The problem with making songs that remind people of a certain way of life go away is that it makes a bit of history go away. You try to tell people how things were, and you know, "If things really WERE that way, there would be music. There would be stories in song." So you make the evidence of things you don't think are nice go away, and the things appear to never have happened.

China (the 11-year old former choir member) said, "They were bringing back the memories of how African-Americans picked cotton, and it wasn't a good memory. It was disrespectful to African-Americans." So the memories of slavery should only be happy ones, and it's disrespectful to make people think about what African-Americans went through.

Now, if they wanted to drop the song because they didn't like it, I'd understand.