RFU reviewing use of slave song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

[GimmeAy]

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/53096584

Anyone recall this lively but good-natured discussion from earlier in the year? www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3817800-Is-the-chosen-English-rugby-anthem-appropriate-do-you-think?pg=1

What do we all think now given the shift in attitudes to slavery and things associated with slavery? I think the attitude back in February was that it was ok, because it was initially sung in the context of rugby by a black player. BBC reporting that that player's nickname was Chariot which is why he sang it.

AIBU to be interested in whether our views have changed at all?

Let's keep this thread on topic.

Eaten alive??!!

Nobody has been even vaguely vituperative about the use of the song. Nobody.

We have all discussed its history, it's use in rugby clubs, it's changing use during games over time.

Only YOU have presented ad hominem attacks, been scathing, only you!

Cue 20 Brits (of all descriptions) furiously trying to ignore the thread while writing their cutting responses in their heads hahaha

Bullshit OP. You don't care about appropriation. It's a stick to beat the English with. Feel free to hate the English if you want, but don't use other people's history of slavery to do it with. It's a pretty low thing to do.

I've been called a racist, a xenophobe and a GF on numerous occasions.

No, no MrsTP.

Not the English, BRITS!!!!

Sorry, it's VERY confusing who the OP has contempt for.

So songs that were written by slaves are requested to be banned effectively wiping those people from history. These were people and yet they are called slaves as if this is their some identity and not worth being known as people. Surely keeping songs written by slaves keeps their memories alive

Have you ever considered that they way you present yourself, the things you say/type, may have something to do with people's perception of you?

Just a thought.

Thing is your OP contained an error and that's where it all started to go wrong.

I think we should listen to what black players, coaches, and so on feel about the song.

MrsTerryPratchett I've my own axe to grind with the British (yes - the British - as the Scottish were as brutal to us as the English). Can't recall the Welsh being responsible for too much brutality..... But yes, I empathise with black slaves as the Irish were white slaves to the Brits (again, not solely the English) for long enough. So anything which coincides with my opinion of the Brits or the English, I will endorse.

Thing is your OP contained an error and that's where it all started to go wrong.

What error?

Where I said 'BBC reporting that that player's nickname was Chariot which is why he sang it.' That was accurate - that is precisely what they reported.

I think we should listen to what black players, coaches, and so on feel about the song. Most English educated 'black players/coaches and so on' don't know what the song is about.

@GimmeAy

I think we should listen to what black players, coaches, and so on feel about the song. Most English educated 'black players/coaches and so on' don't know what the song is about.

Yes we do, a brown player who knows plenty of players, coaches and managers who know what it means.

If I was an Irish child educated in England, would I know the Irish version of that history? Probably not. Well I certainly wouldn't be taught it at school.

Yes we do, a brown player who knows plenty of players, coaches and managers who know what it means.

Do they find it amusing that the slaveowners have adopted a song written by one of their slaves as their anthem?

So anything which coincides with my opinion of the Brits or the English, I will endorse.

Using someone else's song may be subject to debate but appropriating transatlantic slavery to suit your sporting desires is... well I'm not sure there's a word for it.

pinky I think, hope, that is something BLM will eventually clarify. That inherent racism, cultural appropriation etc all be dragged into full sunlight and we can all see them as they really are.

The difference between appropriation and appreciation needs to be unpicked.

The difference between racism and being different, not having the same history, also needs to be taken out of the combat zone.

I don't think this generation will do it. This is the time for finding issues upon which to disagree and setting the lines of combat.

The next generation may be able to unpick it all and make sense of, peace with, the realities of history.

I'm too old, I think. My version of not being racist, or any other ist, is, for some, the very definition of racism: as in I don't see a person's skin colour, I see the person... that is, apparently, denying that person's very blackness.

So now I don't bother. I just do what I do and don't upset the horses!

That's really not what it says.

@GimmeAy

Yes we do, a brown player who knows plenty of players, coaches and managers who know what it means.

Do they find it amusing that the slaveowners have adopted a song written by one of their slaves as their anthem?

Why would we find it amusing? Amusing is also a very strange choice of word.

Do they find it amusing that the slaveowners have adopted a song written by one of their slaves as their anthem?

They? You know Simon is referring to himself, right?

@MrsTerryPratchett

Do they find it amusing that the slaveowners have adopted a song written by one of their slaves as their anthem?

They? You know Simon is referring to himself, right?

We’re probably in the same catergory as Brits!

I’ve reported this poster for her gleeful xenophobia.

How disgraceful to label a whole nation ‘thick’ twice. Total CF.

So “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, celebrating the Underground Railway, written AFTER the Civil War by a freed slave, made popular by the African American Fisk Jubilee Singers, sung at many black funerals and civil rights demonstrations, honoured by Congress, now to be banned

It was a favourite of Paul Robeson, of Louis Armstrong and of Martin Luther King. The last attempt to ban the song was in 1939, in Germany. So black people’s own culture is also now to be cancelled. Please everyone, take a breath before you eliminate black lives from history

Trevor Phillips
@TrevorPTweets