User talk:Historian1970

Dear PEHowland, I have responded on your talk page regarding this conversation. I would note that the research that I cited on the page is not my own view, in that I am merely relying on the scholarly and historical record (which I referenced and cited). My writings are not an opinion, but they are, to the best of my abilities, a summary of the most reliable sources that I could find. They are peer-reviewed, research scholarship based on empirical evidence and that is different than any one person's opinion or social circle's opinion.--Historian1970 (talk) 21:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

''Fully understood, and you are entitled to your view. However, it is only one interpretation, and you need to respect the Wikipedia concept of the neutral point of view (NPOV). I have tried to edit the article to respect this, with your perspective and others. This is not "vandalism". It would be nice if you could post without using a pseudonym, then perhaps it would become clearer about what your concerns are! As a PhD myself, I am not particularly impressed by "scholarly" and "academic" references - these aere all written by people with prejudices and agendas. The best we can try to do is reflect the different arguments and let the reader draw their own conclusions.'' Paul (talk) 21:22, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Dear Historian1970 - whilst I appreciate you have your own views on Border Morris, to delete much of the original article and the evidence cited therein also constituted vandalism. If you have alternate interpretations, fine, but then you should write the article in such a way that both viewpoints are preserved, not to simply delete the original material and put in claims that the whole thing is a racist minstrel show. I'm not sure what your interest or knowledge of Border Morris is, as you post anonymously. However, I dance with Silurian Border Morris, grew up in the villages that dances were collected from, and personally knew/know Dave Jones and Keith Francis who collected the dances in the late 1960's from the old guys in the villages. There was no element of minstrel in what was collected and these primary sources of collection were all clear that the reason for the black face was disguise. There is also written evidence (which you deleted from the original article) that mentions the black face and morris back in the 14th Century - 500 years before minstrel shows.

To do this in an unbalanced way places a racial slur on the whole tradition which certainly does not reflect the views of current dancers, and is not fully supported by the historical evidence. It is as much speculation as theories of disguise, dressing up as the King of Morocco or anything else. By all means add a section of modern North America interpretations of border morris, but please do so in a balanced way. I have tried to make a start at this in the latest edits. Paul (talk) 15:52, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Note - I have also significantly shortened the piece on Border MOrris on the Morris dance page. This is not in response to the details of what you wrote, simply that the border information on the main morris page was too long in comparison with the other traditions and was directly duplicating the Border Morris page. It makes more sense to write the material once, and cross-link. Duplicating material will lead to conflicting and different information on the two pages in time. So, I hope you are content with at least resolving the description of border morris in just one place! Paul (talk)