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Travis Kelce #87, Mike Caliendo #66 and teammates stand before the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Baltimore Ravens at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on September 5, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri.
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Travis Kelce #87, Mike Caliendo #66 and teammates stand before the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Baltimore Ravens at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on September 5, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri. (David Eulitt / Getty Images)

Watch: NFL Already Infuriates Viewers, Kicks Off Game With 'Black National Anthem' in Woke Display

 By C. Douglas Golden  September 6, 2024 at 6:42am
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The annus horribilis of 2020 may be four years in our rearview mirror, but its spirit is still with us — at least as far as the NFL is concerned.

For most fans who tuned in to the season opener in Kansas City, there wasn’t much to be disappointed about. Yes, there was a 20-minute delay that was caused by a storm, and yes, there were plenty of cutaways to Taylor Swift, as there likely always will be so long as she’s with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

However, unless you were a Baltimore Ravens fan, there wasn’t much to be mad about on the field; in a thrilling game that came down to the final play, a touchdown catch by Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely was overruled when replays showed his toe was just barely out of bounds, leaving the Chiefs with a 27-20 win.

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Nothing about this could be controversial, especially since Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson — who had an otherwise stellar night, passing for 273 yards and rushing for another 122 — missed two open receivers in the end zone on consecutive plays inside the Chiefs’ 10 with less than 20 seconds left.

Instead, the controversy revolved around the national anthem. Or rather, national anthems.

As you may remember, the NFL has gotten into the habit, since the George Floyd riots of 2020, of performing the so-called “black national anthem,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” before important games.

As CBS News noted, it was played before all Week 1 games in 2020. Since then, it’s generally been performed at the Super Bowl; this February’s performance was by noted R&B singer Andra Day.

Do you believe the NFL is going woke?

Last year’s season opener also saw it performed by the Kansas City Boys Choir and Kansas City Girls Choir; that game was also hosted in Kansas City, obviously, as the prior year’s Super Bowl champion always opens the season on Thursday night at home in the first game that counts.

This year’s performer was Grammy-winning gospel singer Tasha Cobbs Leonard — who, truth be told, didn’t do a bad job of it:

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Except it’s not a national anthem.

We have one, called “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was performed, too — and thankfully, there were no protest antics this time, perhaps proof that at least some of the spirit of 2020 has worn off:

However, it’s safe to say at this point that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is to the culture wars as “fetch” was to the central clique in the movie “Mean Girls”: Stop trying to make it happen. It’s not going to happen.

First off, it makes no one happy. For those who believe we’re one country, united, indivisible, not partitioned by race, it’s insulting to insinuate that there are two national anthems for different races and to bring out one on special occasions.

“We have one National Anthem and it’s for everyone!” one annoyed X user posted.

And then there’s the other side: the people who get angry that anyone could see the problem with separate racial national anthems or that people don’t give “Lift Every Voice and Sing” its due.

Take Conor Murray of Forbes, writing about the controversy before last season’s kickoff game. His headline? “Why The ‘Black National Anthem’—Played At NFL Games And U.S. Open—Is Angering The Right Wing.”

Ah, yes — us perfidious right-wingers, who object to playing a song Murray claimed was “one of several initiatives the NFL announced it would undertake in 2020 to combat racial injustice.” These initiatives included putting slogans like “End Racism” and “It Takes All of Us” in the back of the end zones. Since then, all of us have obviously pitched in to end racism, having apparently not known it was a bad thing beforehand. Thanks, NFL!

And then there are the left-wingers who get themselves in a lather because people don’t give the song enough reverence. Take Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who was live-posting on X last year from what this writer imagines must have been a Super Bowl party where the libations, ahem, flowed freely.

I’ll imply or say no more, and instead Rep. Cohen’s thoughts on the lack of reverence for Andra Day’s performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — such as they were — speak for themselves:

That sounds like one humdinger of a watch party you were at, Steve.

But I digress. Rep. Cohen’s rant is the most blatant single instance of performative foot-stomping over the lack of reverence for the “black national anthem” when it is played that I can recall, but it’s far from the only one — and, ironically, such stinks come from people who generally didn’t have problems when players knelt for or sat out the actual national anthem. Funny how that works.

If America is to be one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, it should act that way. This antiquated sop to the spirit of George Floyd-induced self-flagellation does nothing but divide and vitiate the American soul.

One country, one anthem. Period.

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C. Douglas Golden
Contributor, Commentary
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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