This has been well-argued and a wide variety of interesting points have been raised. To my mind this is the sort of discussion that Mudcat should exist for and not the mud-slinging and insults that have characterised some recent threads.

We have a real dilemma here -

>        We are upholders of the tradition and want to see it maintained
>        We do not want to see minority groups offended.

Sadly there is no easy answer to this but the feeling remains that the matter of blacking up needs to be treated with sensitivity. Perhaps at black-faced morris stands, the foreman or whover should be announcing the "disguise" reasons for blacking up and disassociating the team from any racist implications of their actions.

I certainly feel sorry for the dilemma faced by the headteacher of the school in question who is quoted in today's The Guardian today as saying We found ourselves weighing up any potential offence versus not wishing to compromise the morris dancers' tradition. It's a 'damned it we do, damned if we don't scenario'."

My experience in explaining blacking-up to an African friend has been cited in this thread and I would like to broaden this worthwhile discussion but giving another of my experiences –

At our folk club last year, a very popular local singer, the person who started the first folk club in Lewes back in the mid '60s, did a floor spot and sung his lovely version of the ballad The Jew's Garden or Little Sir Hugh as he has done on quite a number of occasions in the past. Well, there was no negative reaction at the time, but a few days later something appeared on the weblog of one of our very articulate regulars who happens to be Jewish. In his blog he wondered if this ballad should still be sung in this day and age and if the organiser and compere (in other words, me) should have allowed this ballad to have been sung. I must admit that I have never discussed this with the person who posted this on his blog – but this does not mean that I have not thought long and hard about it. Here are a series of my reflections on it.

•        Should a MC at a folk club try to vet the material to be presented at the club? No, this would be impractical, though as a compere, I would certainly inform a performer if anything that was performed made me feel uncomfortable in any way. This has happened on a few occasions over the decades.
•        Is the ballad in question not to be performed any more because it is anti-semetic? Well, we would have to be consistent and ban the likes of Lord Bateman as being anti-Turkish and possibly anti-Muslim, Prince Heathen for being misogynist and so on and so on. We could not have any Mummer's Plays with the dreaded Turkish Knight and looking beyond the tradition, we would have to have a serious look at much of Shakespeare, for example, however much Al Pacino tried to make Shylock look a sympathetic figure in the 2004 film of The Merchant of Venice.
•        Should an attempt be made to "contextualise" a potentially difficult piece like Little Sir Hugh? Yes.
•        Should singers look at their repertoire that they have been singing for years and root out material that is no longer considered suitable? Well, I know that I have done this. I know that it is only intended as a gentle piece of fun, but I no longer sing, for example, Willie Scott's There's Bound To Be A Row because I felt a bit unhappy about the attitude towards the wife. Another way is to make a slight alteration in words of a song. An example of this would be one that my wife, Tina, sings - A Pretty Young Girl All In The Month of May where the father is furious on finding that his unwed daughter has had a child and asks her a question. Tina has inserted the word in brackets into the way she sings it now – which to my mind also brings out the intended meaning. The father asks:-
Oh, was it to a black (haired) man or was it to a brown?

I would be interested in reading any responses to this.