SC has an official folk dance? Yes, and it might soon be the Wobble

Yes, South Carolina has an official folk dance, and it's the Square Dance. If this North Charleston native has his way, however, that could change soon.

KJ Kearney started a petition to get the Square Dance removed as the Palmetto State's official folk dance and to replace it with V.I.C.'s 2008 song "The Wobble."

The Square Dance was adopted as South Carolina's official state folk dance thanks to a law passed in 1994. To have it removed would require legislative action.

The basis of Kearney's argument lies in the Square Dance's past.

Businessman, inventor of the assembly line and automaker Henry Ford traveled across the country promoting the dance, founding clubs around the nation and publishing an instruction manual named "Good Morning: After a Sleep of Twenty-Five Years, Old-Fashioned Dancing is Being Revived by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford."

With Ford's help, the influence of Square Dancing spread to schools and soon to statehouses. Now, 24 states have the dance listed as one of their official state boogies.

While Ford is hailed as a prolific businessman, Kearney pointed to his anti-Semitic past in his petition. Ford published a series of books in the 1920s titled, "The International Jew: the World's Foremost Problem."

Kearney said in his petition that he has nothing against square dancing itself, just its history.

"To be fair, there is nothing especially heinous about Square Dancing," he wrote. "But the fact that its widespread popularity was only achieved because a really rich, really racist person thought it would help uphold 'American' values is super disturbing."

Kearny picked The Wobble, a song often heard and danced to en masse at weddings and school bugaloos, because anyone can get down to it, he said in his petition.

"Show our elected officials that we want to be represented by a dance that can be used to intertwine all South Carolinians in a way that Square Dancing cannot," Kearny wrote. "Especially when you consider its less than inclusive origins."

Also proposed to replace the Square Dance were The Electric Slide and the Cupid Shuffle.

Of the 200 requested signatures, about 100 had been fulfilled as of Wednesday afternoon.

This story was originally published June 6, 2018 at 12:37 PM with the headline "SC has an official folk dance? Yes, and it might soon be the Wobble."