Black National Anthem

[SunsetBengal]

(07-04-2020, 12:38 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Case in point. "Black national anthem" is a colloquial term for the song, created during Jim Crow America to help unite a group that was being treated as second class citizens.

The fact that white people are flipping out and seeing this as an attempt to "divide" is the only thing that is actually dividing people.

Quote:Lift ev'ry voice and sing
'Til earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on 'til victory is won


Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land

Back in the time of slavery in the US, there was a large portion of the Nation who saw that practice as wrong.  That portion abolished that practice, as they viewed humans as people and not property.  Some folks didn't agree with that idea, as treating their labor as humans cut into their production and profits.  This dispute became bitter and heated, it eventually led to a great war that resulted in the side standing for freedom prevailing.

In the years prior to that dispute and ensuing war, a great many slaves fled their owners and plantations.  Where did those people flee to?  They didn't run to Mexico.  They didn't travel West and claim their own territory to form their own Nation.  They didn't take boats back to Africa, where their own people sold them down river into slavery in the first place.  No, they fled to America, land of the free, home of the brave.  A place where we live as "One Nation, indivisible".

The notion of a "second" National Anthem, one specifically aimed at one people in a great melting pot, is sort of contradictory to the ideals that the Nation is actually principled upon.  Perhaps the general messaging in society shouldn't be "hey, some of you were mean to us", but rather "thanks for seeing us as equals, and making things right"?