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 God .

Dixie may be derived from Jeremiah Dixon, one of the surveyors of the Mason–Dixon line,

That was marketed forc mokers! The stuff I vaguely remember was Gibbs Dentitice:

From www.madsensmemories.com/memories/2018/10/16/foaming-gibbs-dentifrice
It came in a round tin with a dome-like tin cover, and looked like a cylindrical cake of pink soap sitting on the base. You had to brush a wet toothbrush across it a few times to whip up a foam, rather as men did with shaving cream. With this somewhat gritty pink foam you cleaned your teeth.
I must have used it thousands of times as a child. It cost about 7.5d in the old money, or about 3p for a tin. It had flavour added, a sweet, slightly soapy, slightly sickly taste to it, and it was pink.

🤮🤢
I hate fish!!

Dixieland - one word - just refers to music that originated in the southern states. It's not intrinsically racist.

The Dixie Chicks didn't drop the word because it's racist. They dropped it because White Southerners (who probably are racist) were co-opting them an example of white southern culture. And they didn't want to be identified with that because they don't feel they are, specifically.

I don't think this is really a problem for a band playing at a fete in Bridlington.

While we're at it though "rock'n'roll" started as slang for fucking. So that's gotta go.

@PointsSouth what do you have against Bridlington?

I was trying to think of somewhere that was very unlike New Orleans.

Though I hear the Bridlington Mardi Gras is getting wilder and wilder. The things people will do for Smarties.

I agree that it is very unlike New Orleans!

I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child. That was something euphemistically named ‘baby orange’ and as I remember served up in white ceramic jugs !! I also remember blue plastic bed covers spread out at mealtimes for those who were bedbound, massive ‘meatballs’ and baked beans served on Wednesdays and fish, chips and peas served every Friday !!. Saturday was Scouse - it was Alder Hey in Liverpool !! The toothpaste I remember as being pink powder - you had to wet your toothbrush and scrub it around the surface of the tin - was called ‘Euthymol’. Shuddering at the memory of both.

Thank you.

HA! I applaud the Bridlingtonians' standards, Smarties are infinitely better than the cheap plastic tat we lose our minds for over here 😉

When you say "over here", that makes me wonder — what's coming to mind for you when you hear "Smarties"?

Oh bless you op. You thought you’d be getting brownie points for being our WHITE knight in shining armour 😆

By over here I mean New Orleans (I made an earlier post about the history of Dixie and Dixieland) and by Smarties, I mean the Cadbury's ones and not the crappy sugar US Smarties 😁

Oh thank God, you meant proper Smarties (Not Cadbury's, tho, but it's an understandable mistake.) Otherwise I might be mildly concerned for the well-being of your taste buds

Incidentally, when I gave Smarties to my pet rats, they carefully removed the (obviously inedible) outer shell of the nut/bean/whatever they thought it was, before eating just the chocolate insides. Fuckin adorable imo

I'm mainly here for the fellow orange triggered migraine sufferers.
But I would like to know how the OP went if she did ring the band to tell them not to describe their music style using the commonly used term for describing said music style.

How do you know your fellow sufferers are orange??!! 😁
And yes, @FauxWhiteOrchid , have you 'phoned them yet? There is a trench of people waiting with bated breath...

Who are you to say what they can call themselves?

BTW "Dixie" was Abraham Lincoln's favourite tune. He asked the band to play it when he visited the Union Army in Richmond.

@FinalInstructionstotheAudience You can still get tooth powder in a tin. I use it. My DCs say it tastes revolting.

Is this an act for your good deed calculator OP?

Is it so that you can feel all virtuous and superior for being such a great person?

Virtue signalling knows no bounds.

Oh dear. Let that be a lesson folks that trying to find offence everywhere to show how progressive you are makes you look like an uninformed idiot.

I think its odd to be offended on behalf of Americans and I think its ott to ask them to change. The region has connections with racism, but there is a lot of history there also that isnt connected with racism and in its about the music for them. If you don't like their name then don't go to their shows.

@FinalInstructionstotheAudience as a NI Catholic: I mean, yeah, I would ban Orange marches if I could, with numbers like “Kick the Pope” and disruption of half the province during marching season, plus the inherent Catholic-hating in the Orange Order.

Dixieland jazz is a genre of music

Should I be worried my neighbours Mr and Mrs Dixie are racist?

Ah, but can some of you people eat orange Smarties?