Down That Old, Ugly Road

Bill Maher on September 10 took on another sacred cow. This time it was segregation, which is dangerously insinuating itself into our national culture. In the video below, Maher is seen remarking

When people say to me sometimes like, boy, you know you go after the left a bit these days, "why," I'm like because you're embarrassing me. That's why I'm going after the left in a way you never did before because you're inverting things. I'm not going to give up on being liberal. 

This is what these teachers are talking about- that you're taking children and making them hyper aware of race in a way they wouldn't otherwise be.

I mean, I saw last night on the football game, uh, Alicia Keys sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which now I hear is called "The Black National Anthem." Now maybe we should get rid of our national anthem but I think we should have one national anthem. I think when you go down a road where you're having two different national anthems,  colleges sometimes now have, many of them have, different graduation ceremonies for black and white- separate dorms. This is what I mean- segregation. You've inverted the idea. We're going back to that under a different name.

These ceremonies, geared toward one or more minority groups, are not mandatory and generally not sponsored by colleges but are encouraged and endorsed by them. A more accurate term than "segregation" may be Balkanization- but segregation nonetheless is accurate.

The pernicious nature of these steps toward re-segregation are highlighted by the branding of the song, once a poem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." There should be only one national anthem, as Maher maintains, even if we "get rid of our national anthem," the Star-Spangled Banner. If there are two national anthems, there is no national anthem.  

Labeling any tune "the black national anthem" is itself misleading at best, noxious at worse. "Black" is not a country, a continent, or even a representation of national descent, which would be African or African-American. There can be no black national anthem because black is not a country. It is a color and description of a race. Were there a "White National Anthem," it not only would be offensive but similarly silly.

Perhaps devotees of a Black National Anthem literally don't know what they're supporting. If there truly is a black national anthem, white national anthem, or brown national anthem, there is an anthem depicting that ethnic group (or color) as a separate nation. That may have been the dream of Southern separatists some 160 years ago. It should not be our dream.

   

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