mekka okereke :verified:
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth
Still haven't made it to Black history yet. I'm still working through white US history.
Q: Why do so many Black people refuse to sing the US national anthem? I'm sorry, but that seems unpatriotic to me. Plus, the Whitney Houston version is amazing! Why don't you like Whitney Houston? Whitney!
A: Because more Black folk know the true history of the anthem, and some can't get past the racism.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@mekkaokereke One thing I really wish more Americans understood is that there are free, democratic societies all over the world that change their flags and national anthems all the time, and we could do so here in the US, too. In fact, reviewing the emblems of the nation and updating them is actually an incredibly democratic thing to do and untethers them from the Cult Of The State, which makes us more free rather than less so.
mekka okereke :verified:
That's how this democracy thing works. This isn't feudalism. We aren't serfs. This isn't monarchy. We aren't subjects.
This is a constitutional federal republic. If we don't like something about our government we change it. That might be changing the leaders, changing the laws, changing the systems that enforce those laws, or changing the very Constitution itself.
And stop pretending that the Constitution was some perfect document. The thing even has typos in it! They misspelled Pennsylvania!??♂️
mekka okereke :verified:
If history erasers can repurpose the meaning of the statue of liberty to mean "white immigrants" I can repurpose the anthem to mean that we're about to win this women's soccer game! ⚽??
And if the players like the president, they'll speak on that, and will accept his phone call.
And if the players don't like the president because he's running a hateful administration that advances white supremacy and misogyny, they'll block his number, and speak on that too. ??
mekka okereke :verified:
That's a cynical and pessimistic view of what the US stands for, and I reject it completely.
To me, the US stands for a nation of all of us, that has lofty ideals that we don't live up to. But we strive to get closer to them over time.
The very notion of who gets to criticize the US, is wrapped up in racism. Racists afford white people license to criticize the country (e.g. "we used to be a proper country!" and " Make America great again!"). But Black folk are not afforded this same freedom.
mekka okereke :verified:
I do sing the anthem (off-key, and with a suspect falsetto for that high note. Hey, we can't all be Prince! Some of us have to be Barry White. OK Biz Markie).
But I'm making an informed choice, because I know white US history.
I don't judge Black folk or folk of any color that choose not to sing it, as "un-American" or "un-patriotic."
For some folk, American patriotism means unquestioning loyalty to the ideals of a white supremacist America. For them, anti-racism itself, is anti-America.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@dneary @mekkaokereke Off the top of my head, there's Australia's active state of debate over its flag and the wanton use of an unofficial alternate flag. Canada's flag is very modern and has been the subject of some controversy based on aesthetics. "O Canada" has been revised to include all genders. IIRC, in Spain, they just ditched the words in 1978? There are more, though I confess I'm a bit smothered and don't think I can dig them all out.
Dave Neary
@roadriverrail @mekkaokereke I dislike jingoism & the symbol-worship too, and it definitely is not as prominent in other countries, but I'm not aware of a lot of symbol-swapping without some legacy of trauma.
Dave Neary
@roadriverrail @mekkaokereke Thinking of the flag & anthem changes I'm aware of: South Africa, Myanmar, Rwanda all represented a hope to leave behind some former trauma (Apartheid, colonial past, genocide, respectively). The other examples I know of new flags and anthems typically came through secession or break-up of a union (USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia). Are there examples you have in mind?
Kit Rhett Aultman
@dneary @mekkaokereke At a lower level, US states have changed their flags and songs without major traumas, too.
GNU Too
Kit Rhett Aultman
@gnu2 @mekkaokereke I certainly remember, as a kid, thinking the Jehovah's Witness kids were "weird" for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance, but much as I disagree with JW theology, I will say they did get that one thing right. I didn't understand the concept of the Cult of the State until I read my Roman history, and indeed, our "respect the flag" stuff is a Cult of the State and should be recognized and criticized as such.
I Forget
@roadriverrail Agreed. As OP points out even changing a constitution doesn't have to mean a big revolution or anything. Duckducking around a tiny bit reveals this interesting visualization on countries around the world amending or rewriting their constitutions.
https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/chronology.html
via this site, which adds a lot more general context: https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/
IMO the US is way behind the curve here, and it's not a good look.
GNU Too
GNU Too
Kit Rhett Aultman
@gnu2 @epilanthanomai Thank you for sharing that! As for me, I am not a Christian, and indeed I have no religious affiliation at all. But I do recognize the role of the Cult Of The State in managing a polity, and I believe it to be contrary to the ideals of a free society. The role of the State Cult became clear to me when Colin Kaepernick broke one of its taboos and refused to engage in ritual purity.
I Forget
@gnu2 Huh. Well, I'm not Christian, so I'm not going to tell them how to interpret their texts. For myself, though, this article's interpretation is way more literal and less nuanced than I could ever accept.
Personally I avoid the pledge because I find a lot of people in US culture use it to bully others--often in the name of nationalistic Christianity--and I find nonparticipation easier to navigate than arguing with them (and no less productive).
ginevra
@roadriverrail @dneary @mekkaokereke Australia changed the anthem for gender in the 1984 and removed 'young' in 2021 because Indigenous people have been here 60,000 years+ I'd still love the flag to be updated
GNU Too
I Forget
@gnu2 Whoops, looks like I chose my words poorly and implied something I didn't mean to. I certainly know lots of non-nationalistic Christians. I only meant to say that some very loud ones are, and that they're a big problem.
Well, there that plus the second point: that personally I find the article off-putting rather than inspiring, even drawing back on how I felt when I was a Christian. But of course it's generally fine for different things to inspire different people.
GNU Too
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