But we are not talking about that we are talking about "The Minstrel Tradition".

Perhaps I was unclear. When I said "the minstrel tradition" I meant "white men wearing black or dark-brown makeup, with white lips and eyes, and singing songs coming (purportedly) from the Old South". And I remain convinced that a lot more people in this country think of that, when they see someone blacked-up, than think of Border Morris.

What baffles me about this whole discussion is how easy it would be to avoid any possibility of offence. As I said earlier on, take a white dancer and dress her in "full fig" - but leave off the face makeup, or paint her face some other colour (green, blue, white, whatever). Does she look blacked up, with connotations of the minstrel look? No. Does she look the part of a Border Morris dancer? Yes. So why not just use a different colour?