For those of you with no qualms about waving the stars and bars on your front porch or applying it to the bumper of your car, today is a sad day; the Ole Miss Rebels’ famous “From Dixie With Love” fight song has been banned after fans refused to disassociate it with the - ahem - controversial “The South Will Rise Again” chant.
(You see, guys? This is an angry, bloody skeleton taking up your cause. Some people might balk at sentiments like these. We can’t help it.)
The final blow came after Mississippi chancellor Dan Jones asked fans not to chant it during the fight song; as noted above, that didn’t sit well with fans, whose inner persecution radars went berserk and told them to just chant louder. Moreover, as Jones notes, some outside fans still associate the chant with the worst elements of the South’s past - and want it to stay that way.
Here’s some of Jones’ statement, from the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL:
“Here at the University of Mississippi, there must be no doubt that this is a warm and welcoming place for all,” Jones wrote in a letter to the Ole Miss community. “We cannot even appear to support those outside our community who advocate a revival of segregation. We cannot fail to respond.”
Jones said he would consider lifting the ban “if the chant stops and our elected student leaders ask for the song to return.”
Jones said previously that, if the chant continued during last Saturday’s game against Northern Arizona, he would ask the band to discontinue the song.
“Yet some have chosen to continue the chant,” Jones wrote. “Sadly, we have also heard from a few outside our university who support the chant as an expression of values associated with a segregationist movement discredited so many years ago.”
Full text here (pops to .PDF in new window).
It’s a shame, but there you go. This is why we can’t have nice things, Ole Miss. Too many people who never learned to share and play nicely.
But the thing is, it’s a fine fight song, wonderfully emblematic of the pageantry of college football. In fact, f–k it: once more, for old times’ sakes.
Right there, loud and clear, accompanied by all the laughter and cheering that usually happens when people know they’re getting away with something that they shouldn’t.
The problem is that for all the legitimate undertones to the “The South will rise again” chant - that it’s about the rebuilding of cities and towns in the wake of the Civil War, for example - you can’t extricate it from its uglier heritage of slavery, segregation, and oppressive Jim Crow laws that dominated southern culture for centuries - and still permeate it, albeit to a much lesser degree, today. That bloody skeleton guy from that flag up above? We don’t see him rebuilding anything. Just sayin’.
It’s like booing. You can’t boo a coach without the kids hearing it. You can’t boo and say “but this isn’t about you!” And you can’t chant “The South will rise again” without it being heard by a whole lot of Southerners who’d be in a much worse place in society if that South came back. They’re called black people.
1:57 pm on November 11th, 2009
As someone who was born, raised, and lived most of his life in the North (in one of this country’s largest cities), I am now a Yankee living in the South. I’m here to tell you that after living in lower Alabama (the Florida panhandle) for three years, the South gets a bum rap. The ONLY racist talk I hear is from my friend and family up north. You just don’t hear it here. You don’t see it either. These people have had to live with derision and scorn based on the myths. They just aren’t like that down here. They ARE like that up north. Trust me.
2:13 pm on November 11th, 2009
And to head off any one refuting my use of the word “myth”, I mean that in the sense that it IS a myth to think that renmants of oppression still exist down here.
2:39 pm on November 11th, 2009
Not much of the talk may be racist, but the underlying tone is still very much there.
A lot of white folks are scared of, and do not like, black folks. Not good, but unfortunately true.
It is a fact that a lot of the old southern wealth was created by owning slaves, and a lot of their personal wealth was measured by the slaves they owned. That is a very sad chapter in the US history, one that I hope is never forgotten.
2:51 pm on November 11th, 2009
that’s one hell of a fight song. too bad they can’t play it anymore. just stop chanting, people.
5:06 pm on November 11th, 2009
They took away the stars and bars, they took away Dixie, they took away Johnny Reb, now their taking away the South Will Rise Again? Why not just change the mascot to the Northern Industrialists, wear Union Blue uniforms and sing “We Are the Champions” at every game.
6:01 pm on November 11th, 2009
I have to disagree Northern Knight, that southern wealth you speak of is looooong gone. Most of it was lost during Reconstruction, and basically any/all wealth from slave plantations doesn’t exist anymore. As for white folks being scared of and not liking black folks: That goes both ways and knows no borders, north, south, east or west.
6:55 pm on November 11th, 2009
The south will rise again?! Historians will tell you it’s meaning is the rebuiling of the south after the Civil War. However, JoeShmoe will attribute it to segregation. Sounds like a lot of racism is hiding behind a fight song. I am a born and raised Houstonian. Racism is still around. Just drive north of Houston about 30 miles on I-45 and you’ll see it in Conroe. Racism=a giant waste of time and energy.
7:40 pm on November 11th, 2009
Racism is alive and well in Mississippi (and other parts of the South), and to believe it is not the case is just foolish. So people may not be calling black people “niggers” but that’s not all there is to racism (although this still happens too). Just because slavery ended, the accumulation of wealth from the backs of black people did not end. Have you heard of Reconstruction and what kinds of corrupt things happened both during and after it ended? Have you heard of share-cropping? Or the thousands of other systems set up to further keep black people “in their place” while the land owners made money? Do you know about the segregation of schools and the piss poor education people received based off of the inequalities of schools? Or the value of being able to vote and the horror of knowing the people who decide what does or doesn’t happen is NOT in your hands? Or the economic power that education, land, voting rights, and other privileges afford you? Please, people. Read your history books. And not the bullshit text books they gave you in high school and middle school. Wake up and open your eyes to the reality of our history, and maybe we won’t be on different sides of the fence.
9:29 pm on November 11th, 2009
Ummm….Yeah. Chicago Yankee in the South, I’m from Arkansas, and you must have found the only haven for non-racists in the entire South. You talk like all that racism happened in the distant past. The Civil Rights movement was a despicable period for the South as well, and that was only 50 years ago. Hell, in my state the NATIONAL GUARD had to be sent in to let black kids into their school because our racist GOVERNOR had the police keeping them out. I still hear racial epithets on a near-daily basis. I think you may be experiencing what folks call Church Talk. Everybody’s your best friend at Church, but wait till you turn your back. The only MYTH that you are perpetrating is that there is very little racism in the South. You should be out with us when we take my nephew, who is half black and half white, to public places. I wouldn’t get stared at that much if I had a penis growing out of my nose! Like Pissed Mississippian said, sharecropping, only counting them as 3/5 of a person, and keeping them segregated was just as much a part of that racism as anything. Even if you had a solid argument, trying to justify something like this song is an automatic FAIL! Whether you are or not, you will always come off looking racist when you defend it. The social stigmas that are attached to it will remain so, and should remain so, as a reminder of a terrible period in our history.
1:58 pm on November 12th, 2009
South: You LOST! Get over it.
1:05 am on November 13th, 2009
Hey south. . we’ve rethought it, and you can go ahead and secede. Sooner the better.
1:21 am on November 13th, 2009
This is NOT about racism. This is about a little man trying to prove himself at a big school. It is completely ridiculous. The only HINT of racism at Ole Miss is the existence of a “Black Student Union.” What about a “White Student Union”????????
11:38 am on November 13th, 2009
And herein lies the problem. Of course racism still exists. If you actually think it’s ever going away, there’s a large plot on the moon I’d like to sell you. But the buffoons here with “hey south you lost” and “secede now” only emphasizes my point. The south is no different than the north in that there are racists everywhere; it’s part of the human condition. And you don’t have to be white to be racist….I know, that concept might be too big for some of you to grasp.
11:39 am on November 13th, 2009
Bob said: “Whether you are or not, you will always come off looking racist …”
Yep. Insert whatever is convenient at the end of that statement.
8:37 pm on November 13th, 2009
“I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.” Booker T. Washington