Yeah, to be very clear, I don't accept it either. In fact, as you say, it's demonstrably wrong. But I very often see it held up both by black people and white people in the way they talk about "blackness".

And while I agree that jazz, blues, hip hop, on and on, are part of something you could reasonably describe as a black cultural tradition or perhaps history, I think of them more as contributions to American (and world) culture made by black people. As are many other forms of art, food, linguistics etc.

They're beautiful and important, but I don't feel that I own them because I'm black. Just as I don't feel distanced from contributions made by white or Asian people because I'm black. And if a black person doesn't like Motown or blaxploitation movies or curried goat, I don't think they're any less "authentic."

This is really what I'm trying to say in the article. The notion of "blackness" shouldn't push black people towards a particular thing or away from a different thing. A black person who listens to nothing but Vivaldi is exactly as black as a black person who listens to nothing but KRS-One. There is "many" within that collective known as black people too.

It's a bit of an aside, but this is my problem with the idea of cultural appropriation. The idea that we own something or are forever tied to it because somebody of the same skin colour, tens or hundreds of years ago, was the first to do it is so reductive.