Originally Posted by redietz View Post
Originally Posted by Mission146 View Post
Originally Posted by redietz View Post
In academia, being correct is what makes or breaks you. You would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of history academics defending the notion that the Civil War was not primarily about slavery.

What gets lost sometimes is the international tide had already turned against slavery. The U.S. was slow to move.

The national anthem -- if you're black, you really shouldn't be standing for it. Just read the third stanza. Of course, this begs the question, why should anyone be standing for it? The third stanza seems pretty blatant to me.
If a person thinks that he/she should stand for the anthem, then that person should, if a person thinks that he/she should not, then they should not. I really don't look at it as a group of people, "Should," or, "Should not," it's a personal choice.
The third stanza is warning blacks who are considering fleeing their owners to fight on the side of Great Britain. It warns them they will be tracked down and killed -- I think that's the most obvious interpretation.

Now what makes it ironic is that Great Britain, as most places at the time, was transitioning out of slavery piecemeal. So had black slaves decided to flee their American owners and fight for Great Britain, there was a very good chance they would be fighting as free men for the Brits. Meanwhile, staying with the slave owners meant they had no freedom. Thus, the third stanza has the ironic effect of arguing that slaves should not fight for their freedom while white Americans are ostensibly fighting for theirs versus the Brits.

The third stanza therefore clearly supports slavery as an American institution. It warns that those slaves who prefer taking a chance at British freedom will be hunted and killed for their audacity to pursue freedom.

Just a bit of a double standard. Tough to stomach as a national anthem.
I tend to agree that is the most obvious interpretation of the third stanza...which probably fewer than 1% of this country is even aware of. For all practical purposes, the Anthem ends after the first refrain. I would say that there is an importance in perhaps knowing the history of the Anthem, at least arguably, but I don't think the third stanza reflects where the country is now and I've never even heard it sung!

Personally, I look at it as just trying to find something to bitch about. The Anthem might have meant that, before it was ever the Anthem, but everything after the first refrain is almost totally unacknowledged these days. In other words, that's simply not what most people consider the Anthem, as we employ it, to be about.

But, for those who do and do not wish to stand for the Anthem, then they do not have to do that.

I'd like to think that, much like this country, the Anthem has overcome the institution of slavery to become something other than what it originally was.