This year, several NBA teams played the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,”. So far, four teams have played it during NBA games.
The question I have is should white people take a knee or should they show them the same respect as people expect during the singing of the national anthem played at all sporting events? That is the dilemma that most people who attend these games face.
Look at it this way, the left take a knee against the national anthem that celebrates a great achievement by our military as a way to protest the police, so why don’t we take a knee for a song that came about to rally blacks after the Civil War ended the horrendous practice of slavery?
The simple answer is yes, we should respect the song that honors the former slaves looking for their rightful place in America. Not to diss the song because we disagree with the methods of Black Lives Matter or the New Black Panther Party. That would be as wrong as players taking a knee to the military because they have complaints against police forces, many of which are unfounded.
Both would be equally wrong. I only used the example to demonstrate the ludicrousness of taking a knee for the anthem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya7Bn7kPkLo
“It is troublesome to say we need a black national anthem in 2018,” declared Timothy Askew, a professor at Clark Atlanta University who is himself black.
“We need to be moving toward racial cohesiveness, diversity, universal understanding and universal respect,” he told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Professor Askew is recognized as an expert on the history of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” but interestingly, he believes that using it as a “black national anthem” is inappropriate and pushes divisiveness instead of togetherness.
“Personally, I think that it does promote racial separatism to call any cultural symbol a national anthem when we have a national anthem,” he explained.
The sooner that Americans of all stripes come together and find a way to put the past in the past where it belongs in order to move to a better future for all.
I won’t be taking a knee.