Daily Inspiration Quote by Katherine Dunham

It reads like a polite shrug, but it’s really a turf line drawn in lipstick and steel. Katherine Dunham’s “I don’t think Ed Sullivan had anything to do with Carib Song” is less about Ed Sullivan the man than about what he represents: the mid-century gatekeeper whose Sunday-night stage could anoint (and sanitize) Black and diasporic performance for mainstream America. Dunham, a dancer and choreographer who fused ethnographic research with theatrical brilliance, is refusing the common cultural rewrite where a powerful white platform becomes the story, and the Black artist becomes a beneficiary instead of an author.

The phrasing matters. “I don’t think” softens the blow just enough to stay broadcast-friendly, while “had anything to do with” is totalizing: not “much,” not “very little,” but nothing. It’s an understated takedown of how credit travels in American entertainment, sliding uphill toward the most visible institution. In that ecosystem, a show like Sullivan’s could be framed as the engine of success, while works rooted in Caribbean traditions get treated as novelty content delivered by television’s benevolence.

“Carib Song” itself points to Dunham’s deeper project: moving Afro-Caribbean movement and music from the margins to the center without stripping it of its complexity. The subtext is protection as much as pride. Dunham is guarding the lineage, the labor, and the cultural ownership of her work against the easy myth that exposure equals origin. It’s a reminder that platforms don’t create art; they profit from being near it.