"there's some songs that just don't work if you're a white person singing them. It'd sound odd if I was to sing about being a hobo in a boxcar, just as a black person singing songs about how they fought in the Irish civil war might sound a little out-of-place - I do think that realism plays some part in it." (That's quoting Grab)

1) I've never heard that hobos in boxcars were particularly likely to be black.

2)There weren't many black people around in Ireland at the time of the Civil War back in the Twenties. But there are a few more these days - and I'm sure there are a few people who'd count as black whose grandparents were involved in it. And I suspect there are black Amwericans wqith a lot more personal understanding of resisting oppression than most of their white compatriots, whatever their ancestry.

3) Men sing songs in the first person as a women, and woman sing songs in te first person as a man. I can't see how realism comes into. What does come into it is whether the singer can show that they can get inside the person in the song, and inside the song.

4) Art's right about the label "politically correct" being a bigots charter to sneer. If we've got to have a label for it when we use language in a respectful and courteous way, I suppose ethically correct is better.

But when we refrain from spitting on the floor in someone's front room, we don't have to give that a label, it's just a matter of not behaving offensively. I can't see much difference. (Next time someone sneers at you for being politically correct, you might just spit on their shoes, and ask 'em if that's ok by them.)

And changing the spelling of "MASSA OB DE SHEEPFOL'" to "MASTER OF THE SHEEPFOLD" is just commonsense, makes it easier for everyone to read including people who might well actually pronounce it was originally written, but wouldn't spell it that way...