There is no argument. He blew your opinion up (a norm these days). It was context to the actual history of the song written by Key, as well as provided evidence of Key's own actions surrounding slavery.
Seriously what is the deal with this black national anthem thing?
- Thread starter i am herdman
- Start date
There is no argument. He blew your opinion up (a norm these days). It was context to the actual history of the song written by Key, as well as provided evidence of Key's own actions surrounding slavery.
Why is reading so difficult for you deplorable? Here is the exact quote which is the central argument of his essay:
“The Star-Spangled Banner” in no way glorifies or celebrates slavery
OK, great. But guess what? Nobody is arguing otherwise. His entire essay is based on a straw man.
Here is what I claimed about the Anthem, and I even said it twice so you morons could understand:
Read the full Anthem. A verse very specifically celebrates the killing of black slaves who are fighting for their freedom. It was written by a slave owner whose brother-in-law was the DA in DC and was vehement about blacks being subhuman and prosecuting those who believe otherwise.
So let me reiterate: we are faulting blacks for not honoring a song that very specifically celebrates the killing of black slaves who were fighting for their freedom, written by a slave owner whose own family was a huge factor in subhumanizing blacks.
I didn't argue that the Anthem was celebrating slavery. I said that it was celebrating killing slaves who were fighting for their freedom. Those are two entirely different things. Both are horrible, but the latter takes it to another level.
Regarding his/your claims that Key was a nice, gentle racist? Yeah, I can post story after story suggesting otherwise, but does it really matter considering the more damning charges?
They were fighting for the enemy. That was the point. We celebrated killing red coats, Japanese, Germans, etc. but now our allies with them. The song was about killing the people we were fighting against who were the kings soldiers.
Your post and people like you are a stretch.
Yes, and that makes the song celebrate the killing of slaves who were fighting for their freedom. The song doesn't care that they are enslaved, that they are trying to get their freedom, but rather, that they are killing them. Great thing to celebrate.
And the point was that they were "fighting for the enemy"? Again, then why do you support honoring those enemies who were fighting the U.S. government during the Civil War? You're a hypocrite.
Who cares, the American Army kills the enemy. Not discriminatory. Whoever was on the side of the King got a bullet.
So you were for the King? You apparently were for the British.
The anthem was written because the colonies hated the british moron. Keys hated the british more than anything else. Thats probably why he wrote a song celebrating the defeat of the british at Fort McHenry that included black colony soldiers. The Star-Spangled Banner” celebrates the heroes who defended Fort McHenry in the face of almost certain defeat against the most powerful gunships of the era. America’s soldiers included mainly whites, but also free and escaped blacks. Escaped slave William Williams served in the US infantry at Fort McHenry and was killed by a fragment of a British bomb. Another escaped slave, Charles Ball, writes in his memoirs of being among the American soldiers of the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla who courageously repelled a night attack and saved the city.
That's probably why he actually freed his own slaves and gave them property along with leading efforts to change slavery by providing freedom and educating free slaves.
To serve this community, Key helped establish the Georgetown Lancaster School for freed people of color and even taught there. Over 1,000 black children were students at the school, and most attended tuition-free.
As detailed in Marc Leepson’s recent biography, Key put his skills and reputation as a lawyer at the service of blacks suing for freedom, most notably in an 1825 case of the slave ship Antelope (a precursor of the Amistad). Speaking to the US Supreme Court, Key described the treatment of slaves as “extreme cruelty” and slaves as “unhappy victims.” Key said that those aboard the ship “are men, of whom it cannot be affirmed that they have universally and necessarily an owner.” Key lost this case, but most of the enslaved captives were returned to Africa — a moral, if not legal victory.
So let me reiterate: I'll take the writings and research of a song from a professor of Afro American studies above your education of a song by high school drop out rappers.
So your argument is that he was black-friendly due to him taking money to represent slaves as their attorney? You realize that the legal field is notorious for lawyers taking whatever stance and defending things they don't agree with if it earns them fame or money, right?
So Key freeing his own slaves meant he was against slavery and wanted to help them? In that case, after he freed his slaves, why did he keep all of the slaves his wife inherited? Why didn't he free them? Why did he say that blacks are "a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community"? Why did Key want all freed slaves shipped back to Africa and banished from the U.S.? Why did Key, as DC's district attorney (I thought it was his brother-in-law, but it was actually him), prosecute so many abolitionists?
And in the most compelling argument to represent Key's stance on blacks and slaves:
Key likewise sought to crack down on the free speech of abolitionists he believed were riling things up in the city. Key prosecuted a New York doctor living in Georgetown for possessing abolitionist pamphlets.
In the resulting case, U.S. v. Reuben Crandall, Key made national headlines by asking whether the property rights of slaveholders outweighed the free speech rights of those arguing for slavery’s abolishment. Key hoped to silence abolitionists, who, he charged, wished to “associate and amalgamate with the negro.”
Though Crandall’s offense was nothing more than possessing abolitionist literature, Key felt that abolitionists’ free speech rights were so dangerous that he sought, unsuccessfully, to have Crandall hanged.
But, oh yeah - he took money and gained fame for representing free slaves, so that somehow overrides his entire life's work.
Probably around the time of the Native Americans, since it seems like you’re trying to talk like one.
Definitely sounds like something shallow you would do had you gone past LSAT. Instead... we're left with you bragging about passing out Tshirts and buying jewelry to kids in the hood.
The irony.....Please see your above comments about "defending things they dont agree with"... As a DA his job would have been to argue "THE LAW" and the statutes supporting it.
Most likely because they were not his property. His wife owned them. He actually freed the slaves HE owned and inherited.
He did? Link us to where exactly he wanted ALL free slaves shipped back? The article points out that: Rather than abolish slavery, however, the society purchased slaves and offered them passage to Africa.
A DC DA, nor the society he was a part of, had the power to abolish slavery. Wouldn't many free slaves want to leave the country that enslaved them? Why would freed slaves want to stay in a country that still enslaved their brothers and sisters legally? Wouldn't they want to escape the country built on institutional racism???? Sounds like Keys was trying to do them a favor based on modern Kaepernick theory.
Yes, and as the DA, he tried doing exactly that to harm blacks, but he inevitably failed because it wasn't legal.
Do you want some education on who ruled the roost between a husband and wife in those days? There is overwhelming evidence that Keys was not in support of slavery, but he invested a significant part of his career trying to keep slavery legal, keep blacks as sub-human, and punished those who supported abolition.
Do you really think that if Keys wanted those slaves freed, he wouldn't have been able to do it?
Francis-Scott-Key
He also became involved in colonization efforts, helping to found (1816) and promote the cause of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which worked for decades to send free African Americans to a colony on Africa’s west coast (later the country of Liberia). The ACS was reviled by abolitionists and by many free blacks as little more than a vehicle to rid the United States of African Americans.
That's the worst jump in attempted logic this board has ever seen. Why would you make yourself look so stupid to try and defense a guy like that? Christ.
Yes. That's what I've been saying all along. Again.....
Key was also an early and ardent opponent of slave trafficking. Although he was a slaveholder from a large slave-owning family, he treated his own slaves humanely and freed several during his lifetime. He provided free legal advice to slaves and freedmen in Washington, D.C., including civil actions in which enslaved individuals petitioned for their freedom.
Talk about failed attempts at "logic". Not only does it fail to say "FORCING all freed slaves to return to Africa"....Apparently not even ALL free blacks thought it was a vehicle to rid the United States of African Americans.... Probably because abolitionists were also members of the ACS
You cant even educate us accurately on the context of a song written during that time. Let me help you out when it comes to women and the slaves they owned.
Rifle wrong again
In her book, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, Jones-Rogers makes the case that white women were far from passive bystanders in the business of slavery, as previous historians have argued. Rather, they were active participants, shoring up their own economic power through ownership of the enslaved.
In the past, historians had often based their conclusions about white women’s role in slavery on the writings of a small subset of white Southern women. But Jones-Rogers, an associate professor of history at the University of California Berkeley, drew on a different source: interviews with formerly enslaved people conducted during the Great Depression as part of the Federal Writers’ Project, an arm of the Works Progress Administration. These interviews, Jones-Rogers writes, show that white girls were trained in slave ownership, discipline, and mastery sometimes from birth, even being given enslaved people as gifts when they were as young as 9 months old.
So before these young women get married, their parents and sometimes female kin and friends will encourage them to develop legal instruments, protective measures to ensure that they don’t lose all of their property to their husbands. These legal instruments that they develop are very much like prenuptial agreements today. They’re called marriage settlements back then, or marital contracts, which essentially detail not only what property they’re bringing into the marriage but what kind of control their husbands can or cannot have over it.
These women are not stupid. They’re like, I’m about to get married, the law says that everything I have is going to be my husband’s. I don’t want that to happen. What can I do to prevent that from happening?
They are prepared, they are knowledgeable, and they work with parents and others who are willing to assist them to develop protective measures to ensure that the relinquishment of all of their property wealth and assets doesn’t happen once they get married.
