Yes indeed, a very interesting and well-argued post from Gibb.

'I am confident in saying that the vast majority of chanty genre songs that have been documented with the word "n-" contained that word precisely because they were songs sung by Black people of the Americas. "N-" in song was "Black language."'

This is exactly what I was trying to hint at in my post of 03 June, though - lacking the confidence of Gibb's knowledge of the genre - I confined myself to a hint. However, I'm less sure about Gibb's follow-up:

'If a non-Black sang it, he was singing Black language... this was some indication of that person's acculturation to the [conveniently, not exclusively labeled] Black voice...'

The problem with that is that the word in question has long been used by white communities as a disrespectful term, and now carries all that baggage when articulated by a white person. There are not a great number people of colour in attendance at English folk clubs (the idea that they might be attracted by white singers using 'N--' is bizarre!), but neither are there zero - and of course there are many white people who object to the word too, 'bourgeois' or not. So we're back with contextualization, since no audience, in an English folk club or elsewhere, is going to possess Gibb's depth of knowledge: is the shanty singer then to preface 'Hog-eye Man' with an explanation of the black heritage of the song, and does that then make it OK to sing unexpurgated? Or is it being suggested that the white singer should avoid shanties altogether, on grounds of cultural appropriation (except that this musical form was appropriated by English shantymen 150 years ago)?

Gibb led off with:
'Are any traditional songs NOT racist? The architects of the "folk music" concept that held sway through the 20th c. conceived of folk as racial.'

I detect a swipe at Cecil Sharp here, and there is indeed some truth in the statement - although it should be pointed out that Sharp used 'racial' interchangeably with 'national', which in a modern context is not quite the same thing. Folk club traditional repertoire still owes a lot to Sharp and to the MacColl-Seeger 'sing from your own culture' policy - which could be viewed as 'racist', but alternatively as a counter to cultural appropriation. But if English folk revivals are to be considered racist for prioritizing a particular musical culture, should not the same apply to singers and musicians performing 'Irish', 'Scottish' or 'French-Canadian' music, never mind bluegrass and a hundred other genres born in relatively homogeneous and static populations. Even the racially-mixed Louisiana bayous maintained separate white and black musical traditions for generations.

The world is changing all the time, as communications become easier, populations less static and musicians more inclined to experiment. However, as Gibb points out, we are where we are, and need to take decisions based on the performance contexts we inhabit now.