I should also note that Cory used to actively read and respond to comments, and often correct any blatantly incorrect headlines if called out on misreading whatever link he decided to sensationalize. I think a lot of long-time readers like myself are wishful that maybe this time he’ll take a moment to fix an error when we complain.
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The BBS is an editorial blog, not an official news website; FFS, people ought to be more discerning about where and how they stay informed. If Corey’s posts bother some people so much, they are always free to, y’know… not bother reading them.
Good luck with all that. It’s his playground, not ours; no one is forcing any of us to be here.
It bears asking;
Why even bother coming back at all then, if you’re so displeased with one writer? To see if the site is still beneath you, or still fails to meet your expectations?
Again if that’s the case, I don’t see why one would waste any time on a site that they don’t actually enjoy. (Unless complaining about things that won’t change is something you enjoy doing, of course.)
It’s too bad if you feel that this isn’t the optimal community for you personally, but each person gets to make that choice for themselves.
Personally, I only come to the BBS to be entertained and shoot the shit, and for those purposes it suits my needs. I have to wonder at people who seem to expect more than that from an opinion site.
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So it’s okay to lie as long as it’s on a blog and not official.
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Yep.
It isn’t just this piece. There is a strong tendency, across many subjects, for white people to frantically deflect and derail as soon as the topic of white supremacy arises. It’s a really obvious pattern.
Is the headline inaccurate? Yes, if read in a hyper-literal manner. Does that have any bearing at all on the substance of the story? Not really.
Squaredancing and similar styles predate Henry Ford. Nevertheless, the popularity of squaredancing in American culture is fundamentally based in the active efforts of Henry Ford to promote white supremacy.
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Who is the lobby behind Callerlab?
I know you well enough from this blog to know we don’t disagree on the actual issues here, and that we both think anything racist is awful. 
I likely wouldn’t have chimed in IF it was just this article in this subject matter, alas it isn’t just this article but a disturbing pattern that regularly undermines real issues across multiple subjects.
I agree, and that is a shame. This is why it is especially important to make sure to not give them dozens of reasons to write something off as lies. It is possible to like facts and be against racism. Anything else undermines our side MORE that any opposition ever could, for what a few extra clicks?
I think the real factual story of Ford pushing squaredancing in public education for a racist agenda is interesting enough to look up, which i did, and the truthful version certainly stands on its own facts without lying about it or making shit up. This story is worth getting right because it has the potential to lead to some really interesting discussions in todays political and social climate. It is a shame we aren’t having that conversation because first we needed to clarify what the real story is and figure out for ourselves which bits were true. That seems like an easy thing to avoid if one really cares about the issue and not just stirring the pot for clicks.
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(Meanwhile at the convention of the International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IVuPZq5r5o)
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I just want to point out that you’ve pretended to ask me a question solely so that you could then provide a selection of “Because I think I’m better than you” answers that you wanted to publicly suggest I would give.
I’m not complaining; I’m not asking for mod intervention or anything like that; I’m just pointing it out as a thing that just happened. As far as toxicity goes, this is very mild. But it’s clear from what you chose to write that you don’t respect anything I had to say, and didn’t have any hesitation about putting words into my mouth and throwing me under the bus. This wasn’t an honest conversation made in good faith; this was just a vehicle for you to remind everyone that I’m part of the out-group, here on BB.
It’s a little silly, really, Meliz; you and I have actually been saying the same thing. We’re both saying that people who don’t like something here aren’t going to be able to change the place, and should move on to somewhere more in line with their own values. You’re doing it by trying to push away people who make criticisms of this place that you love, and I’m doing it by telling those people that I’ve personally found places which work better for me, and that I’ve actually became happier after moving to them. Attacking me like this is unnecessary; we’re both saying the same thing, and to the same people! We’re just saying it while standing in two different positions.
Personally, I love that BB is genuinely progressive. I love the silly and awesome things that get posted here, and the important political updates. BB got me through some very tough times, particularly during and immediately after the presidential election, and it’ll always hold a special place in my heart for that. The whole thing about Cory’s articles makes me sad, yes, and I can’t change that. Similarly, I can’t change the occasional toxic elements of the community here. For me personally, it’s the community that’s most important. And… to be honest… for me, the fun I’ve had with the good parts of this community just aren’t enough to offset the bad experiences I’ve had with the bad parts of this community. And it took my brief return to remind me of that.
So. Thank you for giving me my clue back, Meliz. All the best to you. 
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Note that drug control and gun control also have deeply racist roots in the US. (Accepting “shooting junk” in the offered Texan definition.)
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You mean if you read it as one might English words written down?
Don’t know what came over me.
“Square dancing was promoted by Henry Ford to get white people to stop dancing to black music.”
is very different
to
“Square dancing was a racist hoax funded by Henry Ford to get white people to stop dancing to black music”
Why? Because one is about the actions of one terrible man and another is about a form of dance. What Cory wrote is like saying rice is a racist food because Mussolini wanted Italians to eat it in preference to pasta. Mussolini did promote rice, but that has no bearing on whether one should or should not eat rice or feel differently about it. Hitler was against animal cruelty and thought that Vienna looked nice. Horrible people can be in favor of nice things without those things being horrible in themselves.
As it happens square dancing isn’t a hoax, is no more artificial than any other dance, and is the natural outgrowth of the styles of dance common in Europe at the time, present in all sorts of other places. It also isn’t racist, though it was, at one point, promoted for racist reasons which, incidentally, failed. This is very different from the article and miles different from the the dishonest title.
The question to ask here is whether this is about history, about combating racism, or about kicking southern people in the teeth. I strongly suspect it is the latter. I’m not American. I have no horse in this race, but this sort of disrespect of the truth leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I expect better from the people who are, notionally, my ideological allies.
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Reading this thread I see that at least a few people think it’s ok to spread divisive misinformation here because this is not a news blog and it seems that those who came to warn people that the article and title are misleading are being told they are pedantic or should find some other content to read. That’s disheartening to say the least.
I’m simply left wondering if the money and effort put in by Ford in the 1920’s can explain why country music is still mostly white and why the listeners are still a fairly racist bunch. It seems a bit of a leap to lay all of that at the feet of one racist.
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This is where i fall as well. I do agree that Boing Boing is not in the business of investigative journalism, but disseminating false information and then not taking corrective measures on said bad information is pretty troubling to me. It tarnishes whatever goodwill and reputation you have with your community and those outside looking in.
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This aptly demonstrates a corollary to the “disingenuously misleading statement”. Any attempt to cast a critical eye on statements made by anyone on the “left” side of a cultural issues is automatically construed as defending the opposite point of view. Which puts a critically thinking person like myself in awkward position, I can smile and nod and toe the line, raise my fist and yell “This is wrong!”, I can say nothing at all, or I can get into an internet argument with a stranger that I probably mostly agree with. Saying “nothing at all” is what I opt for most of the time.
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I get very annoyed when people ignore the content of something in favour of finding a mistake to nitpick. But I think in this case it really matters. I found the headline downright shocking. It was incredible to think that before the early 1900’s there was no such thing as square dancing, and that the history I had presumed existed was just me buying into a hoax. It turns out that isn’t true at all.
I don’t think the deletion of hundreds of years of people participating in a cultural tradition is a minor mistake in presentation. I find the difference between appropriating culture and inventing culture to be a very meaningful one that matters to me.
Henry Ford’s promotion of square dancing for racist reasons is an interesting story that I would have been interested in reading without the downright false headline. I didn’t go looking for a detail to nitpick in order to discredit the story, I was just lied to.*
* I doubt I was lied to.
There are far more people criticizing the headline and calling out the falsehood than doing anything close to defending it, and those “defending” it are still admitting it’s a mistake. A critically thinking person like yourself should accept the evidence that there is no need to form a persecution complex.
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I didn’t say or imply that. If you feel that “Corey lies,” then don’t read his posts.
It’s really not that difficult, and it’s more effective than expecting him to change.
No I was genuinely asking, although I did include my own speculations.
It doesn’t make any sense to me; if you don’t enjoy this site any more or have found others to be a better fit for you why you’d continue to willingly waste your time.
Um, I don’t know you from a can of paint; sorry, but your comments deserve only as much “respect” as the next person’s; in that I won’t be rude or uncivil needlessly. But it’s just another opinion, one among thousands.
If you feel that way, that you’re an outcast, that’s all on you; it has nothing to do with me.
Wow; you have serious some assumptions going on there. I have no power to “push anyone away” from this site, nor am I trying to.
It’s a free site, and Corey isn’t the only writer contributing here, which means that skipping over his content if it’s lacking is not terribly difficult.
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The history of country music, especially in the 1920s and 30s is definitely much bigger than one man and is not an easy history (much like all decades long histories) to succinctly wrap up in a few words, paragraphs or even books. There were many people playing, listening to, dancing to and enjoying country music well before Ford started promoting it and some of those people were racist and some of them weren’t. But yeah, it’s disheartening to have one article (edit: Or misleading headline about an article.) throw a rich, interesting, convoluted history into question and pin everything that happened in that history on one man.
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Oh my God, no… The line dancing was the one positive thing about her (though I wouldn’t have thought so at the time). In hindsight she really shouldn’t have been working with children at all, and in this day and age I’d like to think she’d be summarily shitcanned.
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This particular topic isn’t what I’d call a “hot button issue”, and this is why I chose this instance to complain about something that I find all too prevalent on the left, and that I think is actively harmful to the important, underlying concepts that are being promoted. The framing of ideas is important.
I do not feel “persecuted”, but I think I have a tendency to overreact. It doesn’t matter how sensibly something is presented, there is always some sort of blowback, it is just the nature of commenting on the internet, which is why I don’t do it a whole lot. I am fiercely intellectual, but also fiercely emotional, and I will quickly become as ape-like as everyone else in an internet argument.
I do feel “excluded”, as a thinker, but that is the life of a thinker. This doesn’t keep me up at night, there are lots of other things to think about besides my own individual place in the world and how I feel about it. I consider thinking to be my primary job(it pays rather poorly, so far).
I was never interested in politics, political thinking is narrow and circular, and isn’t really trying to solve the unbelievably complex problem of humanity at all.
As a young man, I thought that humanity overall was pretty ridiculous, and I was more naturally disposed to being an observer anyway.
We(meaning humanity) appear to be at a sort of crux, we seem to be in danger of moving backwards. Can I justify watching anymore? Probably not. Do I have anything to contribute? Does it really matter at all?
Arguing on the internet is obviously fruitless. It might be smarter, it I’m going to make a statement at all, just to make it, and ignore any response to it, or at least, don’t respond. That seems at least arrogant, if not downright cowardly. It might be smarter still to say nothing at all, and just read the arguments and try to drill down to the heart of the matter, which is what I mostly do, and one of the things at the heart of the matter is the framing of ideas.
By perceiving me in way that I felt was inaccurate, you forced me to confront a couple of ideas, one, that your perception was not inaccurate, and two, the tone of my communication brought about this perception, even if it was inaccurate. That is good to know going forward.
Perhaps you are a thinker yourself, and if you are, then you know our biggest weakness is that we spend a lot of time in our own heads.
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Okay, I am unwilling to engage in further conversation with you, @Melizmatic. You clearly aren’t interested in responding to what I actually write, so I would consider it a personal favour if you would refrain from replying to me in future. I will, of course, reciprocate. Thanks.
This has so far been an interesting discussion. I still do not understand the “hoax” part of the story. I get that Ford was an anti Semite, a fact that is not really up for debate. Of course it is more complicated than him just being a giant racist. He did provide the funding for the George Washington Carver School, and heavily endowed the Tuskegee Institute. But reading the source material, it seems like his reaction towards the popular music and dance of the day was to fall back on nostalgia, and pine for the music and dance of his youth. This seems to me to be a pretty typical complaint of the elderly about the times that they find themselves in. He met his wife at an old-time dance in 1885, and later in life they were both super enthusiastic about square and contra dancing.
The difference is that Ford had the means and hubris to believe that he could turn back the clock. Besides the dancing and fiddling, he sought to preserve old-timey America with Greenfield village, where you need to go if you want to see giant steam engines or the bus that Rosa Parks refused to give her seat up in.
Ford addressed this issue himself in 1926- "We are not, as has been imaged, conducting any kind of a crusade against modern dancing. We are merely dancing in the way that gives us the most pleasure…As a young man I liked to dance, but the only dances we knew were what are now called the “old-fashioned dances” - the schottische, the polka, the chorus jig, quadrilles, gavottes, and the like. The younger people nowadays, so we found, did not know these dances, and the older people - those who really needed dancing - have grown rusty. They thought they were too old. One never gets too old to dance. "
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