I am black. I love the railroad song. My approach has always been that love transforms even ugly things. I don't throw them away, I make them mine.

Anonymous wrote:If OP is white, boy I'd be ticked off if I were black, for focusing on something so stupid and minute.

If OP is black, again, you're going to turn people away from the important stuff by picking apart something 99% of any color people have no idea is even a thing.

+1,

+ who the hell is singing these songs, anyway? I had to look them all up and only recognized a couple.

This has popped up a couple of times in my Facebook feed, posted by white music educators who vow to do better. I think it’s the university of Michigan that has a long list now of songs they won’t perform anymore, including All the Pretty Little Horses, which my mom sang to me and I regularly sing to my children. I can’t for the life of me think of anything racist or offensive about it. After quite a bit of googling, I found something about a rumor about its origin. I’m going to keep singing it.

In fact, I’ll be generally inclined to take this more seriously when it’s not based on an article written by a white woman kn Medium. I’m all for amplifying black voices. But I don’t hear or see any black voices concerned about this.

Dr Suess, on the other hand....

Anonymous wrote:Guarantee op is a white suburban mom

Absolutely.
-signed, another white suburban mom who is sick to death of this idiocy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harping on everything may have the opposite effect of your goal. Wouldn't it be better to stick to the big issues?

Queue the round of applause.
+1

+ a million

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's really sad and scary how deep all of this goes into our country's culture. I'm ashamed I didn't notice it before...

Agree with the bolded. On the other hand, the fact that we didn't even recognize some of these stereotypes is partly positive in that it indicates change. I read the part about Working on the Railroad, which my family sang on car trips when I was a kid. I didn't know any of the implications or underlying experiences depicted in the lyrics. I didn't know Dinah was the cook and that the horn she was blowing was to announce mealtime. I assumed she was the love interest of the guy working on the railroad and he was so looking forward to seeing her and that the horn was the train horn because she worked on the railroad, too.

My grandfathers worked on the railroad, so I was taught totally different lyrics: "Granddad's working on the railroad." And his nickname was Toot Toot because he blew the train horn all the time, so it was "Toot Toot blow your horn."

Anonymous wrote:I can’t get all frothed up about songs that were sanitized 100 years ago and have been loved by many generations of children since then. If they hadn’t been sanitized, sure.

+1
They’re bland children’s songs now. No one sings them in any kind of racist dialect, the imagery isn’t there.... tell the stories when appropriate, but for crying out loud, you can’t fix institutionalized racism by erasing the history. It helps no one, it solves nothing. It just shoves it a little further into the cellar.

I would be really curious to know how many of these response were by white women trying to “do the right thing” versus minority women, specifically black women. Is this something generally know and cares about? I didn’t know about it. Or just another thing to point to as something we are all doing wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t get all frothed up about songs that were sanitized 100 years ago and have been loved by many generations of children since then. If they hadn’t been sanitized, sure.

They haven’t been sanitized. The racist imagery is still there.

About the same as sexual imagery is still there in Little Red Riding Hood? Gory death in Ring around the Rosie?

Again, can’t get worked up about it. There is nothing racist or sexual about these songs and stories that little kids could possibly pick up on.

Darlin Clementine, though- there’s an explicit tale of child neglect.

DP I see nothing to get worked up about. The virtue signaling is ridiculous.

Guarantee op is a white suburban mom

If OP is white, boy I'd be ticked off if I were black, for focusing on something so stupid and minute.

If OP is black, again, you're going to turn people away from the important stuff by picking apart something 99% of any color people have no idea is even a thing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Excuse my un-wokeness but I’m not going to stop singing these.

And you shouldn't. This conversation has people shaming and bullying others over songs they share. If these songs are harming children, show some evidence. Dusting off a song sheet from the 1800s to accuse people of being racist is not evidence.

DP, these songs are still taught to children in schools and camps.

And if you can provide evidence that show the songs harm children.
In the meantime, here's a video of kids singing "I've been working on the railroad." Very good performance.

https://youtu.be/4APm8bNbodc

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harping on everything may have the opposite effect of your goal. Wouldn't it be better to stick to the big issues?

Queue the round of applause.
+1

If you agree with PP, you want to cue the applause. If you're unsure I guess you could queue the applause while you think about it.

Line it up!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t get all frothed up about songs that were sanitized 100 years ago and have been loved by many generations of children since then. If they hadn’t been sanitized, sure.

They haven’t been sanitized. The racist imagery is still there.

Nope.

Just look at the modern lyrics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's really sad and scary how deep all of this goes into our country's culture. I'm ashamed I didn't notice it before...

I agree. Do your part by not listening to or buying any and all songs that use racist language. So many popular songs have the n word for instance. Don't enable those songs by listening to or paying for them.

It's gotta be scary watching the world change before your very eyes, knowing the time for racists like you is quickly coming to an end. I pity you.

It's white kids who made these modern artists rich. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Advocacy for principles isn't something that's purely theoretical. Principles are expressed by language and actions. Exercise your economic power and don't enable the problem language and actions. Just don't.