What's Driving Objections to "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
It will never be a waste of my money to make political contributions to whomever is running against Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene. These two freedom-hating, anti-Americans just can't stand for people to enjoy their American, constitutional freedom of conscience and expression guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The Super Bowl being the latest target of their anti-American, magpie-imitating jabbering, they are complaining about the pre-Super Bowl rendition by Sheryl Lee Ralph of "Lift Every Voice and Sing".
The reaction from Boebert and Greene is predictable, given their politics and the way they promote themselves to their base, which they perceive as being uneducated, ignorant and bigoted. They are promoting their own image which they hope appeals to enough voters in their district to keep them elected to office. For Greene, who is a self-proclaimed white supremacist Christian nationalist, her district is fairly safe. From what transpired in the last mid-term election, Boebert, from the results of the last mid-term election, is likely in her last term, so she's either going to be as shrill as she can be on the way out, or it hasn't dawned on her yet that this is what is turning voters off, even in the very conservative, rural half of Colorado she represents.
What's the Problem with "Lift Every Voice and Sing"?
Though Boebert and Greene characterize the singing of what is considered by many to be a sort of "national anthem" for African Americans as a demonstration of "wokeness" by the NFL--and let me make it abundantly and succinctly clear that there is absolutely nothing at all wrong or anti-American about any kind of "wokeness"--that's really a pretty ridiculous charge. I didn't check the rosters of each of the competing teams, but odds are that somewhere around 75% of the players who took the field and actually played the game around which all of the ceremony was built are African American. And since they are the ones providing the entertainment off which multiple millions of dollars are made, whatever happens at the Super Bowl can be as "woke" as they want it.
The Civil Rights movement, through which this particular song became an anthem, is more uniquely American than either Boebert or Greene. Given their position and attitude toward January 6th, those two chattering magpies, of which they remind me, aren't patriots at all, so their criticism of this, frankly, flowing from their own ignorance, is worthless. There's no lack of loyalty or patriotism expressed by including the singing of this song as an official part of the pre-game program, along with the national anthem. It doesn't take anything away from that at all, on the contrary, it adds a rich expression of real Americanism, if you will, a recognition of hope that the equality so many people have struggled for over decades and centuries can be achieved. The song was performed along side the national anthem, not as a replacement for it.
The song's lyrics are an acknowledgement of what is a dark past that included the sin of slavery. As the opinion piece in Baptist News Global by Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research Institute notes, 81% of America's African American citizens were enslaved when the lyrics to the "Star Spangled Banner," proclaiming that the United States was the "land of the free and home of the brave" were written. In contrast, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is an honest expression of reality, along with the hope for a better future possible in America.
Unless deliberate steps like this are taken to combat ignorance which produces racist attitudes, we will make little progress toward the American ideal of equality of all people. This country belongs to all of us, and I'm glad to see the NFL recognize it's own influence in demonstrating the true essence of American idealism.
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