"The hope is that everyone will step up to the plate and do justice to her story—for everyone’s sake."

So, Shayna. I was blown away by this essay. I liked the humor, I liked the vividness of the portrait of your night on the dance floor, and I really appreciated the analogy you developed between the rhythm of dance and the grammar of language. I think that gave you a very clear and useful way to talk about race relations (I especially like the idea that "dancing to the beat means staying on topic in conversation"). And I got your argument that we white people need to learn to respect different rules of engagement, to learn the philosophy of (black) dance. In fact, I liked your essay so much, and learned so much from it, that I distributed copies to everyone participating in my small group discussion, this summer, of Why Are All of the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? as well as to random other folks I talk to about things I think are important.

But here's the thing: I really can't dance. Um, well, I have always liked to square dance, but that pretty much says it all: I'm square. I move in straight lines. I don't have a very good sense of rhythm. My body's aging, my knees are creaking now--but I was never very agile with the moves. So that's where these questions are coming from; maybe it's a way of asking about the limits of your analogy. Or maybe it's a way of asking some bigger, deeper questions about how your argument works, how close it can get us to the peace you call for @ the end of it all.

How do people who don't know how to dance learn to dance, except by dancing badly? Are they allowed to do that, on the dance floor you've built in this essay? And what's it mean--to you, to me, to our shared project of improving race relations in this country--if you are offended by my bad dancing?

You said, 'once the white people took it, it was no longer mine and I no longer wanted it....Seeing this white girl take the step that I was doing, messing it up, and showing it to her friend like she invented it, is like a person taking an artifact because it was “cute” or “cool” that was originally used for blessing a child and putting it on a mantel to show all their friends. It no longer serves it original purpose, it no longer means the same thing in that new context. When a person, who views the artifact as sacred, sees its new use, they may feel gravely offended and even disown that artifact because it was now defiled.'

The word that jumps out @ me here is "sacred." What I'm asking about here is the sacredness of your dancing, and your prohibition against my taking it and using it differently, profaning it. I'm wondering about the wisdom of marking off anything as sacred, if that means beyond question, beyond alteration. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "Nothing is @ last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." I'm not sure I'd even mark off that territory.

You talk later about internalizing black culture, making it sacred inside yourself. But you take a different stand when you talk about whiteness: "it may seem horrific or like a tragedy to speak of dismantling what they have held so very sacred." I don't think it is a tragedy--I think it's a necessity, if we are going to learn to dance together. Nothing gets to be sacred, nothing off limits.

Every fall, when Paul G. and I teach our Storytelling CSem, we ask the first-year students to read, think about and respond to a statement from the first chapter of Daniel Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life:

"There is no future in a sacred myth. Why not? Because of our curiosity. Because...we want to know why....we will never outgrow the question. Whatever we hold precious, we cannot protect it.... The idea that we might preserve meaning...is pessimistic..."

Thanks for unsettling a couple of my sacred myths. And here's to further unsettling, a few more new moves.

Anne