# So....will playing "Dixie" be deemed racist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 17, 2017, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921 "2017-08-17T23:38:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/41 "2017-08-18T18:50:12Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I already kinda feel it is. Even though we had this absolutely gorgeous arrangement in choir. Fortunately, preserving actual art seems to be better accepted. But just singing the little ditty? Already has racist connotations. > > I mean: “I wish I was in the land of cotton”? It’s glorifying slavery in the very first line. Glorifying slavery or reminiscing about something familiar? Like buckwheat cakes and _injun_ (OMG lets not not forget to getoutraged over that too) batter. Like somebody from Kansas may be reminisce aabout corn fields, or somebody from Texas may be reminisc about cattle, or oil fields. But if somebody reminisces about cotton obviously they are racist. We should just ban cotton. How can anybody wear cotton knowing the history behind it? You know what else is made from cotton? Flags, _Confederate_ flags are made of cotton and Money Money is 75% cotton Cotton is the evil Yes, we should ban cotton There is no way anybody can justify using cotton considering it’s history. If you wear cotton you are obviously a racist. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/42 "2017-08-18T18:54:22Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > There was a version of “Dixie” popular among Union troops during the Civil War: > > - Away down South in the land of traitors, > Rattlesnakes and alligators, > Right away, come away, right away, come away. > Where cotton’s king and men are chattels, > Union boys will win the battles, > Right away, come away, right away, come away. > > 😃 Yep, the ‘[Union version of Dixie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5ra9cXx1-o)’. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/43 "2017-08-18T19:00:57Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Am I the only one who has had ‘‘Dixie’’ permanently stuck in my head since this thread was opened? Thanks to Mona Lisa Simpson, I have [the Joan Baez version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ksYL26lZE) of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” stuck in mine. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/44 "2017-08-18T19:48:14Z")
> [@Sahirrnee](#): > > Glorifying slavery or reminiscing about something familiar? > Like buckwheat cakes and _injun_ (OMG lets not not forget to getoutraged over that too) batter. My (white) grandmother was the daughter of a cotton-farming sharecropper. One of 8 children living in a small house with gaps between the floorboards (they could watch the chickens walking around under the house) and slept several to a bed. The children all did farm work, including pushing plows, walked to school every day until they quit to work on the farm (my grandmother made it through 7th grade.) No electricity, no indoor plumbing. She still considered those to be “the good old days.” It is funny what someone will be nostalgic about. ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/45 "2017-08-18T20:33:58Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > My (white) grandmother was the daughter of a cotton-farming sharecropper. One of 8 children living in a small house with gaps between the floorboards (they could watch the chickens walking around under the house) and slept several to a bed. The children all did farm work, including pushing plows, walked to school every day until they quit to work on the farm (my grandmother made it through 7th grade.) No electricity, no indoor plumbing. She still considered those to be “the good old days.” It is funny what someone will be nostalgic about. It was harder, but simpler. Also familiar, and they probably had a lot of good times as a family. People also look back and tend to remember the good and forget the bad. And in spite of what a lot of people around here seem to think, and project onto others, not everything is about politics and race. When a lot of people look back, especially to a time when they were still children, politics and rasicm are not what they are thinking about. Most children aren’t concerned with that, they are just being kids. It’s one of the annoying things on this board is that anytime ‘the good old days’ gets brought up some people can’t help but bring politics and racism into it. It’s like they have tunnel vision and that is all they can see. I swear I could post ‘the grass is green and the sky is blue’ and for sure some poster will make it political or racist. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/46 "2017-08-18T20:41:54Z")
> [@Sahirrnee](#): > > It’s one of the annoying things on this board is that anytime ‘the good old days’ gets brought up some people can’t help but bring politics and racism into it. It’s like they have tunnel vision and that is all they can see. > > I swear I could post ‘the grass is green and the sky is blue’ and for sure some poster will make it political or racist. Is everyone else supposed to turn off their awareness of what the world was actually like during those good old days? For me, if someone says “I had a great childhood in the fifties,” I would never think twice. I had a great childhood in the seventies and that wasn’t a halcyon era. But if someone says “Things were better in the fifties,” I will think “It’s likely you are a white man.” ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/47 "2017-08-18T23:11:34Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Is everyone else supposed to turn off their awareness of what the world was actually like during those good old days? > > For me, if someone says “I had a great childhood in the fifties,” I would never think twice. I had a great childhood in the seventies and that wasn’t a halcyon era. > > But if someone says “Things were better in the fifties,” I will think “It’s likely you are a white man.” Because you are looking at it through a narrow lens. There were great things about the 50s, and not just for white men. Do you think all women and all black people hated the 50s? It had it’s problems but it was also a time of economic growth, muscle cars, great music, people were more mobile. A lot of the people who look back on the 50s as a great time lived through the depression, people (black and white) were leaving the farms and moving to the city, with phones, electrity, indoor plumbing and store bought clothes. Things we take for granted like vacuum cleaners, and washing machines, and refrigerators were making housewives life easier Getting a desk or factory job was a hell of a lot better than plowing fields and milking cows. It was a very stable time between the depression and the turbulent 60s. For the people who lived through the 30s and 40s, the 50s was a whole new world. That then got flipped on its head in the 60s. Look at the music of the 50s, mostly about love and romance, holding hands and a first kiss. Women weren’t called bitches and hos. There was more respect for the family and there are many articles on how much stronger black families were in the 50s and 60s. [http://yourblackworld.net/2013/03/02/the-black-family-is-worse-off-today-than-in-the-1960s-report-shows/](http://yourblackworld.net/2013/03/02/the-black-family-is-worse-off-today-than-in-the-1960s-report-shows/) In 1954 the unemployment rate for white men was 0 and for black men it was 4%. Maybe it wasn’t fair but it sure is a lot better than it is now. Do you think back people were sitting around in povery and moaning about their miseable lives? The people who owned these beaches sure weren’t iving in povery. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American\_Beach,\_Florida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Beach,_Florida) [http://www.blackpast.org/aah/carr-and-sparrow-s-beach-annapolis-maryland-1926-1974](http://www.blackpast.org/aah/carr-and-sparrow-s-beach-annapolis-maryland-1926-1974) [https://www.amazon.com/American-Beach-Cookbook-Marsha-Phelts/dp/0813032105](https://www.amazon.com/American-Beach-Cookbook-Marsha-Phelts/dp/0813032105) There are a lot of reasons people can look back on the 50s as a great era that don’t have a thing to do with race, gender, and politics. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/48 "2017-08-18T23:24:31Z")
As I said, if someone looks nostalgically at their own experience, I don’t care. If someone says the 50s were better, they are ignoring all the ways it was so incredibly worse. And ignoring all those ways will always be problematic. If you want to rhapsodize about the fifties, you go right ahead. If you tell me I should, I’ll tell you what I think of the fifties. If you don’t want to talk about the fifties, we don’t have to, but if you start in on praise, you’re opening the conversation to criticism as well. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/49 "2017-08-19T00:31:23Z")
> [@Sahirrnee](#): > > There are a lot of reasons people can look back on the 50s as a great era that don’t have a thing to do with race, gender, and politics. Wow. Just…wow. In the 1950s, race and gender may not have been a significant issue for some, but for others it presented massive and arbitrary restrictions on where they could live, work, eat, travel, and even urinate. I had a friend of my grandfathers who was a decorated Army Ranger who fought with distinction in Korea and later served in Vietnam before the American public was aware there was a war who described one transfer to a base in Alabama for training he was unable to get lunch at any of the towns the bus stopped in in the state. Not even had to order and eat out back; just couldn’t be served at all, despite being in uniform with multiple decorations displayed. The locals were not adverse to referring to him as a “nigger” and “boy”, and not in some ostensibly colloquial sense of the terms. Until you’ve had the experience of being utterly rejected and even obliquely threatened by the citizens of a nation for which you’ve fought with distinction, or been told you can’t attend a college or live in a neighborhood or receive municipal services because of your skin color, you don’t have the perspective of why “the 'Fifties” were not great for everyone. And this bullshit “Southern pride” in evoking the Confederate battleflag or playing “My Old Kentucky Home” without acknowledging that it represents a culture of repression and horrific indignities for an entire class of people isn’t just reactionary political correctness gone amok; it is historical revisionism comparable to Holocaust denial, which of course many of the white nationalist/alt-right elements embracing this philosophy also relish and celebrate. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/50 "2017-08-19T01:12:44Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > As I said, if someone looks nostalgically at their own experience, I don’t care. If someone says the 50s were better, they are ignoring all the ways it was so incredibly worse. And ignoring all those ways will always be problematic. > > If you want to rhapsodize about the fifties, you go right ahead. If you tell me I should, I’ll tell you what I think of the fifties. If you don’t want to talk about the fifties, we don’t have to, but if you start in on praise, you’re opening the conversation to criticism as well. The thing is I don’t care what you think. I was simpy pointing out that other people may have a different viewpoint that is not based on race or gender and liking the 50s doesn’t make them racist or sexist. It you don’t have the ability to see another persons point of view without criticizing or making judgements on them, that is not my problem. If you can’t handle opinions you don’t agree with that is not my problem either. The narrowmindedness that comes from being unable to see another person’s point of view is not an attractive trait, and it sure isn’t confined to the right. It’s why the country is turning into a polarized mess and quite frankly I refuse to contribute to it. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/51 "2017-08-19T01:30:36Z")
> [@Sahirrnee](#): > > The thing is I don’t care what you think. And yet I can still talk. It’s like a miracle, Anne Sullivan! ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/52 "2017-08-19T02:33:47Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Dude, we just had an instance where white supremacists protecting a statue fucking killed people. If it had just been a regular white supremacist march in favor of statues glorifying white supremacy, then it would have been page 7 news. With the terrorist attack people aren’t in such a mood to give white supremacy a pass, you know? > > So your statutes that were put up to celebrate white supremacy now have a much greater chance of being removed after all this. MY statues?? FUCK YEAH Imma sell those puppies!! WOOOOOTTT Unless you really meant statutes. Those aren’t worth as much ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/53 "2017-08-19T13:46:20Z")
The land of cotton was the land where slaves were picking cotton. So, yes, reminiscing about it is celebrating slavery. Yes, in theory you could have a song about cotton that wasn’t, but this song was written when slavery was how cotton was produced. The song is about Dixie. The Confederacy. And its first line is about how great the cotton land was there. The cotton land run by slaves. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/54 "2017-08-19T13:56:02Z")
And I know that I’m gonna get even more nitpicks: Dixie in the song is technically not about the Confederacy, since it predates that. It’s about that same area before they seceded, however, and was written well within the practice of cotton slavery. It also can’t refer to the time after the Confederacy, even though the term is sometimes used to refer to those states that made it up to this day. Point is, given the title of the song, when it was written, and the reference to cotton land, it is glorifying slavery even in its first line. You can’t talk about how great the cotton land was in those days while ignoring who was actually working that land. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/55 "2017-08-19T16:40:43Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > And let’s not even get started with “Blue Tail Fly”. I prefer to believe this song is about a slave who got away with killing his master by blaming a fly. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/56 "2017-08-19T18:08:16Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You can’t talk about how great the cotton land was in those days while ignoring who was actually working that land. Of course you can. Just like you can reminisce about how much you enjoyed growing up in–say–New York City even though there are tenaments and drug addicts and homeless in NYC. Just because things sucked for someone else doesn’t mean that you can’t have fond memories of your own. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/57 "2017-08-19T18:12:20Z")
(Having said that, in the “wistful songs about the south” category, I prefer _Carolina On My Mind_, where friends how t you from behind for some reason.) ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/58 "2017-08-19T18:33:18Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Of course you can. Just like you can reminisce about how much you enjoyed growing up in–say–New York City even though there are tenaments and drug addicts and homeless in NYC. Just because things sucked for someone else doesn’t mean that you can’t have fond memories of your own. Yeah, but If your user icon is a confederate flag, I’m not giving you any benefit of a doubt when you say you miss the south of the 1950s. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/59 "2017-08-19T18:42:45Z")
Yeah, I’m talking about people who were actually alive in the south in the 1950s, not “kids these days” liking the _idea_ of it. (My grandmother- mentioned above would have been reminiscing about the south in the 1920s and 1930s.) ---
**Author:** ![Onthefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9de053/32.png) [@Onthefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onthefly)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921/60 "2017-08-19T19:34:51Z")
I am a South Carolina native and still a resident. My high school band stopped playing Dixie about 1970. It is not the words to the song, unless you sing it in the minstrel show accent, it’s that it was the de facto Confederate national anthem. It was taken that way by both whites and blacks. People actually used to stand when it was played. It was racist then and still is now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-playing-dixie-be-deemed-racist/793921.md?page=4)