Someone said that you pick your battles, and I think the father picked wrong. At the end of the day, what did he accomplish? Not much.

Even though I love to play this song, I don't think that it was a very good choice in a program of music intended to represent different cultures--on that level, I can understand why a middleclass parent, perhaps even a "yuppie", would feel that this seemingly primitive, rural song, which is nominally about picking cotton, did not represent his culture--

However, the fact that the father decided to call in the newspapers and the NAACP, and play the "race" card did more damage than good. There probably was relatively little racial tension at this school before this happened, but it will be an issue there in the future, because a lot of people will resent both the disruption that was caused and the embarassment that has been cause to the school and the community.

Worst of all, middle school kids can be very cruel, and any time anyone is annoyed with the girl who is at the center of this, the words "pick a bale of cotton" can be use to taunt and torment her. They can even be used against any of the other black students, and what are really just ordinary problems between ordinary kids will be escalated to "racial problems"--