Introduction

“Uncle Tim” is the stereotypical white person who dances badly. Uncle Tim is found all over popular culture when white people humorously dance out of rhythm, sing out of tune, or act awkwardly out of touch when expressing themselves to popular music, especially within ethnic and multicultural settings. There are countless times the “Tim” stereotype is seen in movies, television, the Internet, and real time social rituals. Four of the more recent Uncle Tim’s in popular culture are the character Napoleon Dynamite from the movie of the same name, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan in the movie “A Night at the Roxbury”, Kevin James in the movie “Hitch”, and the Internet Youtube sensation “The Evolution of Dance” guy. This archetype is also seen in television commercials when white, business, straight laced-looking people stiffly and humorously sing, rap, or riff music and lyrics associated with disenfranchised African American “ghetto” and “thug” life. At weddings and parties mostly attended by white people who embrace this stereotype, “Uncle Tim” dances include the “lawnmower”, “the sprinkler”, “fishing pole”, and “ the shopping cart”. What unites all of these Uncle Tim performances and expressions is that they are often regarded as funny, humorous, and entertaining. Rarely, however, do people ask why. With further examination, the Uncle Tim archetype will reveal what drives the power structure in American society along with the actions to change it.

Uncle Tim is a sellout because his actions demonstrate a soulful deficiency, a lack of being fully in touch with the body and senses especially when it comes to feeling rhythm. This stereotypical soulful deficiency is most often accompanied with a stereotypical endowment to material privilege associated with being white. Through purposefully funny, bad dancing and its related actions Tims have literally sold their “soul” to justify and rationalize their place in society as financial and material elites.

Soul, in this case, is the ability to deeply express feelings with passion, urgency and integrity. While some of the previously mentioned Uncle Tim examples at best appear to be urgent and passionate, what they lack are the integrity of a full range of feelings, often being farcical caricatures instead, and the integrity of rhythm, often awkwardly moving out of sync with the beat of the music and/or environment. This ability to feel and express feeling, to be soulful, is at the root of society’s other definitions of “soul”, from being a divine moral spirit separate from our bodies to being associated with African Americans and their culture. By “sambo-izing” and “otherizing” African Americans and other minorities, Uncle Tims have sold their own soul, and their ability to fully express themselves beyond being comic caricatures of their minority counterparts.

The Tim’s actions demonstrate impotence to be “soulful”, to seriously, dynamically, and passionately express himself through his body. As a result, the Tim’s actions are useful to subliminally explain why white people have ended up owning a disproportionate amount of monetary wealth compared to minorities in this country – because white people need to compensate for having less soul. Beware of “geeks” bearing gifts, or in this case, Tims bearing gifts of comic relief.

Being an entertainer for 30 years of my life, and a full time freelance trombonist/dancer for the last 10 years in NYC, I have witnessed the Tim archetype firsthand. Also, I have witnessed music’s power to bring people together and reveal how they relate to their world, not to mention music’s power to affect that relationship. The story of Uncle Tim is a very personal one for me because I have made my living primarily performing R&B, jazz, funk, and hip-hop, what many consider “black music” as a white male who does not dress in b-boy fashion or speak with a regular hip-hop dialect. I am not the first to “cross over” this way but have somewhat of a unique experience being a musician and dancer within this context.

I believe the specific issues I have observed during this experience have never really been candidly discussed either in the educational institutions I’ve attended or even most professional ones I’ve been a part of. This candid dialogue is missing perhaps because many of these institutions’ very existence depend on the dialogue’s absence, all the while claiming to be “politically correct”. When a true national dialogue exists, after an initially long and necessary uncomfortable confrontation with our individual fears and insecurities I believe that the majority of the people today who feel disenfranchised and/or unfulfilled can, despite their divisions, become united, empowered, and fulfilled beyond their wildest dreams.

To facilitate a candid dialogue, this book is broken down into three parts based on my personal experience and basic research on history, science, religion, anthropology, and of course music. The focus of Part 1 will be on the role of race in music and how it reveals a greater pattern of division inherent in our society’s power structure. Music, as it is often said, reflects its society. The issue of race is vital to understand not only how the seeds of American pop music were sown, but also how the power structure in America was founded. The way race relates to popular music will be used as a primer to decode the ways origin, entitlement, and interdependence relate to the structure of power in society.

Part 2 focuses on the importance of knowing one’s own life story, recording it, and expressing it. Before the power structure can be changed, people of different backgrounds must meet at a bargaining table and know their own life stories while considering the sources that provide the histories of the groups with which they identify. To discuss achieving our various goals and desires, we must know what we want, what we already have, and what we can share. A universal method to tell these life stories is explained for facilitating effective cross-divisional dialogue. As an example, I share my own life story using this universal method. This universal method is also helpful for acquiring enough confidence and self-awareness to express oneself within any context whether musical or otherwise.

Part 3 is a self-help section that lays out specifically how those associated with being white can overcome the habits of playing the Tim both in music and society. Additionally, it will be shown how the expression of soul relates to a concept in physics called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. All of these points will support why it is essential to incorporate more music and art in education for our children and for each other as adults, along with empowering groups who have historically given the most to society and received the least, the African American community in particular among others. Along with education, incorporating more diverse music and art in community events that includes more cultures and more participation will stimulate thought, innovation, and cooperation between people, so that we all individually can truly develop “personal fulfillment within social coherence”.

I write this book for the purpose of deconstructing what many refer to as a white male supremacist system so that a new one can be formed in its place. While I benefit materially from this system as a healthy, white heterosexual male, I often feel a deep sense of conflict playing and dancing to my favorite “old school R&B/soul” and its derivatives. This conflict is felt most often when people compliment me. It often comes to my attention that they are not just impressed with my talent, but their lowered expectations of me being “white” performing within the context of “black music”, often following each compliment with the qualifier “for a white guy”. Ironically, I would say most times that particular statement comes from white people themselves.

While I believe it necessary to give back to the black community from which so much of my artistic identity has originated, my motivation for this book is not all altruistic. Ultimately, I no longer want to rely on lowered expectations for my performances to be received well, or be fooled into believing I’m better than I am when put up against and compared with people of different races, experiences, or other categories. It does not feel good to discover personal delusions of grandeur. But what is worse is to perpetuate the context that enables these delusions to continue. I love music too much and have too much respect for the past and present masters who create it. And if I wish to someday become a master myself, I need to discover and embrace this truth, while studying and practicing my arts with selfless and passionate enthusiasm. There are definite elements of joy and levity to my performance. It would be nice, however, if every time I danced, people would not think it was a joke or I was trying to be funny and ironic.

This is not a book that argues that all black people have rhythm while white people do not. It does argue that talent is more equally distributed within and across groups than we seem to collectively believe or recognize in this society, that there are many more white people who have rhythm as there are people of color who have the intelligence and skills to achieve in business and science. However, while there are more “hoods” making it in the boardroom there needs to be more “suits” making it in the hood or else everything will be sold out and off until there’s nothing left.

The more common the Uncle Tim has become in society, the more we find ourselves, people of all races and other divisions, in a precarious situation of a rapidly changing world. The Tim archetype has enabled base assumptions we have about groups to which each of us belong, assumptions that for many override and sublimate individual gifts and talents. People who rigidly define themselves by groups often do not realize their full potential because of their encouraged base assumptions about their groups’ identities. The result is a society of isolated, lonely, unfulfilled people who turn to various coping mechanisms to address their symptoms without treating the root of the problem – not answering our individual call to develop our gifts and fulfill our dreams. Part 1 offers theories about from where these divisions originated and how they have even partly led to the sad state of today’s music industry.

The solutions to these problems, as discussed in Part II and III, are not to get rid of technology and other advancements, but to reintroduce what unites all of us - our souls and ways to express them. Soulful expression is not intuitive for everyone within every medium. Often soul is neglected in order to get certain tasks “done”. In order to get in touch with our souls again or for the first time for some of us, we must have discipline to learn how. We must encourage the desire to even have that discipline, a tough sell indeed within an increasingly global and (for many) instantly gratifying society. When the comedian Louis CK on October 2, 2008 taping of the Conan Obrien Show said, “Everything is amazing right now, and nobody is happy”, he was addressing this very phenomenon of how our society has become spoiled by such instantly gratifying technology. Perhaps if people in society were more in touch with their souls, they would be more appreciative and possibly even happier.

I’ve heard many people say you need to be hungry to be soulful, have a story to tell, have experienced pain and suffering to inspire feeling in other people or sympathize with them. Of any of these feelings, I believe one needs to have urgency, to feel urgency in order to be successfully expressive and soulful. This applies to music, as it does to any other achievement or form of expression. Talent may not be universal, but the need to express along with the desire to fulfill individual potential is. To foster our individual gifts across the divisions that separate us is key to reversing so much of the damage stereotypical Uncle Tims in power have done to our society and the world.

The alternative for not addressing what the Tim represents will be to witness an increasing disconnect between each other along with the environment that fortifies us, which will ultimately lead to the doomsday situation often mentioned in the news, movies, and documentaries on “end of days” prophecies, some of which are already happening. I believe the Uncle Tim would rather materially profit from the discussion of the end of the world than actually taking the necessary actions to stop or deal with it. In order to deal with all of our problems today, we all need to come together to find our solutions. I believe art and music are key for facilitating this dialogue and for developing the critical thinking and discipline to come up with the solutions.

Discussed in this book, the power structure in our society is based on four principles:

1. Every human life breaks down into three types of experiences - material (money and physical possessions), sensual (life events processed by the senses) and ideological (faith in authority influenced by family, religion, government, and personal relationships).

2. A person needs a large enough amount of all three experiences in order to be healthy and peaceful.

3. Within today’s society, a dominant system encourages people to relate to groups defined by a refined polarity, having qualities that are in direct opposition to another group. While some dualistic properties in society are essential with which to identify in order to function like gender (male/female) and directions (right/left etc.), this system artificially introduces polar groups that are not as constructively necessary like liberal versus conservative in politics, black versus white in race, and even some gender roles.

4. This system then encourages different unbalanced amounts of the three experiences between these different groups in order to financially profit from the resulting tensions of anxiety through the sale of coping and survival mechanisms.

The ones with the most power in society are those that financially profit the most from the system and, with very few exceptions, contribute to its perpetuity. It can then be said (surprise, surprise) that the society’s power structure is primarily based on money, part of the category material experience. Interestingly, when one is said to have a good amount of experience, they are often said as having a “wealth” of experience. Therefore when one associates material experience of money with wealth, the value of ideological and sensual experiences respectively can also potentially be regarded as types of wealth. This is most evident when people, who start from humble beginnings, accumulate material wealth later in life through “hard work and determination” often relying on their wealth of these other experiences. Undoubtedly each experience influences the wealth of the other two. Perhaps fully discovering this interdependent relationship will someday lead to a new economy not purely based on material wealth, but sensual and ideological as well, but that is a subject for another book. This book’s focus will stay on how these forms of “wealth” relate to our various identities using music as the litmus test.

It should be no surprise that those who financially profit the most and have the most power are often Uncle Tims. For example at various venues at which I’ve performed, the majority of rich white people I’ve seen either cannot dance or at best dance awkwardly while demonstrating the other Uncle Tim characteristics discussed in Chapter 2. These are the people responsible for the stereotype. Through their material wealth, they have the most social climbing power for setting the low standard of social dancing. Additionally, the history that led to the material privileged whiteness at a soulful expense is the same history that led to soulfully privileged minorities at a material expense.

Hence the bad dancing, arrhythmic, out of touch white person stereotype is promoted by the same system that promotes the stereotype of the physically threatening, violent, criminal black person. While the first stereotype has led to plenty of jokes at white people’s social expense, the latter arguably has led to a larger percentage of black people ending up in jail. As overstated as it may sound, both stereotypes serve their purpose for establishing power. The Tim archetype works in two ways for getting white people more material wealth. It distracts white people from having guilt for being privileged by emphasizing an “unavoidable” inherited deficiency. As a result, black people and other minorities seem more in touch with their bodies hence more passionate, potentially violent, and emotionally out of control unable to responsibly handle or control material wealth. This perception affects how law is enforced and opportunities present themselves within society. This is the game the Tim plays in society except it is not a game. Uncle Tim is less about dancing and violence as much it is about a system that enables the division in society through advertised symbolism of entitlement.

Since Uncle Tims have the most power, logic tells that Uncle Tims initially founded this system in order to “keep it in the family” so to speak. Chapters 9 - 11 discuss theories as to when the Tim created this system and sold out soul, specifically in the form of sensual wealth, which led to an amplified desire for acquiring material wealth and control over the physical environment to compensate for this loss. Besides gaining more material comfort, the Tim’s void of cultural sensuality would lead to coveting the cultures’ they oppressed seemingly “amplified” sensuality. Often substituting direct participation with voyeurism of other cultures original sensuality in art and music, Tims would eventually assimilate and water down other cultures’ art and music for their own consumption, a process observed in the evolution of today’s popular music. By the end of Part 1, we see how in addition to the oppression of other’s cultures Uncle Tim’s “selling out” ends up leading to his own sensual oppression, an example being the self hating proclamation that he can’t dance and at best is a ridiculous joke.

Confronting people’s differences is challenging. When they are discussed, they can uncomfortably divide us, often making us overlook the universal traits that empower and bind us together. It can be difficult to recognize separations without encouraging disenfranchisement but it must be possible. When these differences and separations are ignored, destructive forces stemming from them are not properly handled, and continued conflict ensues until destructive event-horizons are reached. These events in history include the cultural revolutions of the 60’s going back to the Civil War. It is not enough to say, “We’re all the same” as it is to say, “We’re all just different”. We have to do both and explore how it is relevant to our time.

One of America’s greatest rights is the freedom to congregate in groups. People find comfort in belonging to certain groups. Whether a group is a race, a culture, a gang, a click, a nation, a sect, or tribe, a group provides social stability and protection from threatening people with conflicting interests and lifestyles. Most importantly, a group gives an individual an identity, a feeling of purpose, even a special exclusivity from which springs pride and hope for being fit to survive and even thrive. Being fit to survive or thrive also often means fit enough to dominate others who threaten survival or prosperity. Division and group differentiation can also provide incentive to compete, or make progress towards achieving certain goals. However groups determine what are threats, progress, purpose and identity by how they fit within a larger system, the space in which they coexist. The perceived threat versus the practical one may differ depending on how information is exchanged.

The variety of groups and perspectives is what makes this country so great. A major drawback is when groups become so exclusive and separate (according to privilege or lack thereof), they really miss out on the enrichment of other perspectives, which potentially can provide knowledge, experience and ultimately power they never will get on their own. Another important right is the freedom of choice. We all have tastes that affect the choices we make. In one way, the intimidating number of options we see in this modern information age makes it difficult to commit to a choice and do something with it. Additionally in considering this book’s subject, not everyone within any group whatever it may be likes to dance or has a taste for music. However, what will lead to a greater country is to determine if our choices are due to free will and individual taste, or because we are swayed, influenced and governed by the groups with which we are identified or “choose” to be a part of, whether it’s a corporation, a section of inmates or a group on the dance floor.

Race is still an issue, if not one of the most important one, because it is the first characteristic noticed about someone resulting from our sense of sight, which greatly affects how we relate to one another before we even try to understand each other’s “issues”. I know I am not alone when admitting the first thing I notice about a person is their skin color (especially their face) and hair, then their gender, and then roughly in this order – what they sound like if they’re talking, how they are dressed, what their body type is, and if appropriately close enough, what they smell like and the look in their eye. Blind people probably have a different impression of race and people based on their other senses. I believe that the majority of society (with full capacity of their five senses) relies primarily on visual cues for making choices. This most likely has to do with how we originally relied on these visual cues for survival during evolution and throughout the history of civilizations. However, at this point in our human history, it seems we are manipulated by these instincts more than surviving by them.

While some argue that race is far from being the most challenging issue people face today, often citing the economy, education, health care, and the environment as more pertinent issues, 2009 has been rife with incidents where race played a big role. In the following, race played a role in how these events were interpreted in addition to the factors that led to the incidents themselves:

1. On February 19 2009, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said to the Justice Department, "On Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago…It's a question of being honest with ourselves and racial issues that divide us.”
2. On March 27 leading up to the G20 summit in London, President of Brazil Lula De Silva stated that the banking crisis “was fostered and boosted by the irrational behavior of people who were white and blue-eyed”.
3. On May 26 Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was scrutinized for her remarks in a speech she made in 2001 saying “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white man who hasn’t lived that life.”
4. On July 16, famous African-American Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for breaking into his own house, triggered a national “discussion” on racial profiling.
5. On September 9, House of Representative rules were broken for the first time when Congressman Joe Wilson used “language that is personally offensive to the President, such as referring to him as a ‘hypocrite’ or a ‘liar’” when he yelled out “You Lie” in the middle of Obama’s speech on healthcare during a joint session of congress. Many have been suspicious about the role race played in this incident considering this disrespect of the rules happened during the first term of our African American president.
6. On September 12, tennis superstar Serena Williams during the U.S. Open championship screamed at a lines official “I’m going to shove this ball down your f----- throat”, was penalized a point on match point by the chair umpire and lost the championship. Williams was fined 10K for her resulting tirade along with the possibility of being fined more. The extent of the WTA’s punishment and the amount of media attention dwarfed any punishment or attention famous blowhard John McEnroe’s received during his more threatening tantrums on the tennis court of the 80’s.
7. On September 13, a drunk Kanye West walked on stage during the Video Music Awards to interrupt country pop star’s Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video saying that Beyonce deserved the award because she had “the best video of all time.” Considering West’s past antics including accusing former President Bush for hating black people after Hurricane Katrina, one naturally can question how much his disrespect towards Swift had to do with her being white.
8. On November 30^th, Tiger Woods fall from grace as a saint of a sports figure and commercial juggernaut when crashing his car in front of his house escaping from a fight with his wife. His sexual infidelities are magnified and more romanticized by the fact that he is the only “black” person in the sport of golf, and the most dominating in the history of the sport.

symbolize. We are left harboring fears and assumptions about traits based on nonverbal visual and auditory symbols we see in American popular culture that parallel and influence the American practical culture. Whether it is President Obama’s fight for universal healthcare, the misogyny in today’s popular hip-hop videos, or the “war on terrorism” in the Middle East, race plays a role. In those mentioned examples, race is not only used as a symbol for instigating fear about who gets more money (material), but also about who has better sex (sensual), and has a more powerful god (ideological). However race is only one of many issues that influence how we interpret entitlement, not just economic entitlement but sensual entitlement, and ideological as well.

Instead of getting caught up in whether something is black or white, liberal or conservative, Afrocentric or Eurocentric, gay or straight, it would be interesting to reveal what fears these polarized labels provoke. Some personal questions to ask about people with these labels might be, “do those people want more or less sex than me and alter my sex life in the process? Will they favor lazy people like themselves versus hard working people like me? How hard do I really work compared to these “other people”? Are they trying to make another God more powerful than mine, making mine irrelevant and powerless? Will they rewrite my history? Will they abuse my body and take away my control over my environment? How much control over my environment do I really have? Will I be forced to hear them cry? Forced to stop what I’m trying to do? Forced to make myself cry? Have to take it up the ass? Catch a disease? Lose my identity? What is my identity? Will I catch their ugliness or realize how ugly I really am? Will they make me more attractive when I have enough attraction in my life?” The answers to these questions come down to how we individually relate to our three universal experiences. Instead of answering these questions this way, we often blame our fears simply on superficial observations of race, gender, nationality, sexuality, body-type, intelligence, religion and personal appetite.

So when it comes to race and entitlement, what do the colors black and white really represent? Why are they given these extreme opposite labels? Does dark black skin remind you of robust health or soiled dirt? Does pale white skin remind you of privileged purity or sickly impotence? That is the discussion missing in the dialogue today. By understanding how we feel about white and black, the polarizing labels of rich/poor, fat/skinny, gay/straight, modernist/postmodernist, or gifted/handicapped reveal that our fears has less to do with being one or the other and everything to do with how they threaten how we are entitled materially, sensually, and ideologically.

A commonly said analogy about deductive reasoning demonstrates the importance of visual cues in society - “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” The importance of analogies, as a whole, for learning is discussed further in Chapter 6. This specific analogy gives insight as to how one might create a system for controlling how people “reasonably deduce” in their environment and choose related actions. For argument’s sake, let’s extend this duck analogy. Hypothetically if something looks and quacks like a duck but runs like an ostrich then it will most likely be regarded as just a very gifted duck. Or if something looks and swims like a duck but roars like a lion it’s probably a genetically mutated duck. Lastly if it swims and quacks like a duck but looks like a rhinoceros it’s probably…wait for it…a RHINOCEROS!!…who has duck related sentiments or might even have been raised by ducks. No matter how much it swims or quacks, it’s still a Rhinoceros!

This hypothetical analogy shows how first look, using the sense of sight, establishes identity no matter how viably persuasive observations may argue the contrary such as movement and sound, or swimming and quacking in this case. This sense of sight, the first look, is how we interpret “race”, a factor that cannot help but to influence how we reasonably know who we are, who other people are, all of which directly influence how power is distributed within society. However, race is not about differentiating between different species, or passing petty judgment on those who like the taste of say grapefruit. Race is how we differentiate and judge one another based on our individual look of being human, a Homo Sapien. The “looks” of our skin color and hair texture divide us into the primary groups of identity before any secondary ones are assigned to us, such as gender, sexuality, politics, faith, etc.

Despite visual symbols being dominant, auditory symbols are highly influential as well, especially when paired with visual ones. A duck after all should “quack” like a duck. Auditory symbols in society, or “quacks”, are communicated either through verbal language or music. Many scientists have deeply explored how language and music relate to one another. To keep power consistently structured, people are encouraged to sound as much like the type of duck they look like as possible. Even when a person learns to make a different sound not associated with their birthed appearance, society dictates that they better dress and move like the people they are trying to sound like if they are to fit in. If not, the system will turn them into a demagogue, a fake, a poser, a radical or novelty until nobody takes them seriously or until they behave accordingly to keep the system running smoothly. Nothing makes the system run more smoothly than making it money, especially when it can use exceptions (or novelties) to mask the system’s broader agenda for controlling power, or in this case controlling the power of language and music within society.

In movies, television, radio, and the Internet, music is used as auditory symbols of entitlement when paired with visual images. For examples, hip-hop music in McDonalds commercials entices younger audiences to fashionably consume fast food. Deep sounding European classical strings often are used to signify suspenseful parts of movies. Notice in movies how many alternative rock themes play during superhero’s triumph, battle, or love scene, or how many European orchestral themes, or jazz crooners are in the background of commercials for posh cars, diamonds, and other material luxury. European orchestras signify sophistication. Jazz crooners signify old style of high-class tuxedo romance. Alternative Rock signifies not only that the hero will win in the face of adversity, but that the hero will be white in some way, shape, or form. Soul/Hip-hop/R&B signify either something criminal, violent in a black kind of way, an anti-authoritarian sentiment, or the nostalgia of 70’s fashion.

I find it interesting in my professional music experience that Rock/Alternative/Country/Folk is mostly considered “white” music while Soul/R&B/Hip-Hop/Dance is mostly a “black” music yet both originally came from African American culture. In other words, with few exceptions, the majority of rock bands that end up being popular today are white while the R&B/Soul/hip-hop artists are primarily black. Curiously when it comes to the exceptions, the number of white artists who cross over successfully to the black R&B/Soul/Hip-Hop/Dance genres of Pop music (Eminem, Timberlake, Aguiluera, Spears, Thicke, Bolton, Hall & Oats, Jamiroquai and the list goes on) dwarfs the number of black artists who perform in the Rock/Alternative genre (Living Colour, Lenny Kravitz, Seal, and that’s about it unless you go back decades earlier like Hendrix and Little Richard and Ray Charles with his country album). Needless to say the ways white music artists move are not as rhythmically engaging as the ways of black music artists (regardless of race) which again is very telling about how color is associated with the symbolism of sound.

This is not to say Rock does not have a black audience and Soul does not have a white one as they have audiences made up of other categories of people. Hip-hop, an evolution of Soul/R&B, would not be popular if it did not have a white audience much to some traditional hip-hoppers chagrin. Based on my observations as a musician, I would say there are more white people who love today’s hip hop/R&B today than black people who love today’s “alternative” Rock. The different rises in popularity of these different genres is a result of when in American history they were created in combination with the social dynamics stemming from our society’s power structure.

Hence, white music and black music are used to target audiences defined by class. For example, on Morning Joe on MSNBC, the music played coming in and out of commercials is 9 out of 10 times rock or folk music, music that in my experience is embraced by the majority of white people. The purpose of this music is most likely to enhance a sentimentality of a mostly white morning watching viewership to send them off into a receptive mood for the upcoming commercials for products and then brings them back humming the same tune to affect their receptivity for their skew of the current events.

Interestingly when people find an escape from a materially obsessed society by watching a popular movie, or listening to a popular song, with an “anti-establishment” sentiment, often they are still being fed subliminal encouragement for the status quo. An example is the anarchic rebellious hit movie “Fight Club” (1999). With all its social honesty, raw sensuality, violence, and anti materialistic sentiment, the main line in the movie used as the rallying cry to destroy a materially obsessed society, is the same one Uncle Tim used to create it: “We are the all singing all dancing crap of the world”. It’s a very “white” thing to say. Watching the famous movie “the Matrix” is also a fantastic substitute for actually unplugging from the system.

Some may argue that the Tim stereotype is not as controversially important or as socially urgent a subject to discuss as the historically more destructive stereotypes of oppressed groups. However, by understanding the stereotype of the oppressive class, the Uncle Tim, we just might be able to get inside “the man’s” head and understand the motivation behind what makes his system of entitlement tick. After deconstructing the Uncle Tim system to the bare bones of three types of entitlement, people from all walks of life including Uncle Tims themselves, will find everyone has something to offer and something to gain.

Many no doubt will also argue that this book is full of liberal, left wing post modernism. They will say that it preaches pluralism, multiculturalism, empowering the oppressed and minorities, Darwinism and that everything is relativistic. To an extent they would be correct. However my argument for multiculturalism is to develop cutting edge innovations in art, science, sociology, and pursue an absolute truth, both modernist goals. Multiculturalism does not have to lead to politically correct language that distorts honest dialogue and accurately recorded history.

Additionally contrary to liberal and conservative viewpoints to oppression, this book defines oppression in three ways; not just material dominance but sensual/rhythmic and ideological as well. And due to the systematically polarized world we live in, we are all oppressed to a certain degree in at least one way or another. Expanding the definition of oppression is perhaps the biggest difference between this book’s philosophy and those socio-political philosophies in the past. Lastly this book preaches the utmost importance of personal responsibility and discipline, the building blocks of all accomplishment and joy (besides good fortune), a philosophy often preached from the right wing privileged modernist perspective.

In these ways this book attempts to stimulate a new moderate dialogue. Is it a liberal (postmodernist) interpretation of conservative (modernist) values or vice versa? Alas, I have a feeling it will be regarded as a liberal interpretation because conservative (modernism) came first. Any philosophy or expression that comes first will naturally call anything that comes after it a polarized reactive interpretation. Being a newer interpretation, I will concede to the label of postmodernist liberal if the issues of “black” and “white” in music, race, and our civilization are considered in the same way of what came first.

The consensus in my academic and professional experience is that besides a European influence on tonality the defining characteristics of our popular music’s rhythm and form is rooted in the blues created by the first African slaves in America, black people who created black music. Therefore, as a white performing artist aware of this history, naturally I feel a reverence towards the people associated with originally creating this music I so adore.

Additionally because I feel so connected to this music, I feel an urgency to understand where the origins of the music being “black” and the origins of me being “white” overlap. Hence, it is inevitable I seriously consider and favor to a degree African/African-American studies and Afrocentrism in general. Nevertheless, being rationally educated, I need to consider how in some ways certain multicultural arguments are polarized reactions to a white supremacist system, that at times can be revisionist history and pseudoscientific as well. Nevertheless, there is enough accurate truthful history from multiculturalism to be considered. Many white people today are afraid to consider these interpretations because it is much easier to blame these identity threatening truths on the rage induced delusions of disenfranchised people of color.

However, besides understanding better the history of white imperialism and any associated guilt/silliness white people have engaging black music, it would behoove us as people of all walks of life to consider where the first humans originated – Africa. And in that spirit, it makes sense that “Afrocentric” sources would be more accurate in many ways because they are more likely vigilant to discovering things “black” in Africa that logically would have been destroyed or reinterpreted during “white” imperialism. Similarly, my experience as a white musician playing black music seems to result from the dynamics of a sort of similar white imperialism during the history of American popular music.

In both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Uncle Tim’s Condo there is a person and a possession. The actions it took for Uncle Tom to acquire his cabin (in the popular sense not the book sense) are similar to the actions taken by Uncle Tim to get his condo. In Uncle Tom’s cabin, there exists the warmth of a log cabin, possibly a fire, a bed, and access to food and things to be more comfortable than a typical slave. In Uncle Tim’s condo there are all kinds of sparkling dishes, counters, cushy mattresses and comforters, flat screen televisions and every other gadget and toy that gives white people more status than his neighbor. The condo is a metaphor for the suffocating power of material wealth not just in the hands of the Tim, but anyone else who ascribes to his ways. His condo provides a seductively safe place from being enriched rhythmically and soulfully as an American and unconditionally as a human being. As a result, in settling for the life inside his “condo”, he does not learn how to dance with others different from himself, nor connect to his own and others feelings, relegated to being an emotional spectator missing out on the full breadth of life.

Perhaps through a facilitated dialogue cross divisionally, the Tim can realize his full soulful, rhythmic, and sensual potential, and morph into a complete person, rather than remain a caricature of material greed. Perhaps with this new wisdom in the value of “soul”, he will open the doors of material entitlement to all people without forcing them to sell out as he did before. Let’s make a first step towards universal entitlement by taking a tour of Uncle Tim’s Condo. Make yourself at home.