‘Snead asserts “[i]n black culture, the thing (the ritual, the dance, the beat) is ‘there for you to pick it up when you come back to get it’. If there is a goal in such a culture, it is always deferred; it continually ‘cuts’ back to the start…” (Snead, 67). While Ra’s science may be an advance, it is still done with the notion of the “cut” in mind; one of Sun Ra’s goals is to ultimately transport black people back to a time before the taint of the white society on black culture, and the new science helps accomplish this.
In contrast, white science, represented by the two men from NASA, only has advancement in mind, without acknowledging the importance of the past. This illustrates the difference between the two cultures that Snead details in his piece when he says “[i]n Eurpoean culture, repitition must be seem to be not just circulation and flow but accumulation and growth” (Snead, 67).’