As the Captain observes:
"having said all that as a white person,who has only suffered a tiny amount of racial abuse,it is difficult for me to know, how it must feel to be a black person who has suffered racial abuse,and how the majority of black people,feel about Blacking/Browning up".

Having asked a (statistically insignificant) sample of two black friends their view on this, both stated similar views, paraphrased as follows: "that's the way you do it and I am not insulted. I think Morris dancing is silly, but that's different." And as a dancer (Cotswold, so not blacked up) I have danced in town centres, with blacked-up border sides, where Afro-Carribeans and Asians have been in the audience and been seen to applaud the dancing - appreciating it in its own right as something (silly) people do in these islands.

I know of no sociological study made of UK-domiciled Afro-Caribean or Asian communities' attitudes to blacking up in Border Morris, but would love to hear of any results and research methodologies.

And as someone else observed at the beginning of this thread - if the British can't respect their own traditions how can they respect the traditions of others - and I do sense a danger of building perceptions of the perceptions of others, seeing insult where no insult is taken, let alone intentionally given. I, for one, think the young men who run in front of the bulls in Pamplona are not just silly, they're barking mad. But I appreciate the fact that it is important to them both as a tradition in its own right and for what that tradition represents - achieving a state of barking madness as far as I can see. But I am not them or of them so it is unfair for me to judge them in their country and their traditions by my value set.

The ultimate result an over-indulgence in politcal correctness is that nobody will dare do anything for fear of offending someone. That will result in everyone sitting at home, never daring to do anything except watch Sky Television (for fear of offending Rupert Murdoch because he hates the BBC). And if people think that PC will help us defend against the odious BNP I can't help but feel it is exactly the application of `Enhanced-PC With Added Puritanism' that will drive more and more people into their arms. The BNP needs to be laughed at - loudly and longly.