Slave Songs of the U.S.

I believe that the authors seem to be genuine in their introduction to the slave songs.  Just the fact that they are transcribing these works shows how they are not racist.  A racist would not see transcribing this music as being worthy of their time.  So I think that, that is a testimony to the authors that the did this.  A direct quote from the coursepack shows how they are not racist.  "Still, the chief part of the negro music is civilized in it's character..."  Later however they say that some are "intrinsically barbaric."  I believe they said this so as to diffuse the argument that perhaps they ignored these passages when writing this introduction.  By stating that there are some songs that seem to be barbaric, they are able to say that they are in short passages and it proves to me of a cultural aspect rather than one of being of of something less than whites.

I believe that in this introduction the "negro" as they say, is lifted up, especially when compared to the rest of society at that time.  The authors go to great lengths to say how throughough they were in thier work in order to preserve it.  They also go on to say that the "negro's voice" is impossible to write on paper and cannot be reproduced by other people.  I believe that this is another example of how the authors pay tribute to blacks in this introduction.  Overall I think that they were trying to reveal blacks as something that most people from the North and elsewhere didn't previously think of African Americans.  And to their credit, it was probably something risky to do at the time, both career and life wise.