Reply #48: Actually, there's a lot of reason to worry: this wasn't a "dumb" mistake but an uninformed one

[Nikki Stone1]

"Old Man River" was a song written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern to express the struggles of blacks during Jim Crow and it was revolutionary for its time. Hammerstein was a VP of the NAACP and a major civil rights activist. The problem is its time has past, and now, in retrospect, it looks VERY racist. And that's a shame because it was exactly the opposite in its time.

Music teachers have been trained with this music without being given the political training that goes with it; understanding that the song had a particular political context, and that context is gone. This leads to a conflict: music teachers wanting to teach "classic" American music but the perception by students of this song as irredeemably racist. Teachers need to be trained about the politics as much as about the music.