re: #245 HappyWarrior

Star-Spangled Bigotry: The Hidden Racist History of the National Anthem https://t.co/6J6tOD3sd6 via @TheRoot h/t @HappaWolves

— Propane Jane™ (@docrocktex26) August 29, 2016

In other words, calling out American hypocrisy/championing civil rights and racial equality is only acceptable to bigots after you’re dead.

— Propane Jane™ (@docrocktex26) August 29, 2016

There’s a reason that we only sing the first verse.

If you start looking at the rest of the anthem’s lyrics, especially the third, you realize that Key’s cheering on the death of slaves who thought that the Brits would help free them.

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 washed out their foul footsteps’ 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.