Personal experience Jim Dixon asked for, which is a good place to start. Well, I'm white for a start. And I have a nostalgic admiration for the songs of Stephen Foster. I sang The Old Folks at Home at sitting round the fire type session in a pub a few weeks ago, among a few congenial souls who like old songs: I don't think there was anyone in the pub that I didn't know, and there certainly weren't any black people. I didn't feel, in those precise circumstances, anything wrong. But I am quite sure I would not have sung it if I had thought there were any hard-line racists in the pub, because I wouldn't have been happy about the contents of the song in those circumstances. I wouldn't have sung it if there had been black people there that I didn't know, either. But I probably would have if JC Gallow had been here, who is a longtime friend and musical colleague, and also black. Because I know where I stand with JC, and in particular I know how he reacts to the use of the words "darkies" in England when used in kindly, old-fashioned and non-hostile way. Not sure if there's any intellectual or ethical justification for all that, I'm just describing my feelings on the issue. On broader topics, I love hunting songs and whaling songs, though I know some people find them offensive. I'll still sing them anyway, too bad (I've never hunted or whaled, by the way). I also like singing murder songs and bank robbing songs, though for some unfathomable reason nobody much ever seems to object to them. I feel in an ethical world "Jesse James" word be a morally worse song than "Fine Hunting Day", with "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground" trailing far behind in the wickedness stakes, but somehow this order is turned completely topsy-turvy in the world of PC morals. It's all very confusing.