To contact this jazz band and tell them to stop using this word?

[FauxWhiteOrchid]

There’s a local jazz event taking place soon and the bio describes the band as “Dixieland”. I remember the Dixie Chicks apologising and changing their name.

The word derives from the American South and is also used in a Confederate song. Here’s the full Wikipedia page for “Dixie”. Basically, its usage is racist.

I was surprised to see the word at all but also not surprised as I live in a very white Reform/Tory voting area.

AIBU to contact the band and ask them to change their description? Or leave them alone? I know what the reaction will be if I do contact them: just music blah blah been a traditional word for this style of jazz blah blah world gone mad woke blah joy thief etc. But I see no reason to use this word in this day and age.

WWYD?

Oh yes blackberry jam is fine, all fruits are with the exception of oranges. I can eat satsumas so that is some consolation and I've just eaten the sweetest juiciest peach you can possibly imagine.

I'm sorry you are sad about our mortal enemy status but in the words of my GC, "they started it."

I haven't tried them, maybe I should.

🤣🤣

As a PP said, mea maxima culpa! Smarties are of course made by Rowntree. And your rats sounds very smart indeed 🕵

I dont think Id contact them because to be fair Im mixed race/ half cuban but was born and lived all my life in England and I have never heard of that been an racist word and have no idea of its meaning, Also had an mixed raced friend at school whos actual name was Dixie.

Dixieland is a well recognized jazz genre since forever and then some.
The former Dixie chicks are a country band whose members are unusually liberal leaning in a genre which is by and large not liberal leaning at all.
I think it is a very different context which people will interpret very differently.

That's all 86%? Dixieland Jazz was originally developed by African Americans.

People need to stop being so sensitive, i’ll have to start moaning I’m offended to be called white..heterosexual…

I as much as there is a controversy around the word, it's because people associate the South, and particularly that era, with slavery and all the negative attitudes to blacks that were common at that time.

It's still fairly reductive though, those things to not sum up a whole culture, any more than slavery summed up the ancient Romans or the Ottomans, or raping and pillaging summed up the Vikings. Those were all rich cultures in many ways, some were harsh, some elements we have a hard time relating to, but I have never heard of anyone unwilling to use artistic or cultural elements of those because it might be offensive.

YANBU. I read through the replies fully expecting the usual buzz words like "woke" "snowflakes" etc and I wasn't wrong.

lol! 😂

Since you want comment as well as a vote: I don't think any words should be banned or unuseable. IMO if words are used with innocent intent, then offence is taken not given. The person taking offence at an innocent remark is the one in the wrong.

I thought they were dead.

You did ask. 🤷‍♀️

you're being ridiculous.

😱

Me too OP (think it’s interesting). The word Dixie is synonymous with certain ideologies linked to the Confederacy- in other words slavery. It refers to the areas in the Deep South of the USA where slavery was legal. To the PP who said what alternative description could be used - try actually just naming the area e.g ‘jazz synonymous with the Deep South of the United States’. A term that has connotations of the oppression and injustice suffered by black people should not be used just because it’s ‘easier’ and you can’t think of a suitable alternative.

Somepeoplearesnippy · Yesterday 12:52
I'm sure if we tracked the derivation of many words they would refer to things that would now be considered unacceptable but languages, like attitudes, are constantly evolving. Just because a word meant one thing 20 or 100 or 500 years ago doesn't mean it means the same thing now. It won't even mean the same thing in two different countries or even two different areas of the same country.

You can't erase history from language.

EXACTLY! Language evolves, and as society or views change so do the words we use. Not long ago the term ‘spastic’ was used to refer to people with cerebral palsy. The charity Scope used to be called the ‘Spastics Society’, people with a disability were commonly called ‘handicapped’. I think most people would agree these are positive changes that reflect how we now feel and act - not erasing history.

I forgot to mention before I have a cousin named Dixie.

Joan Baez!

Never heard the term. 🤷🏼‍♀️

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/27/us/dixie-term-south-racism-black-lives-matter-trnd

The word Dixie takes on a different meaning for different people.
Most commonly, it's associated with the old South and Confederate states. Dixie was considered the land south of the Mason-Dixon line, where slavery was legal.
But once the term was used in a minstrel song, its correlation with racist ideologies became crystal clear, according to Ingram.
"Most historians would agree that Dixie is a word people understand as* *obviously a reference not just to a place, but a certain kind of ideology," said Ingram, a history professor at College of Charleston in South Carolina.
"There's no mystery around all this,"she said. "People's instincts about this being a problematic term is definitely correct. It's correlated with something a lot darker than just history."

Look, slavery existed before Dixieland Jazz was created - by black musicians
Dixieland jazz, as with most jazz, mostly played by black musicians
Do you really think they would call it Dixielan jazz if they thought it had slavery connotations
So many mince thinkers around this

I have heard the words, "Dixie' and 'Dixieland" before now but didn't realise it was racist before this thread. On Googling I found this:

'Modern interpretations. Beginning in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans have frequently criticised "Dixie", saying it is a racist relic of the Confederacy and a reminder of decades of white domination and segregation."

I can understand that well enough, it's like 'coloured'. Whether Dixie is still considered racist or not, I do not know. I doubt it was meant that way in this instance, a lot would depend on the ethnicity of the band members.

Language evolves. Look how the gay and lesbian community have embraced the word “queer”, it is often now seen as a positive.

Surely the issue is whether there is any intention to be racist.