I've found that changing words to their 'PC counterparts' often weakens a song. (Example: Rise Up Singing's wimpy "Just My Hands," to replace the powerful "One Man's Hands--" and, for the record, I use RUS quite a bit, and think it's a great resource. They just flubbed on this one.)

I have asked my 5- & 6-year-old students about the meanings of songs that use the word 'man' or 'men,' in the "whole human race" sense, just to get their perspective. In 15 years of teaching, I've never--NOT ONCE--had a student think that it meant only men and not women.

I'd agree that there's no need to sing racially offensive words, when any other descriptive term would do (I like that 'sailor' mentioned above!), but as for the man/woman thing, forget it. To neuter a song is to parody it, or to turn it into a shallow copy of it's former self. It generally just sounds silly.