Long time ago.
-Q; 08 Apr 09 - 01:25 PM

**

No point in crying over history. One corrects, and moves on.
-Q ; 09 Apr 09 - 01:28 AM


I have noticed that one of Q's areas of interest on Mudcat is 19th century and earlier African American "plantation songs", African American spirituals, and American minstrel songs-all of which happened "a long time ago". It also seems to me that another area of interest-and I also should say another area of expertise-that Q has demonstrated on Mudcat is the etymology of old words and old phrases. And with regard to those old African American songs, I have noticed that Q posts them-as most other Mudcat members do-without any introductory remarks as to their now largely unacceptable use of referents such as what has become known as the "n" word. Since these songs are posted for the folkloric record, it's understandable that folks need to know how they were written way back then. It is less understandable to me that Q has never ever acknowledged in any Mudcat posting that I can recall reading that he recognizes that reading such dialect songs with or without the "n" word could be jarring to contemporary Black people and other people. I've wondered why Q has never acknowledged this. But I think that I have a glimpse of his reasoning in his second comment that I quoted in the beginning of this thread: Q wrote "No point in crying over history. One corrects, and moves on."

I call this the "it was what it was" point of view. Again, let me reiterate that for the sake of the folkloric record, I believe that it is important to fully know how things were-including how songs were sung and by whom and when from which sources. However, I also think that it is important to at leastacknowledge that the past still impacts the present in myriad ways like causing some Black folks like me to cringe when we see the "n word spelled out or when we see the "n" in the word "Negro" not capitalized. And-speaking for myself-the past still impacts the present when I become sad after reading threads like this one and learn of other ways I didn't previously know that the United States mistreated Black people from Africa and the African Diaspora. I'm an adult who has learned coping strategies to live with and work through my sadness. And how I feel in the scheme of things is of little importance. But it occurs to me that this "it was what it was" position coupled with a lack of regard for how what was affected Black and non-Black people then and how such an attitude and approach to the past impacts Black and non-Black people now might explain why there are so few Black people and other people of color who actively post on this discussion forum. (As always, I include the statement that I mean Black people and other people of color who publicly identify themselves as being a Black person or a member of another racial/ethnic group that is considered to be non-White). Given that it appears that Hilda Fish and Quarcoo (Kweku) haven't posted to Mudcat for over a year, it appears that I am the only Black person who has publicly identified her/himself as Black who still posts on Mudcat.

Some people may think that having an almost all White discussion forum doesn't matter. But how much richer the conversation would be if there were Black Africans from Senegal who could share information about the possible impact this American driven ruling about having WW2 White soldiers only liberate Paris had on them or their fathers or grandfathers. And think of how much richer the discussions of shanties and early calypso and other Caribbean music would be if there were folks from Jamaica and Trinidad and Barbados who were interested and knowledgeable about those music forms. I can think of other examples of how discussions about race-which regularly crop up in Mudcat's BS section like clockwork- could be fuller if there were Black people and other people of color posting to those discussion threads. And I'm sure that you can also think of some examples of past Mudcat threads. But I want to return to Q's second point.

In the first half of that second point Q wrote-presumably about this thread-that there is no point in crying about the past. To that point I would say that sharing information about this history and discussing this history and the ways that it might have impacted the present is not "crying about the past". For instance, if there are no African or Caribbean songs about WW2, I wonder why that is, given the propensity of Black folks to write songs that include references to actual happenings. Could it be that the pain of what happened to these soldiers in Europe was/is deep that those soldiers have difficulty adequately expressing it? Or could it be that the experiences of those French speaking Black people who (I learn from this thread) made up most of the French WW2 army, were so "foreign" to other people in their country that those people were disinterested in any songs with that theme or the soldiers didn't bother to compose songs about those experiences?

And returning again to Q's second point-in the second half of his second point Q wrote "One corrects, and moves on". Another poster to this thread wrote that it is documented that German soldiers murdered surrendering African soldiers because those soldiers were Black. How can "one correct" this? Shouldn't there at least be an acknowledgement if not an apology for this? And another poster wrote that French speaking Africans & Caribbean WW2 soldiers were denied pensions or had their pensions halted-again for no other reason then because of their racial identity. Has this action been corrected? And have the history books used in public schools throughout the USA, and France, and Germany, and The United Kingdom and in French speaking African nations and French speaking Caribbean nations been corrected to truthfully tell what happened way back then? You can answer those questions and others.

I thank Jack Campin for starting this thread. And I thank others for posting information and opinions to this thread. And though it may not seem like it, I also thank Q for writing those comments which I have quoted in this post. Ever since Q visited my website and encouraged me to visit Mudcat, I've been alert to learning from him. These two comments that Q wrote helped me "suss" out more about 'what makes Q tick'.   Of course I could be wrong about what I've gathered. And no one can ever fully no another person. But I've been interested in "reconciling" Q's interest in 19th century Black history with what appears to be rather dismissive "Republican" views of contemporary Black people which appear (to me) he has articulated in some political and social Mudcat threads. And as I've said-since I've been posting on Mudcat-I've been trying to figure out why so few Black people and so few other people of color post on Mudcat.

These two quotes from Q have given me more pieces to both of these puzzles.