"2. Certainly has some unpleasant and racist connotations even though modern-day morris folk do not intend it to be so."

In a nutshell, that's the thing. The claims that Border Morris never had any connections with minstrelsy are simply not true. In fact, the connection through both the music and the instruments traditionally used is very strong, not to mention the blacking up.

This doesn't mean that morris dancers who black up in 2009 are deliberately celebrating a racist tradition (though, as Crow Sister pointed out, I have suspicions about certain members of my local border side as they are BNP activists). But if anyone asked today's border morris dancers about the origins of the tradition, they'd not be telling the whole truth if they did not mention mistrelsy. And you have to think about how good you'd feel explaining that legacy to a person of colour.


The people on this thread who have accused the school of ignorance for not researching the custom might want to do a bit of reading themselves.

This discussion has been carried out time and again on Mudcat, and I still don't understand why some people feel so threatened by the suggestion that it might be a good idea, in this day and age, to maybe think about using a different colour than black to stand in for the traditional "disguise".

If the school has, as it says, a "fragile" and diverse community, I can absolutely understand their reluctance to potentially damage what trust they may have built up locally by having a black-faced border side perform at their event.