The Stephen Foster issue is one of association. Not all the songs he wrote were racist, but many were - with images of "old folks at home", "Way down upon the Swannee River" etc. The strange thing is that he was not a Southerner, I'm not sure he'd ever even been to the south. But those songs were co-opted and loved by antebellum southerners. There are many wonderful songs amongst them. But now is not the time to sing them. When we sing songs about the good old slavery days (even if that's not explicitly stated), we remind others of the bad old slavery days. It's not a good idea to put those bad old days on a nostalgia pedestal. Is this making sense? the songs are good, now's not the time to sing them and I'm not sure when will be, I guess it would have to be some future time when racism isn't an issue. I doubt that we'll get there in my lifetime unfortunately.