in response to one of the original questions, it's been hip to "be black" for about 10 years now in the city i grew up in of about 350,000.

it's been cool to "be black" in the city i'm in now for about a year and a half, (this is a small college town) which i attribute primarily to the Renaissance Society, an hip-hop/jazz/spoken word artistic movement the has been very active in the area.

The band itself has since broken up, but spin-off projects have spawned a decent amount of urban and hip-hop activity in an otherwise dead-end town of about 20,000



As far as the broad topic, i got in a conversation about "white bustaz" the other day--cats who have a distinct and different presentation of the self when around their melanin-blessed friends.

It's a curios phenomenon, but we all act different for different audiences. We've all been posers about something at one time or another, too.

it's mostly funny and/or annoying because of the socio-political impacts of melanin, ethnicity and race in the US.

otherwise we'd probably just laugh