Peter Harzem wrote:

>I have been reading this exchange with some disappointment in myself,
>and in our times.  I wanted to write 'what does your color have to do
>with loving classical music?' And I was saddened by realizing that I, and
>I am sure everyone else, readily knew the reasons for the 'I am black and
>I love...' statement.  The day we can genuinely ask that question, and not
>just rhetorically, will be the day when we will have taken one more step on
>the long journey towards becoming civilized.

There's a story told about the San Francisco Symphony's coast-to-coast
tour by bus and truck sometime in the late 1940s, back in the [bad? worse
at least] old days of Jim Crow.  The busses pulled over to a roadside diner
for a meal stop, and the car with Pierre Monteux and his wife also pulled
over.  The Monteux party was the last in and they took the only free seats,
in a booth in a distant corner of the establishment.  The waitress came
over and said "You can't sit there, those are for colored people only", to
which Monteux replied "But we ARE colored, my dear, we are colored PINK."

Irrelevant to the real tragedy of the situation, but still....

Inclusively yours,

Joel Lazar
Bethesda MD