My apologies to Rob Singer

[Mission146]

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.

[redietz]

I give you the counter argument.

How would white America react if N.W.A. performed the first verse of a song at a Super Bowl halftime, and the third verse talked about killing pigs every chance you get? You think they'd be applauded for evolving beyond their third stanza?

Same theme, reverse silhouette.

And, comically, about as many Americans would know the third verse of the N.W.A. rap as would know the third stanza of The Star Spangled Banner. But that wouldn't prevent them from taking up arms against it.

[smurgerburger]

How often does something published get proven dead wrong in academia? Barring cases of fraud I don't think it really works that way.

Was Freudian psychology proven dead wrong? Were structuralism and post-structuralism proven dead wrong? Lost cause-ism? Frontierism? Behaviorism? Marxism? Or did they just go out of fashion with the younger generation of academics?

I'll grant you Copernicism but that was most significantly refuted outside academia.

[Mission146]

First of all, N.W.A. to perform the entire song at a Super Bowl halftime would be endlessly hilarious, on principle alone.

That said, it would probably lose a little bit due to the fact that Ice Cube has since portrayed a cop, on more than one occasion.

Anyway, what are you suggesting---that the National Anthem be changed to something else? Sure, go for it, join the movement...I don't really give a fuck what the National Anthem is, if you want to know the truth. I support the rights of people to have whatever relationship to the National Anthem, whatever it may be, that they want to have.

[Mission146]

I guess perhaps, "Fuck Tha' Police," would cause division between some people on the Left and their own allies on the grounds that it also contains at least one homosexual slur.

[Mission146]

[monet]

Another Racist Black Guy playing the National Anthem...

[redietz]

Growing up, in third or fourth grade, we had music books printed in 1910 or 1920. That's how old and poor our grade schools were. In music class, we did on occasion sing more than the first verse of The Star Spangled Banner out of our old music books, which is why I knew there were other verses. However...even then, that third verse was edited out.

So even some of the prehistorically unwoke music book writers from 1910 knew that the third verse was problematic.

[monet]

[Mission146]

Growing up, in third or fourth grade, we had music books printed in 1910 or 1920. That's how old and poor our grade schools were. In music class, we did on occasion sing more than the first verse of The Star Spangled Banner out of our old music books, which is why I knew there were other verses. However...even then, that third verse was edited out.

So even some of the prehistorically unwoke music book writers from 1910 knew that the third verse was problematic.

You can feel the, sweat from my balls! You can feel the, sweat from my balls! You can feel the, sweat from my balls!

Dude, I'm just dying over here. You'll never know how much I will forever appreciate you for making me think of that.

Anyway, yes, obviously problematic. I'm confident that's why we don't sing the whole thing.

I just don't know what it is you're advocating in favor of. Are you just trying to point out that the omission is to whitewash the National Anthem? Okay, it is, I agree---now what? Do we accept it for what it means to the majority of people now, or do we instead advocate to change it on the grounds of a stanza that the majority of people do not even know exists?

Again, I do not have a side on this issue and I don't care to take a side. If there's one thing that you should have figured out about me by now, it's that I'm not really a big, "But...but...meh tradition!", type of guy. If it gets changed, then it gets changed.

The only position that I really have on it is this: When the National Anthem, whatever it might be, gets played---I will probably stand up and remove my hat, if I am wearing one. As adversarial as I am, I don't particularly feel the need to turn every single possible thing into a source of conflict and even a dickhead like myself can recognize that unity can be a good thing for its own sake, every once in a while.

[monet]

Damn these Racist Black People singing the National Anthem...

[monet]

Shit... Again???

[monet]

Some Black Americans believe that Racism is Over...

Do Black Lives Matter??
“My life matter, especially to My bitches.” -Lil Wayne-

[smurgerburger]

The third stanza (which I'd never read before), is retrospective. It is boasting that the band of persons who disloyally sided with Britain which it characterizes as "hirelings and slaves" will now be tracked down and violently punished.

What is the complaint here besides the unfashionable (there I go again) brutality? Seems like standard wartime patriotic sentiment.

[Mission146]

I should also mention that I’ve previously advocated for making the anthem, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” by Toby Keith.

[MisterV]

The third stanza (which I'd never read before)

Ditto, til now ...

__________________________________________________ _______________

The Star-Spangled Banner

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[redietz]

The third stanza (which I'd never read before), is retrospective. It is boasting that the band of persons who disloyally sided with Britain which it characterizes as "hirelings and slaves" will now be tracked down and violently punished.

What is the complaint here besides the unfashionable (there I go again) brutality? Seems like standard wartime patriotic sentiment.

If the slaves go over to the side which would provide their freedom, they are to be tracked down and killed. They are to remain steadfast so white Americans can maintain their own freedoms.


https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/08/...r-and-slavery/

[mickeycrimm]

Like you yankees weren't racist. GTFO. Northerners didn't exactly invite blacks into their churches and schools after the civil war. The northern ghetto's were started because blacks had to stay in their own quarters separate from the whites. And they were given only the most menial jobs. Northern whites were just as bad as southerners when it came to racism.

I'm definitely quite confident that they weren't invited into the churches, so thank you for that! It's always nice to have your points made for you.

As far as the schools go, that's really something that I should know more about, but I don't. I would be interested to find out how all of that went down, in the North, and how long it took for Northern schools to be fully integrated. I'm certain that it wasn't as long as it took for the South, we didn't have Jim Crow laws, after all---but I'm sure it wasn't immediate in all areas. That's honestly probably a fair criticism.

In the north blacks were segregated in both housing and schools for well over a hundred years after the civil war ended. Whites simply wouldn't rent or sell a house in a white neighborhood to blacks. When they started integrating the city schools in the 1970's whites took their kids and fled to the suburbs. Integration of city schools was the single biggest reason for the massive expansion of the suburbs. The whites went where blacks couldn't afford to live.

Cut to the 80's and 90's and their was actually a black migration back to the south. Job opportunities and blacks saying southern whites were honest about their racism while northern whites were just as racist but pretended not to be.

I seen a Youtube video not long ago about a neighborhood in San Jose, California, one of the most liberal bastions in this country. They didn't have any low income housing so there was a proposal to build a 60 unit low income housing complex.

At the hearing before the city council white liberal after white liberal stood up and said something like "I'm not prejudiced but....this would not be a good fit for our community." So many white liberal assholes were against it that they canceled it.

That's the type of shit you run into all over the north. White liberals telling everyone just how unprejudiced they are. But watch what happens when you try to put low income and/or minorities in their neighborhood. Hypocrites.

So instead of maligning southerners you need to clean up your own backyard.

[mickeycrimm]

You're Bradydamn right that it was a mistake.

There are certain formal processes that would have to take place if you were going to allow South Carolina (and others) to secede in a way that would at least be acceptable to all parties involved---and attacking United States Government holdings is sure as shit not the way to do it.

You can't even call it an illegal occupation because the U.S. Government already had a fort there. It's not as if South Carolina seceded and the United States sent troops to a fort that had never housed U.S. troops before.

In fact, let's look into that in the light most favorable to South Carolina, from the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union:



Okay, so we start with the fact that their logic is that electing a POTUS who did not want to expand slavery into the new territories is tantamount to the Government becoming destructive of the ends for which it was established. That ignores, of course, the fact that South Carolina was NOT one of the new territories, so for the time being, what happened in the new territories had nothing directly to do with them.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

Okay, so they are pissed off that slavery is not expanding into the new territories AND because the north has become hostile to the Fourth Article that called, effectively, for slaves to be returned to the state that they escaped from was not being done.

The following paragraph states:

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

Further down:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

AND:

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.

AND:

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

In an official document, not only did South Carolina use the institution of religion to defend slavery, but further defined the notion that slaves should be freed as, "Erroneous religious belief!" I honestly wouldn't have believed even this if I hadn't went looking into the deeper history of South Carolina, specifically. South Carolina, as a would-be sovereign, maintained that, pursuant to Christianity...freeing the slaves was religiously wrong!

That stands on its own. I don't even need to offer additional commentary.

Would you like to tell me more about how the Civil War was NOT about slavery, or should we go ahead and dust off the Confederate Constitution for examples that I already know are there?

Southern states no longer wanted to be in the Union and northern states were against secessation. Categorically the Union troops were fighting to preserve the Union, not to free slaves. The non-slaveholding yeoman farmers that served in the confederacy (90% of the troops) were not fighting to uphold slavery. They didn't give a rats ass about a rich man owning slaves. They were fighting to protect their homes, families and rights, from an invading force.

Now, you can say the elites on both sides thought things came down to slavery. But that was not the case for the common people that made up the bulk of the population.

[mickeycrimm]

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.

Thats right. Elitist academics that make up a .1% of the population. But the common people thought something else.