In time things will have moved on so that the contempt and the insult will have died a natural death, and the marks of it in the records of the past will have ceased to have the power to hurt in the way they still do, and ceased to provide mechanisms for the racists who still crawl upon the earth today.

A parallel: for many years the stories of Somerville and Ross about "The Irish RM" were widely regarded by people in Ireland as insulting, because of the way they portrayed the relationship between the "native Irish" and the English Rural Magistrate and his family. That reflected a sense in which England was seen as somehow in a position ot look down on the Irish, and that was resented.

But that's gone, and it was demonstrated when British and Irish TV cooperated in producing a splendid set of series of the stories, popular both sides of the Irish Sea.

Sooner or later, please God, the racism born of slavery and its aftermath will have faded into history, and Americans just won't be able to understand it, let alone share it. That'll be a time when Uncle Remus and company will be accepted and loved without embarassment.