how is the star spangled banner song racist

Recently Quaker Oats finally did away with their mammy mascot Aunt Jemima. It’s the most violent people who go for love and peace.”Įver since the murder of George Floyd, activists have pushed our corporate overlords to take baby steps in the right direction. That’s why I’m always on about peace, you see. I fought men, I hit women, I was violent. In an interview, Lennon once explained the “Getting Better” lyric, “I used to be cruel to my woman and beat her,” by saying, “That’s me, because I used to be cruel to my woman and physically… Any woman. He also hit and largely abandoned his first child, Julian, with a wife whom he also abused and cheated on. Worse yet, Lennon was a self-avowed spousal abuser and serial philanderer. For one, it seems improbably the whole of America would gather under the words of a British artist who helped pioneer the use of LSD. That said, swapping out Key for Lennon presents some issues of its own. In his words, Key was sneering at Black people with the audacity to take money from their liberators to kill their former masters. As the war took place far from English soil, the British got into the habit of freeing Black slaves and then hiring them to fight against America. The War of 1812 was waged, in part, over England’s attempts to stop the young United States from expanding the slave trade in North America. In the offending passage, Francis Scott Key makes reference to a “band” of “hireling and slave” whose “blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.” As historian Jason Johnson has argued, these words are a timely dig at Black people fighting for the British. If that’s the only part of Francis Scott Key’s 1814 poem that you’re familiar with, then the history behind the third verse will be a bit of a shocker.

Besides, those patriotic high notes really make my rocket glare.” And it’s true, the one verse that we trot out at sporting events is merely unsettlingly violent, rather than outwardly prejudiced. “I’ve sung ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ for years, and I’m not racist.

Taking those aspects into account, however, some activists are calling for America to find a new national anthem, and one popular proposal has put forth John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” doesn’t seem that racist, as long as you skip the later verses and ignore the white supremacist who wrote it.

How is the star spangled banner song racist