** thread.cfm?threadid=108931 BS: Mudcat Is Difficult For People Of Color; started on 25 Feb 08 - 09:34 AM
But the main reason why I'm starting this thread is to clarify what I meant by this comment in this thread: thread.cfm?threadid=120026&messages=46 BS: WW2 made whites-only.
I felt that if I were going to respond to questions that some folks had raised and comments that some folks had made about that particular post on that WW2 thread, it would be better for me to do so in a separate thread.
Let me quote the key portion of that WW2 post that I'd like to clarify and talk more about in this thread:
…"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 [and] from which sources. However, I also think that it is important to at least acknowledge that the past still impacts the present in myriad ways"…
-snip-
I'll talk more about what I meant by these comments in my next couple of posts to this thread.