"the main propenents proudly call it niggering."

To be fair, I'm not sure that this is still true, but to address Richard's points (and according to Dave Hunt's evidence that I quoted earlier) it was certainly a term still being used in living memory (the 1930s-40s).

To be honest, once you begin to interrogate the history, it's rather hard to refute the connection. The REAL questions, here and now, are these:

If you are in a side that blacks up and someone asks you what the origins and history of the custom are, would you be happy to mention its connection with mintrelsy?

If the answer is no, does this mean that the racist heritage of the custom makes the custom itself, by extension, socially unacceptable in the 21st century?

If the answer is yes, does this mean that you, as a morris dancer, or your side, feel that there is a disconnect between the heritage of the custom and its contemporary expression? Has blacking up in itself become so disconnected from its roots that those roots no longer matter?

And finally, to those who are defending most vigourously their right to black up and dance wherever they want, Derek's question once again: "there are several different ingredients in any morris tradition – music, costume, dances, style etc.... Most Border Morris sides use recently- composed tunes, played on instruments that were never used traditionally for Border morris, wearing costumes that often bear slight relation to the costumes used traditionally, dancing dances that are recently made up in a style that has been recently invented. And yet ... when it comes to challenging the blacking up aspect of their appearance, it is "tradition" that is used in justification for continuing to do it. If all the other "traditional" aspects of the dance "tradition" can be jettisoned, then why not the black face?"