So here we were, not slaves but indentured servants for the evening; this time we'd been sold for $15 an hour, and once again the Makulu big baaas was getting off cheap.

The party got under way. Each table had been given the name of an African country, and I was assigned Ghana and Mozambique. Ironically, or maybe not, depending on whose side of the fence you sit on, the all-white band was playing world music.

So here I was wandering through this palatial spread with all of these so-called old money pricks, serving hors d'oeuvres on these silly, tacky, phony, ugly, silver trays, with the so-called elite of East Coast society. Everyone looked as though they were between the ages of 45 and 70, and, following the theme of our sacred white mother, each guest was arrayed in his best safari outfit from Abercrombie & Fitch or Field & Stream or wherever these people shopped. The house was full of skins of every animal on the endangered species list: zebras, cheetahs, tigers, leopards, gazelles, water buffalo. And walking around with the food, of course, were representatives of the most endangered species of them all, the black homo sapien male, aged 14 to 40, who've mainly all been put in wildlife reserves

Yes, the best kind of species is the one you can tame.

As I walked around and looked at these people who obviously shot their game from air- conditioned buses, the words of Malcolm started to waft through my head: "There were the house Negroes and the field Negroes." And I started to wonder, Which one am I? When I first heard that quote I thought, I don't want to be a house Negro, that isn't radical enough, it's not grassroots enough; but field Negro, yeah, that's who understands what the real struggle is, the real suffering. It turns out it doesn't matter, though: in-house or out-house, a slave is a slave. I was observing this group of upstanding, righteous-religious folk parade around in their costumes, and I was here to fulfill a fantasy. After all, if you can't bring the party to Africa, bring Africa to the party.