Greg B, I think that there is a whole range of reaction and response, in this area, and I think it has as much to do with how it's heard as it does with how it's said.

There is no escaping the racist heritage we all share, and everyone, whether they are working on it as a personal issue intentionally or not, is in a different place about it. Racism, at the time its mindsets are "installed," is so pernicious because it hits each person in a personal way, deeply, and then it often masquerades as something else. But the result is that no matter what one's motives or feelings may be as a presenter, there are going to be people for whom there is just zero tolerance for anything even remotely connected to the matter. And that can be the result for either "side" of the "issue."

For the black community, one such area was what are now called all over the world, "Negro Spirituals," because that IS what they were called at the time they were "discovered" and, at the time, the term Negro was considered pretty damn polite. The songs were a reminder not only of slavery but of a time when there was little or no economic standing for people of color in the US. It became a class issue, just as much as bluegrass gospel is often not welcome among people who prefer to think that culture begins and ends with classical music.

It's po' folks music, and for a time, black folk did not care to be seen as po' folks in any way, shape, or form-- that was where danger lay. Of course later, there was a big resurgence of black folks reclaiming that heritage, and there is some awareness that it's everyone's music, not just the music of people of color-- a lot of it was created in close communication with white folks of the time.

This is one reason why the Feet Vote is so important to me. If you can reach through all that stuff, all those generations of passed-along, unaware or aware racism, and touch a heart, then real communication is going on. You can tell that's occurring when people come back.

Of course you can also get a good Feet Vote by attracting people to what restimulates the distresses... but in that case, doing what we do, if we were doing it that way, I would have expected it to be white racists coming along to our service. In fact, that isn't what is happening at all.

Butch has a line on something positive too, if the NAACP is with him, not against him. He's way ahead of me in that regard, and I think we can learn much.

~Susan