To "lighten" this thread a bit, perhaps I should note that the title for this thread came from the honored Mudcat tradition of engaging in play on words for thread titles. Thus the thread "Dark Matters"
-whose link is given in my first post-resulted in this thread title "Does Being Dark Matter?"

In the context of this thread, the question "Does Being Dark Matter?" really is asking "Does race matter?"

As I have stated throughout this thread, I believer that there are times when race does matter and there are times when it doesn't.
And with regard to a separate but related question, in my opinion, there are also times when race should matter, and there are times when race shouldn't matter.

To give [other] examples when I believe race does and should matter, I'd like to turn your attention to the genre of folk culture that is my special interest at Mudcat-children's rhymes. First, here's just a bit of background-I've been collecting & "studying" children's rhymes since the mid 1980s. My collection work has primarily been through direct contacts I have with African American children in the Pittsburgh, PA area {mostly as a result of an after-school children's program I started in 1997, and through examples that I have gotten from various Internet websites including Mudcat, http://blog.oftheoctopuses.com/000518.php ; and my website http://www.cocojams.com/ .

One of the things that I've concluded from my collection & analysis of children's rhymes [including reading Iona & Peter Opies' books on children's rhymes and other such books] is that race often-but not always-is a factor in which types of rhymes children recite, which vesions of specific rhymes children recite, and how children perform the rhymes that they recite. I have also found that the racial identity of the population from which a rhyme originated also provides information about the context of the rhyme and the meaning of slang and other words & phrases found in that rhyme.

For these reasons {and to gather information that "tests" this hypothesis}, particularly on Mudcat and on my website Cocojams, when people share examples of children's rhymes, I've encouraged them to include information about the race of the children who recited the example along with other demographical information such as gender, decade the rhyme was recited, and geographical location.

Though there has been a growing number of people on both these websites who provide demographical information, most people don't include their race or the race of their informants. I think one reason for this is that nowadays-at least in the USA-many people think that it is a sign of racial insensitivity if they make any reference what so ever about another person's racial identity or even their own racial identity. In this "kumbayah racial colorblind" stance, it's a no no to even refer to race or skin color as a means of describing a person.

In spite of the prevailing viewpoints that "race doesn't matter" and "it's not socially correct to publicly mention race", since I've started asking for this information, I have seen an increase on my website and on Mudcat of the number of people who will "buck the tide" and include information about the race of the person [usually themselves] who recite or have recited the children's rhymes that they are sharing.

In my next post to this thread, I'll share a few examples of children's rhymes where race appears to matter.