"(Way Down Upon the) Suwannee River,"
by Stephen Foster, is Florida's state song.
Actually, the name of the song
is "Old Folks at Home."
When Owen and Balder learned the song, in elementary school--Delray Elementary,
where I went to school, and my mother and father went to school--the words of the
chorus had been changed from "Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary" to
"Oh, brothers, how my heart grows weary," I guess on the theory that black
children will be offended to learn that their ancestors were called darkeys, or longed
for the plantation.
I wonder who has the authority to change the words to
a song like that. The legislature? The state Board of Education? Popular usage?
The language police?
Former state legislator Willy Logan, who proposed adopting
another song, because "Old Folks at Home" was racist, was arrested for
masturbating in a public restroom and removed from his high government position.
Do you think that is a coincidence? He was taken down for his beliefs.
In the schoolyard, many of the black schoolchildren called each other motherfucker,
or nigger, or my nigger, although Owen and Balder didn't call them
that, and it's not prudent of me to report they called themselves that, in a book.
That's like saying I endorse them calling each other that, I encourage it, indeed,
I may be the cause of it, since, being white, I made them disrespect themselves enough
to use such ghetto speech.
"Your dog want to suck my dick," as
one of them said when Rhya Jo jumped up on him.
Thank you for explaining
that. Get out of my yard and quit making my dog bark at black people.
The
black schoolchildren liked to make my dog bark at them by tormenting her from behind
the fence.