[Doyle] From Dixie, With Love | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

[Doyle] From Dixie, With Love

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As a University of Mississippi graduate excited about the progress of his alma mater in the past decade, a strong distaste for the likes of Richard Barrett is interwoven into my DNA.

For the many of you who have no idea who I'm talking about, Mr. Barrett—who for the remainder of this article we will refer to simply as "Dicky"—is an old, crotchety, learned Miss.-based white supremacist. With reason, Dicky was not interviewed for this article, although I'm sure whatever he would have to say would match in eloquence and in relevance the prose of Sir David Duke, Joe Bazooka or Elmer Fudd. Yet, this man's odd place in our ranks explains why my alma mater may soon lose its beloved fight song.

Dicky is not a powerful man. Save for the aforementioned cartoon characters, he represents no major constituency in the state. Yet for some reason, any time the topic of race inevitably boils to the surface at my fair university, Dicky seems to be the first number on every reporter's speed dial. Why? Because he is one of the few remaining Mississippi artifacts who publicly spews hate speech, and reporters need someone to "balance" a race story. So along with respectful messages from our students and faculty, we get Dicky. What many reporters don't quite grasp is that giving Dicky equal exposure as the chancellor or the student body president is unwittingly giving him power.

Elmer Fudd can now place the article on his refrigerator. "Aaah, welevance."

Which brings us to this fight-song silliness. Our school is at risk of losing "From Dixie with Love" because a fringe group of students and alumni use the last five notes to scream "The South Will Rise Again," a phrase racist in most contexts and ignorant in all the rest.

"From Dixie" is a perfect song for our university. A medley of an abolitionist tune ("The Battle Hymn of the Republic") and a Confederate battle song ("Dixie"), it recognizes our contradictory history—a university now pioneering in race relations that was founded by the same state aristocracy who pushed for Mississippi's secession. Some dislike the song because of its Civil War focus, and thanks especially to the "The South Will Rise Again" chanters, many of our 2,000 black students find it malicious.

The Associated Student Body Senate, with good reason, has publicly asked for the chants to stop. Chancellor Dan Jones, just four months into his new job, is backing up the students, and has threatened to cease playing the song if the chants don't stop. The testing ground was Saturday's North Arizona game. I couldn't hear anything when watching the game on television, but friends of mine who attended the game did hear some saying it.

Now, "From Dixie with Love" is only a song, and the sun will still rise over the hills of north Mississippi if it's never played at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium again. But it is a mistake to give this fringe group power by removing it. Instead of expending all this energy devising ways to shame the chanters into submission, we should instead consider why they use the language in the first place, and come up with reasonable ways to discourage the act.

We should launch an education initiative to treat the cause and not the symptoms.

It's true: Some of the chanters are just troublemakers and immune to all reason -- the Dicky Barretts; the Elmer Fudds -- but most are rational people who simply don't know any better. My good friend Roun McNeal, former Associated Student Body President, used to join in years ago, and recently related to the Associated Press why he stopped.

"I said the chant one day, and there was a black family sitting in front of me, and they turned around and gave me this look like I hurt them," he said.

Ole Miss has an office of diversity affairs. We also have a group of students dedicated to social integration and healthy race relations among the student body. We house the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. There's no reason why we can't find an effective way to curb this activity without removing a song most of us enjoy.

Because it's an antiquated Civil War tune, there are many perfectly legitimate reasons to let "From Dixie with Love" die. If the chancellor, the faculty and the students find this to be the case, then let's have an open discussion. This can be a teachable moment.

But please, Chancellor Jones, don't remove this song because of the actions of cartoon characters.

Bryan Doyle was editor of The Daily Mississippian during the 2006-2007 academic year and the former music editor of the JFP. He is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.

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