mainstream media primarily geared towards white people. However, remember. BET switched hands to a white owned corporate juggernaut, Viacom. And a black man sold it to them. Viacom already owns many of the media stations that promote stereotypes and symbolic images part of the system’s doctrine to profit from keeping people separate. Johnson was already having a diminishing lineup of nightly news shows in the 90’s relevant to informing black people of the issues important to them. Viacom’s takeover gave way further to producing cheap entertainment encouraging negative stereotypical black behavior and ignorance separating the black community further from empowering themselves and relating healthfully to the white community.

In a newly ideal equal world, this same awards show should be aired on any one of the public accessed television channels of NBC, ABC, CBS, or Fox, honoring the same people recognizing the contributions empowering historically oppressed black people. And there could even be an award honoring white, Latino, and other races who have helped the black community. Maybe it could be called the “Sisterhood” or “Brotherhood” award (Ruth K.) Addressing the issues of the black community is important. However, its importance is not emphasized enough to people outside the black community, specifically the white community, the people who potentially can directly change the system in order to empower black people.

It seems that BET type media become sources that subtly imply the idea that white people have everything they need and desire, everything to be successful, a type of financial success that in the past was exclusively “white”. This assumption is based on the idea that financial success guarantees a full, rewarding, and happy life. After all, financially successful white people don’t seem to have any real problems, at least compared to those of oppressed black people. I mean financially successful white people are happy living in a different world where their children play in the front yards of their houses and clap on 1 and 3 to different songs about fairy tales while they sway out of rhythm. And the parents spend their days sitting in think tanks figuring out the next steps to further take advantage and profit from black people and other minorities. And at night, they have sexual intercourse strictly in missionary position without any enjoyment or emotional expression taking pride and keeping in mind that they are financially stable and more well off than their “black” counterparts. And if you believe that one, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

Nevertheless, why would the white community want to help the black community when so many have failed to do so in the past, often from either lack of perseverance, determination and/or resources? Two less quoted excerpts of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech provide hope and reason to believe that white people as a collective group would want to support the empowerment of black people: “…Many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably linked to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.” Through King’s words, I feel justified with my love and place in creating and reacting to black music. MLK also poses the question to “devotees of civil rights”:


“When will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating ‘For Whites Only’. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” (Martin Luther King Jr.–“I Have a Dream” speech 8/28/63)

What King says here lays out in specific language how black people have been oppressed in five ways. It is important to note how oppression has changed and what has stayed the same since the time King’s speech. Of the five things, police brutality still exists towards black people as recently as the fatal shooting of non-confrontational and unarmed Oscar Grant in January 8, 2009. Secondly, black people are allowed lodging like anyone else, from what I’ve observed in most my travels with black people, a positive progression. Thirdly, a larger percentage black people from the ghetto have a hard time getting out of it, because it’s more than a place. Ghetto is a frame of mind instilled into many black youth from an early age, who find it glorified in the system’s media. Fourthly, instead of the open segregation signs “For Whites Only”, many black children are still “stripped” of their “selfhood and dignity”, because of the increased failure of the education system in poor black neighborhoods across the country. And fifthly, many black people were involved in voting recently to elect Barack Obama, a very encouraging progressive step towards self-empowerment. However, before this election, there have been numerous reports of black voting suppression in the recent elections prior to this one, most notably, the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. So while we have made significant progress, there is still a very long way to go in so far as total equality within education and financially empowering opportunities for black people.

Obviously the election of Barack Obama is also a huge step toward empowering the black community in having such a prominent black positive role model in the public eye. As observed in the Awards show and multiple conversations I’ve had with black people, his name has inspired phrases like “no excuses”, and other more famous parts of MLK’s speech “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty we are free at last!”

While Obama promises both in his choice of words and in his image to break away from the system of the past, it is still important to remember that until he signs bills into law that contain the language necessary to enforce laws and acts that will empower black people, he will be nothing more than what the media has made him to be up to this point, a symbol of hope. In fact, arguably it seems the media has used Obama, a symbolic image of an empowered black man, in order to paraphrase the famous subliminally racist phrase, “I’m not racist. Some of my best friends are black”. When people hear this statement worded this way, especially black people, many frown up on it for good reason. If people are truly your best friends, you forget what color they are, or do you? And when?

Additionally, how soon we forget that Obama almost had his “black” card revoked because he is exceptional for a black man and had access to resources most black people have not. Hence the whole “elitist charge” that occurred during the presidential race, a bold charge considering that American elitism has its roots in white supremacy. Therefore, while Obama is now the symbol of “black hope”, it is unfair to assume and imply that now everyone can be just like him and accomplish what he has, because the truth is most black people in America do not have access to the same education, health, and support systems Obama was fortunate enough to have. Today’s American youth are exposed to a different media technology, technology that has seduced its way into monopolizing play time and social time through the entertaining uncensored images and sounds of television, the Internet, and video games. This instantly gratifying technology not only feeds us images to define our world, but also affects our free will in relating to our world, not to mention leaving us less disciplined and patient when we aren’t using the technology.

Both the media, and all of the American people’s obsession with our first black president have given racist people a new excuse to hide their racism and agendas: “I’m not racist. One of my presidents is black.” The blackness of Obama has been more celebrated and discussed than his agenda, an agenda with specific actions yet to truly be revealed, actions not just to uplift black people, but the whole country from a faltering economy and horrendous foreign policy. In the same breath, it will be interesting to see if at any point, any of Obama’s future failures or mistakes in rising up to meet the overwhelming challenges of our world today will be linked to his “blackness”. However, this cloaked racism isn’t limited to “white” media. The BET Honors Awards signified a similar statement by having Joss Stone as the token white singer of the show: “We’re not racist. One of the best singers on our show is white.” Put simply, we need to get over it. We need to stop patting ourselves on the back. There are more important things to face and discuss than talking about the color of our best friends or our president. Wake up! At last, it’s not over. At last, it’s just begun.

Electing a black president and/or making black friends will not address the source of tensions that exist between black and white. The issues run much deeper. These deeper issues are alluded to in the stereotype of how white people relate to black music, that they can’t dance and have no rhythm. This simple concept, comically embraced by both groups of people, is a simultaneous projection of both guilt and entitlement. It is guilt in the form of being a peace offering of white “sensual” vulnerability in order to disarm, intimate, and distract black and poor people from the further weakening and manipulation of their “material” world. It is entitlement in the form of black people believing that they are exclusively entitled to the creative and expressive powers of “sensuality”.

Going back to the previous “dream speech” quote, White people’s freedom “is inextricably linked” to black people’s freedom. However, King does not go into detail about the specifics. Perhaps he meant for us to figure that out for ourselves, like a mysterious prophet incanting a riddle. Perhaps how our freedoms, and destinies are bound can be better understood by how they are suppressed.

Contrary what the divisive language BET like media communicates, I believe the key to truly lastingly empower black people is to help empower white people while empowering themselves. This might sound strange at first read to many people, because white people are often thought of as the ones in power. And this is true according to the way we define society today, through materialism. However, power comes in many forms as discussed in chapter 3. My impression is that Black people want the power white people have historically been entitled to, white people want the power black people have historically been entitled to. In the collective sense, black and white want different types of power.

In our society, however, black people’s desire to attain equal wealth in all physical things from necessities to material comforts to whites is much more emphasized in both history and mythology than the type of wealth white people desire, a type of wealth historically preserved and harnessed by black people. This is the wealth James Brown famously refers to as “soul power”. I refer to it as sensual wealth, access to experiences involving the senses. So while black and white people in the collective sense want and desire different empowerments, they are suppressed by the same system created by the forefathers of our country who happen to be white.

This assumption that all white people want “soul power” would imply that all white people want to dance and enjoy black music but are not allowed. Some would argue that this goes against what we have seen with record sales and concert attendance throughout the history of American music. However, the counter to that argument, one not discussed openly on Awards shows or the media in general, is that just because you were there doesn’t mean you felt it. In this case we refer to the experience of being “soulfully” wealthy.

Alternately, do white people lack the soul power and specific experience to create black music? After all, the American public has embraced many white “soulful” and “blue-eyed soul” artists of each era’s popular music, everyone from Sinatra to Elvis to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, to Eminem and Justin Timberlake. Some would argue that they seem(ed) to do just fine. Everybody loves them. Well, who is everybody? And why do they really love them? Is it the music, or is it what the music represents? Some would say they just like it. It’s exciting music - sexy, rebellious, heart felt. It might remind them of hanging out with friends during their youth. Or the rhythm is so infectious and fun. Or that music reminds them of how they loved to hate their parents and their music. Or the music inspired them to get things they didn’t have. Or it nostalgically reminds them of what they used to enjoy wanting and helped them pine for things lost or were unattainable. Consider the source.

Music is indeed universal and speaks to everyone. However in my experience, white and black people relate to music differently. Turn on the television of Obama’s inauguration and watch the faces of black and white people listening to Aretha Franklin singing “America the Beautiful” before his swearing in. Sure everyone smiles, but they all smile differently. In most of the black people’s eyes even though they’re smiling, there’s a release of sadness, an urgency to embrace a fragile and rare moment. Look at the white people’s faces, they’re smiling but their smiles and eyes look at best inspired by a passionate sentimentality, and at worst a forced obligatorily polite stiffness. Feeling music can never be faked in responding or creating it, though faked feelings never kept music from being sold that’s for sure. Lasting music has honest feelings within it, regardless of who creates it. A question to ask is if music is new. By “new” I do not mean is it the most current. More I refer to, if it has been done before. Rather is this new music “old”? And if it is, is it older than we realize? Is this new music and art innovative? Or is copied from somewhere else? Does it matter? People enjoy it. However, if it copied and it did come from somewhere else, how did the original differ from the copy, even if the copy was brilliant, and expressive, and many enjoyed it? What was the original like? And why do we not hear about the original more than the copy? It’s the nature of the business many say. But what does it matter? People drink, dance, and have a good time. What does it matter?

It matters because I believe many of our identities with which we are familiar, influenced by our popular music, are hoaxes disconnected from our true history not just as Americans but also as humans. To question the origin of how and why we relate to music and art in America gives insight to the more existential questions of our origins, especially in how these questions relate to the current global view of hard sciences, religion, race, culture, politics, and the economy. Looking at how we relate to music offers a pure and untouched path to access the source so we can find answers to these questions. The reason why this path is so pure and untouched is because people have been often too fearful to go down this road, afraid of losing an identity that music directly anchors.

It matters to me because I am a professional musician and dancer who on a daily and nightly basis faces the biggest assumption in American society that white people can’t dance and have no rhythm, especially heterosexual white men. It is because I happen to be white and straight that people are surprised, skeptical, and curious when I not only play music but dance so passionately and shamelessly in ways usually associated with black people, gay men, straight women, and/or all the above. It is because of this assumption and stereotype that I have questioned my own existence, often in the past chastising myself, doubting not only that I may be an exception in society but also just how exceptional I might be.

There is always the question of choice, the question of whether our identity is a result of nature versus nurture, destiny versus chaos, god versus the devil, matter versus magic. I have obviously chosen this path of life as an entertainer, one expressed primarily through black music. In the same way that I believe I chose this path in life, some could argue, including myself at times, that this path chose me. In the union between my choice and myself, I have had to weather many storms of doubt, scrutiny, neglect, not to mention inconsistent cash flow and loneliness by not following an easier path that could have more easily provided companionship, affirmation, or a steady paycheck.

Aside from an attempt to deconstruct a white supremacist system, I write this book because I am fed up with being so exceptional and unique. I am fed up with my exception being received and marketed as eccentric. As a result, I search for the sources of the perspectives that observe me. Whether agreeable or not, by exploring these sources new insight can be shed on a white perspective rarely discussed.

It seems that most of society is content not only with accepting the idea that people of different cultures dance differently, but that people of different skin color and hair texture also “just dance differently”. When I have broached this subject in conversation, many people I know often try to politically correctly justify these assumptions by conjuring images of “Lord of Dance” and rigid postures, compared with the pelvic, grounded, and dynamic rhythmic expression of limbs found in African dance. However, if American popular music, dance music, were being played in a club, I believe Michael Flatley doing an Irish step would look more out of place than an African Bushman doing a ring Hadzabe dance. This is one extreme example that tries to explain that white and black people dance differently. The first farcical inference is that all white people have Irish blood when in fact there is cultural and expressive diversity across Europe, and black people have African blood when in fact there are many differently expressive cultures that make up Africa. However because of our limited pop cultural history of black and white people, we are expected to accordingly dance differently.

Before continuing to consider the source of tensions between black and white, a moment needs to be taken to recognize people of different races that come together to become lovers, couples, and close friends, not just awkward acquaintances, or superficial business associates. These are people who see a beautiful part of themselves in another person despite having beauties most of society strictly defines as homogenous hair and skin color. These are people that often blaze a more challenging trail in the eyes of popular society, one with less bumps in the road than in the past depending on where they live, but a trail with issues often not dealt within relationships of the same race. Hence someone with a “black” experience finds universal common bonds with someone with a “white” experience, and vice versa, because these people believe that at the end of the day, we all just have experiences, experiences that are defined by so much more than just skin color and hair texture. In fact, not only should today’s multiracial couples, friends, and lovers be recognized and applauded, but the friends and family who support such unions should be commended for being higher thinking, higher feeling individuals not bogged down in the quagmire of culturally classified entitlement, and open to the realization that empowerment and love transcend shapes, sizes, and colors.

The earlier healthy relationships are started in life, the better chance similar ones will develop and continue throughout an individual’s lifetime. These relationships are the first ones between children and their parents/guardians, their peers, and the relationships with other sources that inform, from schooling to recreational activities. Like Judith Jamison noted during the BET Honors, music and art is vital for encouraging these interpersonal relationships, relationships that can empower the world harmoniously and peacefully through expressions that lead to innovations. Ultimately, all expressions and innovations in any aspect of life lead to self-discovery. The heart of the issue is how much freedom people feel they have to discover themselves, freedom to discover their identity along the light spectrum of black and white. Henceforth, through art and music we can tap into our necessary inherent abilities to create all things and become sources ourselves. More than ever today, there is a need to create a new system to encourage and foster the growth of freedom and universal empowerment. For through universal empowerment, we can overcome the global crises that face the world today, crises that while in the past have affected mainly a select majority of the people of the world (“non-white” and poor people), will affect even the minorities (“white” and rich people).

The sources of my research include authors from various fields of study, some of which include music history, psychiatry, genetics, American history, anthropology, theology and even Egyptology. Concepts from these authors will be used to support how our American music and other aspects in society are used to symbolize divisive entitlement. The importance that these concepts come from different walks of life cannot be stressed enough.

While it is essential to address the separate issues of each group of people, especially the oppressed, it is as important these issues are communicated across color lines and cultures. Additionally, extreme views as well as moderate views need to be included for discussion on the various divisive issues of religion, race, culture and science in order to observe clearly how and when disagreements arise, fade, and are ignored. A discussion restricted to moderate views on integration is hypocritical to holding a truly open and communicative forum without including more extreme views on separatism and segregation. Since so many moderate and extreme views have been discussed in separate contexts, the theories presented in this book attempts to be in the middle ground between political correctness and radicalism.

It is only through an open and respectful dialogue of all these perspectives can we stimulate thought, and then make and take the necessary actions to change a limiting system. This concept is based on the concept Rue refers to as “pro-social self esteem”, the concept that when you help someone less fortunate than yourself in some respect, that you help yourself, often known as the Golden Rule. The key then is to find out how we are strong and weak in different ways, and exchanging our strengths as commodities. Most notable between black and white, these commodities are our different knowledge in acquiring material, sensual, and ideological power.

The poet/post-trauma specialist Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run With The Wolves, believes that “both assimilation and holding to ethnic traditions are the ways to contribute to creative culture and to a soul-based civility”. However, while the individual should have every right to hold onto their traditions, it should be made clear that this right in the pro-social self esteem cause, should not prevent others from adopting or assimilating parts of culture specific traditions as their own. Throughout history this has happened anyway in all forms of culture from science to art. However, how these forms have profited materialistically certain people is with what most people take issue.

The sources that influenced the exercises described in Part III are the great pianist Kenny Werner’s “Effortless Mastery” and the actor Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed”. The difference between my exercises and theirs however is that they directly engage the issue of race and consider the mindset of the oppressor by directly confronting what it means to be white. Thusly, being white can be better understood and the oppressive roles can be changed to allow the ultimate greater universal need for broader expression and creation, often thought as entitled only to “non-white” people. Eventually the oppressor is the oppressed and therefore as white people, and popularly known, rightfully so, as the oppressors, we need to empower ourselves in fully discovering how the system that defines our color and the ways it limits our expression and in turn oppresses us. Let us take one step at a time at the mercy and understanding of all our peers, especially people of color, because as MLK states – “We cannot walk alone”.

Two of the more “extreme” sources used for writing of this book that seemed to be more geared towards black readers are The Isis Papers by Dr. Frances Welsing and The Destruction of Black Civilization by Chancellor Williams. Interestingly, both authors sustain a tone that downplays the importance of informing white people of their research and discoveries, which generally seem common to many black authors who write about race. Welsing is particularly offensive towards white males and their role in white supremacy. However, considering who she is and the history of racism in this country affecting black people and her world, her opinions are understandable and her theories about how white men are inferior would be justified if they were not so blinded by pseudo scientific rage. On one hand, both authors correctly emphasize that the key to black empowerment is to inform black and “non-white” people of their rich history and inherent entitlement to healthy lifestyles, education, and general well being, often which has been prevented from their access to material things. As Williams aptly notes:

“In short, certain conditions in a country can bring about that internal peace, stability, and confidence which unshackle the mind. There is now time to think. No more trekking with bleeding feet for hundreds of miles across rocky deserts. No more seeing your kinsmen fall out to welcome death along the way. A home at last, better farms, plenty of food. And now…time to think”

However, both Williams and Welling sustain a tone of separation calling for justice without considering how such “justice” would directly affect all white people, the ones they group together as part of a larger white supremacist collective. As Welsing points out, if a person does not question the system, then they are a part of it.

Unfortunately, the connection many black authors fail to make is that not every white person can question their environment the way black people do.  The same environment that oppresses black and oppressed people, tranquilizes white people with the sense of gradualism MLK refers to in his Dream Speech through keeping them comfortable in their physical life and preoccupied mentally with the same symbols representing their entitlement to material success, the same symbols that represent disenfranchisement to black people. As a result, many white people are kept in the dark and ignorant. They often become insensitive to the ways they are responsible for perpetuating a system that oppresses blacks and people of color. For any true revolution to be lasting and work, one has to figure out how to separate the viral forces of oppression from the bodies and minds they inhabit. This way, those that can be saved, will not be lost to a life of social imprisonment, guilt, and worse hoping for yet another revolution to overthrow the next world order. However, the cosmic powers of music, and art are the same powers that Welsing refers to for those who “will work for justice”:
“There are no class divisions nor language barriers for those who do this cosmic work. It is time to solve this problem once and for all. It is time for justice on the planet Earth”.

Interestingly, what neither Williams or Welsing explain, despite their invaluable perspectives and research, is the phenomenon when black and white people relate and unite with each other by free will and love, even despite all circumstances to keep them separate by both black and white separatists. Instead, they often emphasize how white people have historically mixed and procreated with black people through force and raping. Additionally, Williams and Welling fail to note how white people came to exist, Williams describing them as the first Asiatic people that simply came from the Iberian Peninsula and Welsing describing them as being the first albinos born from black Africans. This is where geneticists like Wells and Wade can contribute. However, Wells doesn’t attempt to make a bigger picture of how the role of “race” plays into both the history of man, or addressing the significance of these timely genetic “variations” greatly affected culture, a perspective perhaps blinded by his own whiteness.

So far it seems that these lack of explanations come from the remaining mystery that we still do not know how certain differences in DNA are responsible for decoding specific appearances. For example, Dr. Welsing contends that white supremacy stems from the traumatic event when white people were the first albinos born from black people in Africa, insecure with their inferior genes. However science proves that white people do produce melanin just smaller amounts of it that’s why they become tan in the sun while albinos’ burn. Additionally, albinism exists in all “races” of people, and geneticists recently discovered that the gene that codes for albinism exists on a different chromosome from that which codes for the “pigment differences between Africans, Europeans, and South Asians” (National Institute of Health – 2/29/08). So while some parts of human history have been decoded thanks to the what the historians, sociologists and psychologists discover and theorize, other parts of our history will remain a mystery until more DNA research is done. This research should ideally involve people of all walks of life, skin colors, and hair texture so that a unified interpretation can exist. And this brings to mind a personal observation. Are there any black evolutionary biologists and/or Darwinists? I’ve never seen or heard of any in published articles or television. Physicists and astronomers yes but evolutionary biologists and archaeologists, those that directly interpret human history, no.

Scientists try to explain our superficial physical differences and characteristics through environmental explanations and theories. Historians try to explain our superficial cultural differences in the same way. Psychiatrists try to explain our perspectives on these differences using theories on mental patterns to justify Darwinist principals of survival. Religious people try to explain our perspective to explain both these physical and cultural differences using supernatural and cosmic reasons. Religion’s greatest value is in attempting to explain the phenomenon that cannot be explained scientifically or by known historical record. Rue effectively notes the different types of mental constructs inherent in man’s religious writings that dictate and attempt to control human behavior. However, Rue also does not make the general connection between these constructs and how these cultural religious constructs relate to race. In today’s system, we are divided by race, culture, science, and religion, and only a select few profit enormously from the tensions created by these separate classifications resulting in a constant need for new language and symbols to understand these divisions. And who controls the language? Those that control education of language and visual symbols make the laws that dictate our physical environment.

Inspired by Dr. Welsing’s “Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)”, this book attempts to weave together a wide range of sources in order to create a “unified field theory” about the issues that divide our society starting with black and white. The most major difference between our white supremacy theories is that her explanation of on the “abnormal” and “inferior” white male’s insecurities is from her perspective as a black woman polarized by a system that oppresses and destroys her people. My “Uncle Tim’s Condo” theory offers an explanation for these insecurities straight from the horse’s mouth, as a securely insecure white male. Despite our differences, Dr. Welsing offers skeptical hope to potential dialogue and reconciliation that I propose throughout this book:

White peoples of the world presumably also could benefit from such an awareness of the motivation behind behaviors that often baffle them. If they are sincere in their attempts to stop the practices of white supremacy (racism), whites may be able to find methods to do so once the cause is understood. Perhaps some psychiatrist will develop a method of mass psychotherapy (i.e. therapeutic counter-racist theater) to help whites become comfortable with their color and their numbers. However, one can foresee a major problem arising from the possible difficulty of motivating whites to release the secondary gains historically derived from the racist system. (P.13)

The most significant term in the whole paragraph, in my opinion, is “therapeutic counter-racist theater” and ironically it is in parentheses. Perhaps not psychiatrists, but artists will come up with a “mass psychotherapy” to come to terms with race and other divisive ones that foster oppression like religion, sexuality, class, etc. through theater AND art and music as well. Perhaps participation and education in new types of theater, art and music could empower people of all colors (including white), hair textures and other categories. Perhaps through expressive forums in theater, music, and art, there can be recognition and reconciliation of past wrongs and injustices. However, especially when it comes to music, the issues of “black and white” need to be aired out and released in order to make this “theater” truly progressive and constructive.

This skeptic hope can become the source that creates a new system not only based on materialism, but emotional content, expression, and creativity, based on the convergence of both the natural physical world and the cosmic and unexplained, a convergence of critical thinking education with the critical feeling education. They go hand in hand. We all must go back to our roots. So I ask the readers when reading this book to do what I suggest in the beginning of this introduction - consider the source. Consider the source of all things human. To facilitate this would be to consider how the human race is defined. According to the hard science that has made our modern technological world possible, Homo-Sapiens or modern humans came from Africa. Consequently, it we behoove us in our society to consider how we know what we know of African history, who interprets it, who controls the distribution of the recordings of these various interpretations. This information is vital to understand how our society’s language defines black and white, “African-American” being regularly interchangeable and substituted for “black” while “European-American” or “Caucasian” less popularly substituted for “white”. As we consider these factors throughout the book, what will emerge is a systemic pattern in our society of polarized language that symbolizes entitlement visually when written and aurally when spoken. Time to change the dialogue.

Let’s go down this road together. You are about to go down the rabbit hole, drink the potion Alice drank, and take a bite of Eve’s apple. You are about to lose your innocence so that you will no longer have the excuse of being ignorant. This is your duty if you want to help save the world, especially if you are an artist reading this. And in the most creative sense, we are all artists, creating things all the time.