I think I'll bow out of this discussion for now. I'm not going to change anyone's mind - and no-one here has convinced me - especially as I'm coming from a position where I too used to defend this practice and have deployed the same arguments in the past.

I'm just going to make the point that I'm not suggesting these (largely) middle aged white men - presumably from border towns with very small black populations - are in themselves racists or intentionally portraying something that can be viewed as a racist stereotype. The modern-day connotations are quite simply a by-product of living in a post-minstelry era, where minstrelry is the most obvious and best known reference point and where there is a body of evidence suggesting that minstrelry had an influence on the style the current day lot claim to reviving - notwithstanding the evidence that the practice predates minstrelry. What is beyond dispute is that folk revival era border morris sides chose to black up in an era where the practice was already widely regarded as highly dubious because of the legacy of minstrelry. The clock cannot be turned back to erase this part of the history of white entertainment, however much anyone might wish this to be so. Viewed through this prism (and taking the "niggering" issue into account), the argument that the dancers don't dress exactly the same as minstrels is neither here nor there. Questions about this issue will continue to be raised as long as white people black up. And so they should be: it's part of the price of blacking up in the 21st century.

The evidence-based historian Ronald Hutton, in "Stations of the Sun" (read it if you haven't - it's fascinating stuff), notes that in the 18th and early 19th century, morris sides moved between the local big houses at Christmas, dancing for alms: aristocrats, gentry, farmers, tradesman and clergy were viewed as valuable sponsors. Hutton does not make reference to disguise being donned, presumably because dancing to entertain the wealthy was seen as a socially acceptable way for the rural poor to raise money. This tradition declined in the middle of the 19th century because both dancers and patrons (note: patrons!) started to view it as outmoded and because social divisions were widening. Hutton does mention dancers on the borders during this era "generally" blacking up but appears to view this as an exception to the general rule and he does not make reference to this practice being to hide the identity of the dancers. Elsewhere he describes disguise in ritual begging as "part of the general merry-making" which then in itself became part of the ritual - household accounts from the era often include records of payments made for such entertainment.

Anyway, what these people choose to do with their faces is, at the end of the day, entirely up to them. Doesn't mean I have to applaud them for it, though, or own this revival of a minor regional anomaly as meaningful or important part of my cultural heritage.