Triggered NCSU ‘snowflake’ seeks ban on the word “Dixie”.
Seriously. If this skull full of mush — who happens to be 
the reigning student body president — has her way, the D-word will join the N-word on the list of ‘Words that shall never be uttered in polite society’:
Where the winds of Dixie softly blow,
O’er the fields of Caroline,
There stands ever cherished NC State,
As thy honored shrine,
So lift your voices! Loudly sing,
From hill to oceanside,
Our hearts ever hold you, NC State,
In the folds of our love and pride.
Happy Red and White Week everyone! This is the week during which we pay homage to our rich history and growth as a university, where we take the time to unite as one in our traditions and pride, where we unequivocally express our unity as members of the Wolfpack.
Today I write to you not in one particular identity, but as an intersection of them all: a student leader and person of color at a predominately white institution.
While other institutions, some peer and sister, kicked off their school year with protests and distaste for campus statues and building names, I sat back comfortably knowing that NC State didn’t have to go through the public scrutiny.
Was I naive? Absolutely. I knew racial biases were on campus. I’ve seen them, I’ve heard them, and I’ve felt them. I knew a much more complex problem existed than just statues and building commemorations. I knew this comfort, however brief, was wrong.
Though we don’t have statues or buildings commemorating confederate and/or racist people (that we know of), we force students of color to sing the word Dixie in arguably the most sacred song that any Wolfpack member gets to sing, the Alma Mater.
Our Alma Mater pays homage to our university and our connections to Wolfpack members of past, present and future. However, this brief hymn, sung at athletic events, convocations and orientations, while also etched on plates, canvasses and glass in our student unions, bears more weight than one thinks.
Dixie [dik-see] noun: the southern states of the United States, especially those that were formerly part of the Confederacy.
Derives from Jeremiah Dixon, a surveyor of the Mason–Dixon line, which defined the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania, and, for the most part, free and slave states subsequent to the Missouri Compromise.
Your interpretation of the word dixie might be different than mine. To you, it might not mean anything. To you, it might be a harmless devotion to our nation’s history. To you, I might be overreacting. Is a word harmless when it shoulders a weight on the backs of our students of color? It is much more than a devotion to our nation’s heritage. It’s etched and effortlessly sung in every area of our university experience.
I know college is a breeding ground for difficult conversations and intellectual growth. I know that some people might think removing this word from our Alma Mater is not what college is about. But am I hiding from this word, or are you hiding behind it?
At convocation, I challenged the incoming class to be uncomfortable, not by causing harm to oneself and/or others, but by expanding one’s ability to grow. I now challenge you, the student body, to have uncomfortable conversations. Ask your peers how they feel about Dixie. Ask the faculty and staff about racial biases. Most importantly, listen.
This homecoming season, I want you to try to relish the Alma Mater, and the word you sing as you stand next to your friend who is Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American or Asian. I want you to be uncomfortable and think what this word would mean to you if you lived with the weight of racism on your back every day.
I want you to ask yourself, if this word is harmless, if it is history, if it doesn’t mean any harm, why can’t it be kept in the museums where we commemorate our history? Also ask yourself: Do I want this word? Do I want its history? Will you shoulder its weight? The answer you give determines the burden or the lack thereof that your peers and loved ones carry.
Brace yourselves. Here comes the irony:
On Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. in 434 Daniels Hall, DASA’s Living and Learning Initiatives will be hosting a night of dialogue on this exact conversation: what are the racial implications of the word “Dixie” in our Alma Mater? As associate professor Blair Kelley moderates I invite you all to listen, question and share your thoughts about this key piece of our Wolfpack history.
In solidarity,
Jackie Gonzalez
They’re holding this forum on racism in a building on the campus named after 
Josephus Daniels, the late publisher of the News & Observer. Daniels turned the N&O into the official propaganda arm of the state’s white supremacy movement. The N&O, under Daniels, is blamed for agitating events that led to the 1898 Wilmington Race Riots that led to the assault and murder of so many innocent blacks in that fair city.
And here they are worried about the word “Dixie.”
If we head down this road, where does it lead? No more DIxie Classic Fair? No more Dixie Youth League Baseball? Women named Dixie having to change their names?
This Stalinist snowflake is downright Orwellian.
And to add to the irony, Josephus Daniels father was a Union sympathizer during the War Between the States who betrayed the Confederate defenses on the Pamlico River to Union invaders, and was later shot by enraged townspeople as he attempted to join the yankee evacuation of Washington, NC after setting fire to the town in 1864. This major white supremist Is a descendant of a UNION man, not a Confederate.
It is also ironic that as a lifelong southerner, the only time I have ever heard the song “Dixie” playing on the radio was when I was in Prague, Czech Republic. During the fall of communism, anti-communist protesters in a number of eastern European countries, including East Germany, carried the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbol of freedom and of resistance to tyranny.
There are a number of theories as to the origin of the term “Dixie” which term predates the War Between the States. One is that it is derived the $10 paper currency of Louisiana which had the French word for ”ten” – “Dix” on its face.
This woman seems very bigoted against southerners.
The jackals of political correctness are becoming more comical by the day. The sad thing is the idiots in charge who listen to such crap.
This pathetic girl’s arguments make no sense whatsoever. She is just part of George Soros’ campaign to divide America, wittingly or unwittingly..
Trying to tie “Dixie” to the Dixon of Mason-Dixon and then somehow to slavery is a real stretch. At the time Mason and Dixon surveyed that line, Pennsylvania to the north of it was a slave state, so it did not divide states with slavery from those without. Those who are trying to divide America are not very strong on real facts or real history.
Not such a stretch. Listed as the most straightforward explanation on History.com Dixie became “an informal demarcation point between the southern slave states and the free states to the north.”
http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-is-the-south-known-as-dixie
“Straightforward” to whom? Those with an agenda?
Do you think the north was known as “Masie” after Mason?
Sheesh!
Straightforward to Hisory.com. If you read the article you would see that it is their word.
“Straightforward” as to the personal opinion of the author of that article and that person’s own agenda. The author provides no historical evidence whatsoever of that usage or their opinion it is “likely”. Other articles posted on that site clearly have an anti-southern agenda and rehash the far left talking points against monuments.
The origin from the Louisiana currency is one I have heard multiple times in the last 50 years. This one about the Mason-Dixon line is a totally new one, probably revisionist history to fit an agenda.
Well, no. It is the word of the specific author of that article, who gives no evidence whatsoever supporting that viewpoint other than naked speculation.. Other articles on that site are from authors who repeat the far left’s talking points on their attacks on our monuments, so if the site has an agenda, it is anti-southern, but in a signed article, as that one is, it may not just be that of the author.
If by “anti-southern agenda” you mean anti-slavery, then I would agree with you. Otherwise, you have provided no evidence whatsoever supporting your viewpoint.
So, the view from the left is that the word Dixie is code for slavery and the word southern is another word for slavery? Good grief!
Maybe you should consult your side’s hero Karl Marx, who wrote while the war was still in progress that “the war is not about slavery; it is a war of economic subjugation by the north against the south”.
Those on our side of the fence would go with the opinion of the leader of the British anti-slavery movement of the time, novelist Charles Dickens, who wrote: “The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states”.
J.P. Jones, Not at all, though that is what john steed seems to suggest.
K. Marx is no hero of mine. I understand your attraction to him much like Trump’s deep ties with Russia. What he knows about our country’s Civil War is not based on fact (see link below) not unlike Charles Dickens a noted writer of FICTION from “across the pond”.
One need not look beyond each Confederate State’s reason for sucession some of which are summarized here:
http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/secession.html
You ignorance is showing again JBP. “Succession” is a very different thing than “secession”
Your ignorance also shows about our own state’s secession. In early 1861, NC held a Secession convention, and the Unionists, led by Zeb Vance prevailed and NC voted to remain in the Union. However when Lincoln demanded troops to invade our neighbors in April, Governor Ellis responded to Lincoln that “you will get no troops from North Carolina” and called the Secession Convention back into session. Due to Lincoln’s aggression against our neighbors, Vance switched sides and the vote to secede was unanimous. NC’s secession was triggered by Union aggression against our neighbors and NC’s secession documents do NOT mention slavery.
Those across the pond are the most objective observers as they lack the political and regional biases of those on this side of the pond. Sir Winston Churchill is another with a great perspective on the causes of the war in the chapter on that subject in the history of the US he wrote entitled “The Great Republic” in which he also said that slavery was not the major issue that caused the war.
You may deny Marx, but you progressives are in lockstep with him. I quoted him just to point out to you how the “progressives” of the period felt on the subject. As to myself, I put a lot more faith in Churchill and Dickens.
Oh, and another of those who said after the war that it had not been about slavery was Union General Sherman who went on to say that if it had been about slavery, he would have fought for the south..
Europe and Asia populations were completely biased on the subject. They were getting eating up the cheap cotton and tobacco produced by the labors of the Plantation owners slaves!
Hum. Speaking of eat up with it.
John Steed I believe is correct on the Soros $$. Unfortunately historical correctness is not necessary to cause the chaos the Socialists are seeking.
Browny Douglas
As long as Republican RINOs are in charge of the UNC system, this nonsense will never stop. There is no leadership. A total failure of leadership by the GOP legislature. Why even bother to re-elect them?
So I guess you are happy with using the word nigga when you are not in Polite society according to your first paragraph. Jackie was saying that we should have a discussion and you and your flunkies immediately start calling her names. That usually means you have guilt and what we think is correct. Stick to fact and stop the name calling. You have replaced nigga, spic, and kike with Snowflake, but now I can stand up and call you out on it. I am glad it will be in Daniels. I hope wherever his spirit is, it will be shaken and uncomfortable when I walk my black behind in it to discuss this topic
No, I think the term that would apply to your ilk is Stalinist thought police. . You seem to be comfortable with being in a building named for one of the biggest racists of his period, but you manufacture outrage over the non-racial regional term Dixie.
If people are inclined to offend others they will surely find a way. Censorship is a good way to offend me.
You mentioned the word “nigga.” I don’t think that’s a word in the dictionary, and it’s not a word I ever use. I do hear it some from black folks mostly. Negro was once the term used to describe black folks. That came to us from the Spanish and the Portuguese. The word nigger, nowadays referred to as the n-word, came from the word Negro. I hardly ever hear that anymore except among black folks. I used to use the word niggardly more than I do now. These days people don’t seem to know it means miserly. The thought police sure enjoy changing the language.
The southern region of the United States has been referred to as Dixieland since the 1850s. I always heard that Dixie was a reference to the ten dollar bill printed by a bank in Louisiana using the French word dix. Should we now count from nine to eleven in French counting neuf, the d-word, onze? Since dix is ten in French maybe we should be especially politically correct and count nine, the t-word, eleven! I think political correctness is another term for censorship and censorship sucks!
How are we going to have a dialogue on anything meaningful without being able to use words? I wish no harm on anyone, but I will not put up with harm coming my way either. I construe censorship as harm.