As usual, I am a bit slow and the conversation has progressed, but even so:
I was halfway feeling, or at least understanding, Leeway's critique of Karl's original post. But the most recent elaboration squared me fully with what Karl is intending to get at and I'm on board. Without sounding too blunt about it, I think Tony is being overly reactionary. I don't think Karl is arguing what you think he is, or with the force you're implying. I don't see the ethos of "white victimization" anywhere in that post that puts it on par with the "Crow-Jim"/Stan Kenton pity party of the 50s. The point he's making-- and Bill Dixon is a perfect locus-- is that critics, the vast majority of them white, have (as per usual) constructed an absolutist, essentialist narrative that paints black and white over gray. I get that this is touchy, uncomfortable territory, but no less than Dixon and Anthony Braxton have spoken at great length about this, and both have been truly victimized by these narratives. Both have different artistic as well as tempermental orientations, but Braxton has said outright that the important contributions of white musicians like Marsh and Giuffre were under-recognized, and that history was in effect distorted. It is, of course, very easy to backslide into a less-nuanced interpretation that comes closer to what Leeway is seeing, but I don't get that at all from what Karl wrote. But they very fact that these things happened is worth noting. And I don't think this has to take away from the incredibly real strain of Black Arts that runs through the 1960s NYC avant garde scene. But we have to make something of Paul Bley, Burton Greene, Joseph Scianni, David Izenon, Paul Motian, Michael Mantler, Barry Altschul, Steve Lacy, et al. Tony accuses Karl of trying to apply "white-out", but that suggests erasing Black artists in favor of white, putting the onus of innovation on white players rather than Black. This is not the same as simply taking them into account. We have to pay heed to Bill Dixon and Anthony Braxton on this point.
In sum, I think the problem being addressed is, in the end, a typical and predictable failure by critics to give due dilligence to the full story, which is always complex, in favor of a simpler suggestion. This is, as far as I can tell, the thrust of what Karl is getting at. Once we stray from this path and get to the personal experiences of individual white artists, especially vis-a-vis black artists, then I think this whole conversation gets a little more muddled. Strike that-- infinitely more muddled. The personal is always political, so it's hard to separate the two-- just ask AB-- but it can be done to some degree as far as this conversation goes. So I'll leave it saying I agree wholeheartedly that the typical narrative of free jazz in the US from the 50s up to the mid/late-60s AACM era is sorely lacking. (Post AACM, into the advent of European Free is, IMO, a whole other book).