On 07 May 2022, bigdog <geowright1963@gmail.com> posted some
news:dc966bd1-9978-4ba5-8310-bef35ffaea04n@googlegroups.com:

> For once, one of our institutions has refused to give in to cancel
> culture demands to scrap one of our great traditions. The Kentucky
> Derby will again have a choir singing Stephen Foster's song My Old
> Kentucky Home, accompanied by the University of Louisville marching
> band. Modern day wokesters falsely claim that the song as written was
> celebration of slavery.
>
> "The song, written by Stephen Foster, tells the story of a person who
> is enslaved being sold down river, where conditions would be harsher.
>
> Its inclusion in Derby and its position as the official state song, as
> well as the composer’s original intention, have been debated for
> decades. While some claim it’s an anti-slavery song, Louisville
> author and historian Emily Bingham has pushed back against that."
>
> The reality is the song was inspired by the book Uncle Tom's Cabin and
> was an anti-slavery song. Rather than accept what the modern day
> cancel culture has to say about the song, I prefer to go with what one
> of Stephen Foster's contemporaries, Frederick Douglas, had to say
> about the song.
>
> In his 1855 autobiography, "My Bondage and My Freedom," Douglass wrote
> that the official state song of Kentucky awakens "the sympathies for
> the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root, grow and
> flourish.”
>
> Partially bowing to the cancel culture and partially due to Covid
> concerns, the song had been played by a lone bugler without lyrics
> last year. This year the Kentucky Derby will restore the tradition of
> having a choir and the band perform the song as the horses are led
> onto the track. It is one of the most moving traditions in all of
> sports and it is nice to see it restored to its proper place despite
> the howls from the wokesters.

All you have to do to defeat wokeism is stand your ground.