This has happened in California, of course
(Washington Times) Student leaders at a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area have decided that the national anthem is racist and outdated and have banned it from school rallies.
According to multiple area news outlets, the Associated Student Body at California High School in San Ramon made that decision based on a phrase in the rarely-played third verse.
“It was brought to our attention that the national anthem’s third verse is outdated and racially offensive,†Ariyana Kermanizadeh wrote in an open letter. “We had nothing but good intentions by removing the song so that we could be fully inclusive to our student body.â€
Yeah, the 3rd verse that no one knows and no one ever signs. This is all about virtue signaling and being Offended by all things American, yet, these same snowflakes won’t ever actually leave the U.S.
[Kermanizadeh] noted that “this song was written in 1814. That was written 204 years ago. Imagine all the traditions and laws that have changed … [and] so must our traditions.â€
The Right to Free speech was written even longer ago: should we do away with that? Of course, Leftists would actually like to end free speech for people they disagree with.
Reaction ranged from bemusement among other students to disbelief among outsiders.
“It comes from a very disrespectful place,†Amir Udler, a senior at the school, told the Californian, the student newspaper that first broke the story last week. The decision “is disenfranchising the vast majority of the school who loves the country.â€
That’s the way it work in Snowflake World, where anything that Offends them must be banned, regardless of whether it ruins it for the majority.
Fox News opinion columnist Todd Starnes asked rhetorically, “Where are the grownups in charge of this public school?†and admonished his listeners to contact the school board.
“The Star Spangled Banner may have survived the bombs bursting in air, but it may not be able to withstand the rampaging mob of politically correct inclusivists,†he wrote.
The grownups at the school are probably afraid of the kids, who would surely lob accusations of racism and sexism and stuff at them if the grownups don’t agree.
The Anthem, the Flag, the Pledge, the Constitution and the Declaration all enshrine White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male values. To that extent they are racist. Their are at least exclusionary. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews and other minorities cannot be true Americans, because they reject WASP male values. Just accept that, and spit in their faces.
If only you WERE joking…
TEACH unintentionally didn’t post the 3rd stanza:
Historians debate what Key actually intended with the part of the poem.
https://www.snopes.com/2016/08/29/star-spangled-banner-and-slavery/
“Jose, can you see…”?
Key was writing about mercenaries and indentures fighting on the side of the British.
An uninformed opinion carries no moral force. Learn about what you would criticize before you open your trap.
We didn’t side with the students. We presented the 3rd Stanza and a balanced discussion of what it might mean.
Although your stupidity makes us think the students are right.
Snopes?
Balanced?
That’s funny.
Once again, your hatred comes out.
It’s all you have.
And what was the ‘racist’ third stanza?
It mentions the existence of slavery, something rather obvious in 1814, but mentioning the truth is hardly justifying it. Perhaps the Special Snowflakesâ„¢ think that if they can just ignore history, it simply won’t have ever happened.
They might have had more of a case with the fourth stanza:
The word ‘freemen’ rather than ‘free men’ could be taken as a reference that freemen were morally superior to the slaves (and ‘hirelings?’).
Frances Scott Key owned slaves in his young adulthood, but eventually freed his slaves. His legal career was a checkered one, representing runaway slaves, slaves suing for freedom and masters seeking the return of their runaway slaves. As US Attorney he prosecuted a man for seditious libel for having and distributing abolitionist literature.
Mr Key was a founding member and active leader of the American Colonization Society and its predecessor, the influential Maryland branch, the primary goal of which was to send free blacks back to Africa, but he was never an abolitionist.
Mr Key was an adult during the first half of the 19th century, and was a man of his times. The Francis Scott Key Memorial stands in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco (the same park in which Admiral James T Kirk landed a captured Klingon Bird of Prey in 1984). I suppose that the Snowflakes will want that torn down.
Walter Olsen writing in the National Review gives a good description of the entomology and the common use of the term “slave” back in Key’s day and prior to that.
Suffice it to say that there is more to the word than what we think of as “owned individuals.”
If everything is racist, then nothing is.
I would be willing to bet that the average fellow doesn’t give a damn what hurts the feelings of whiny mentally ill people.