"Dixie" the original lyrics, racist, or not racist?

Dixie's Land
(Daniel Decatur Emmett)

Away down south in de land ob cotton
Old times dar am not forgotten
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land where I was born in
Early on a frosty mornin'
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.

cho: Den I wish I was in Dixie
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land I'll take my stand
To lib and die in Dixie,
Away, away, away down south in Dixie.
Away, away, away down south in Dixie.

Ole missus marry "Will de Weaber,"
William was a gay deceiber;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
But when he put his arm around 'er,
He smiled as fierce as a forty pounder,
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.

His face was sharp as a butcher's cleaber,
But dat did not seem to greab' er;
Look away, etc.
Ole missus acted de foolish part,
And died for a man dat broke her heart,
Look away, etc.

Now here's a health to the next old Missus,
An' all de gals dat want to kiss us;
Look away, etc.
But if you want to drive 'way sorrow,
Come and hear dis song tomorrow,
Look away, etc.

Dar's buckwheat cakes and Injun batter,
Makes you fat or a little fatter;
Look away, etc.
Den hoe it down an' scratch your grabble,
To Dixie's Land I'm bound to trabble,
Look away, etc.

RG

snip

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=dixie+weaber+deceiber&btnG=Search

"To many African-Americans, Dixie is a symbol of racism and slavery. Thomasina Neely-Chandler, an ethnomusicologist and music professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, says the important thing to remember is that Dixie is a harmful misrepresentation of blacks.

'It's not the song or the text,' Neely-Chandler says, 'So much as how it's used in a distorted way to present a particular people with an image that really doesn't represent them.'

In the years after the Civil War, Dixie was embraced by whites, but increasingly rejected by blacks. The divide over the song deepened during the early days of the civil rights movement.

'(Blacks) would sing a song like We Shall Overcome or The Battle Hymn of the Republic, University of Mississippi historian Charles Reagan Wilson says. 'But then opponents of integration and black rights would sing 'Dixie' as a kind of counter-song asserting white privilege and white supremacy.'"

ALSO:

"So the possibility that Emmett learned Dixie from Ben and Lew Snowden -- a pair of black musicians he knew from his hometown -- carries its own irony. The Snowdens' parents had been slaves in Maryland, but by the 1820s were living outside Mount Vernon, Ohio, not far from where Dan Emmett's family lived.

Judith Sacks and her husband Howard, a professor of sociology at Kenyon College in nearby Gambier, Ohio, wrote a book on the song's history called Way Up North In Dixie. They say the Snowdens were well-known musicians who gave concerts from a converted gable on the side of their house. The Sackses advance the theory that the song Dixie is a childhood recollection from Mrs. Ellen Snowden, the mother of Ben and Lew.

Judith and Howard Sacks acknowledge they have no explicit proof for their assertion, and many scholars are skeptical, including Cheryl Thurber."