It's your next, defensive, thought that is not true: "Guilt by mere chronistic association."
How exactly is this not true?
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As a teacher, you should be able to separate your emotional reaction and be able to acknowledge the factual truth.
I appreciate the sanctimony, but I'm quite capable of separating emotional reaction from truth. It is students (and quite frankly a lot of adults I meet) that are not. It's one thing to acknowledge institutional racism (a subject I believe is more fluid and debatable than you probably believe). It's quite another to ascribe those institutional characteristics to individuals or to dismiss an individual's work simply because it is a product of the era. That this is happening was my initial complaint. Subscribe to white guilt all you want; it doesn't mean we need to blacklist an artist on those grounds.
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I think there's a failure in this thread and the other to which you refer to distinguish between discussing the institution of racism and its impact on its denizens from calling the denizens themselves actively racist on an individual basis. Some are, some aren't, but they are all affected by the institution.
Agreed, but while I believe institutional racism exists, the degree to which it affects its denizens and the prescriptions for eliminating it are up for debate because the very parameters for defining it are subjective. You argue as if these things are set in stone, which is why you and I will never reconcile on this.