The program "The View" last week devoted a lot of time to this while somehow avoiding what I actually said. It seemed to be a lot about a need to school me on the Black National Anthem itself.
Whoopi Goldberg said we need two anthems because "we're having to re-educate people." Because nothing ever goes wrong when you start talking about re-education. Just ask Chairman Mao. Maybe we can set up some sort of camp now.
Goldberg wouldn't approve of re-education camps, of course, unless they were segregated. She stated (beginning at :56 of the video below)
I'm just going to throw my two cents in. I think because we have gone backwards a good 10-15 years, we're having to re-educate or educate people. We're going to have to re-educate people about how women want to be talked about, how black people want to be talked about, how Hispanic people want to be talked about, and yet, it's a little bit tough- Native Americans, the Asian folks. These are all things that we- I thought we all worked together and got everybody to the point where here's what you can't say and just so you know, Bill, Lift Every Voice has always been considered the Black National Anthem.
It's always been that because the separation of the anthems has been so clear to us. Now maybe other people don't feel like that but I feel like, you know, we have to re-educate and retell people. We don't thing rape is funny. We don't think, you know, talking about Native Americans in a really despicable way is funny. It's not funny. It's not funny. We have to re-educate.
This was a curious rant given that Maher was not talking about Native Americans or rape. Nor was he even commenting about black people. He was talking about "Lift Every Voice and Sing," dubbed the "Black National Anthem."
Goldberg was so determined to inform people who are not women, nor black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American that they need to be re-educated that she mentioned it once, then circled back and mentioned it twice. That she did not specify "non-Hispanic white males" makes it no less condescending, only less explicit and straightforward.
She stated "we have gone backwards a good 10-15 years." Also, "I thought we all worked together and got everybody to the point" of addressing people respectfully. Evidently, we've gone backwards- yet now we are enlightened. Whoopi, please debate Whoopi.
And no, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has not always been considered the Black National Anthem. The tipoff should have been the word "black." Fifty years ago, the prevailing term was "Negro." Twenty years earlier, it was "colored." (To the enlightened who will do the "educating," it now is often "people of color.")
If "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a black national anthem, black is erased as a race, color, or culture and becomes a nation. If not a nation, a national anthem is not an anthem. Maher explained Friday evening
and you know, when it comes to an anthem, it doesn't have to be the one we currently use but it has to be just one. You know, because it's a national anthem and symbols of unity matter and purposely fragmenting things by race reinforces a terrible message that we are two nations hopelessly drifting apart from each other....
Notwithstanding Goldberg's claim that "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has always been considered the Black National Anthem"
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was first written as a poem. Created by James Weldon Johnson, it was performed for the first time by 500 school children in celebration of President Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 in Jacksonville, FL. The poem was set to music by Johnson's brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and soon adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its official song.
Bill Maher's previous show "Politically Incorrect" was forced off the air after the host told the uncomfortable truth about the 9/11/01 hijackers. A couple of decades later, he is smeared by new critics, for whom honesty and accuracy are alien concepts.
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