Of course, I agree that there was racial injustice, and that this is part of the history of the music, but history is a subjective matter and all accounts are inclined to be skewed by prejudices. As you said yourself in your Mississippi Rag post, the Burns series either marginalised white jazz, or more often completely ignored its role in the development of the music. I suppose in the eyes of the show’s writers and producers to do otherwise might be seen to in some way condone the racism that occurred. But in discounting the role of white musicians in the history of jazz, the true picture, the real history, is obscured.
It is, I think, ironic that by the mid-1930s the racial barriers that had separated black and white jazz musicians were starting to crumble, yet now the history is being rewritten in order to erect new ones! Where else would one have found white men and black men working together so well in the 1930s and 1940s? Granted, the occurrences were rare - the Goodman quartet, Shaw with Billie, some recording sessions, etc., but the fact they happened at all says a lot for how attitudes were shifting, at least amongst musicians - and one has to start somewhere.
The Burns series seemed to me to be rebuilding the ramparts rather than extending the bridges. A shame really, because the series had great potential to educate through handing down knowledge. And wasn’t it Plato who said that knowledge is eternal truth?