Midland Lee High School Use of Dixie

We support the right of Midland Lee High School to continue to use the song Dixie as a school fight song. As the song was a favorite of our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln it has no connotations of racism. The MISD school board should not continue to encourage claims of racism because of the innocuous use of a historic period song such as Dixie. These frivilous claims actually diminish the concern we should have about real, overt acts of racism that occur from time to time across our nation. It further diminishes the historic suffering of people who were enslaved during that dark period of American History. We encourage the MISD School Board to reject any proposal which seeks to strip this fine school of its traditions and to publicly denounce any attempt to create racist tensions in our community.