The purpose of this philosophical inquiry is to problematize the assumptions underlying elementary music teachers' choice to both erase folk songs from their curricula and to replace lyrics with racist associations. Erasing is defined as a process in which music educators remove certain folk songs with racist origins entirely from their repertories, whereas replacing is defined as a process in which music educators adapt texts of certain folk songs with racist origins and thereby change the musical stories of those songs. I argue that both choices are insufficient for teaching students about the historical legacy of contemporary racism. Next, I propose erasing-as-dismantling and radically replacing as two sequential processes in lieu of the simplistic choices to erase and replace. Subsequently, I conceive of "thoughtfully erasing to radically replace" as a practice during which white teachers decenter whiteness and center the lived experiences of the Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian/Pacific Islander (BBIA) community.