NFL Announces 'Black National Anthem' Performer for Super Bowl
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
Leave it to our gigantic media conglomerates to double down on bad ideas.
Repeating a controversial move from last year’s Super Bowl (and most recent sports events since 2020), the NFL announced that they are beginning Super Bowl LVIII with the so-called “Black National Anthem,” as well as the actual national anthem.
As announced by Adam Schefter, an ESPN reporter and podcast host, on X (formerly Twitter), the NFL has chosen country legend Reba McEntire to sing the national anthem, rapper Post Malone (of all people) to sing “America the Beautiful,” and singer/actress Andra Day, most famous for playing Billie Holliday in the 2021 biopic “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Super Bowl LVIII lineup in Las Vegas: Reba McEntire with the National Anthem, Post Malone with “America The Beautiful,” and Andra Day with “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 18, 2024
Certainly the folks on X (formerly Twitter), aren’t altogether enthused by its inclusion in the Super Bowl. User Eli Racks rhetorically asked “so yall just going to be have people stand for 25 minutes,” while other users, like PolkTheArtist, asked why “do we need Lift Every Voice and Sing?”
So yall just gonna have people standing for 25 minutes, huh? 😭
— Vibes – Eli Racks (@IamEliRacks) January 18, 2024
Bro, we’re American. Why tf do we need Lift Every Voice and Sing?
— PolkTheArtist (@PolkTheArtist) January 18, 2024
Granted, the song was not plucked out of the air last year at the Super Bowl.
First written in 1900, the song is a hymn of thanksgiving referencing God freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus.
While not explicitly referring to a particular race, it has long been an important cultural touchstone for the black community.
That said, its newfound ubiquity is a direct result of the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
It wasn’t until BLM protestors started burning down the country that the song migrated to more public arenas, with the major sports teams and even PBS playing the song in addition to, or even instead of, the actual national anthem.
Now, there is nothing wrong with the song on its own, and taken at face value, it’s a beautiful hymn of thanksgiving, praising God for rescuing us from the grip of evil.
But there is no need to use it as a separate national anthem for the black community.
We don’t need a “black” national anthem and an “everyone else” national anthem.
Our culture is already plagued with division along racial lines; we don’t need our institutions to exacerbate those divisions by implying that “The Star-Spangled Banner” cannot speak to all Americans.
It can, and it does. Our national anthem is called that for a reason — it’s for all Americans, not just one race, religion, or social class.
That is, and has always been, the whole point of having a national anthem.
Promoting a separate black anthem hinders unity and further promotes the leftist lie that there are irreconcilable divisions between the races, and we can only have peace by keeping them apart.
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