NFL, NBA, BLM

“NFL to play Black national anthem ‘Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing’ before ‘Star Spangled Banner’ at Week 1 games,” headlined a July 2 story from CBS Sports.  That drew pushback from Sen. Ted Cruz, who wondered, “How many national anthems do we have? Is there an Hispanic national anthem? An Asian-American national anthem? This is asinine. We are ONE America. E Pluribus Unum.” The Texas Republican was on to the implication.

Since “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” is not the national anthem of the United States of America, there must be a black nation that needs an anthem of its own. This was the view of the group that founded the hate-America left.

The Communist Party USA, an overwhelmingly white party controlled by an all-white Soviet dictatorship, held that blacks were not real Americans. As Paul D’Amato noted in the International Socialist Review, “In 1928, the Comintern declared that Blacks in the U.S. constituted a nation, and they called for ‘self-determination in the Black Belt.’ The Black Belt was a swath of territory cutting through the South known for its rich, dark soil, in which rural Blacks at that time were concentrated in large numbers.”

The Comintern is the Communist International, founded by the Soviet Union to control the national Communist parties. In “Communism’s African-American Soviet Republic,” Paul Kengor charted how in 1930 the Comintern called for a Soviet-directed and controlled “Negro Republic” among America’s Southern states. Professor Kengor also found that the current Revolutionary Communist Party calls for black Americans to unite into a separate, autonomous republic in “the southern part of the former imperialist United States of America.” The decision would be made by “a special vote in which only African-Americans would be eligible to participate.”

For Christian Davenport, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, it’s simple and sensible. “Actually, I think that it is fairly easily for African-Americans to form a Black nation within the United States,” professor Davenport told David Love of the Atlanta Black Star.  “There are large sections of the United States that have nothing but Black people in them already,” and “organizations like the Nation of Islam occupy decent size areas in American cities.”

Black Belt apartheid is again in vogue, this time with powerful promoters such as the National Football League, which plans to play the “Black national anthem.” As CBS Sports explains, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson and later set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson. As it goes:

Lift ev’ry voice and sing
‘Til earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies

References to the deity include, “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,” and as the song closes out:

Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land

According to CNN, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” was first performed in 1900 by a choir at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, where James Weldon Johnson served as principal. The performance was “part of a celebration of former President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.” Abe is out of fashion with the violent mobs now toppling statues and burning cities. No word whether the NFL games will feature the entire song.

The National Basketball Association has not announced plans to sing “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” before “The Star Spangled Banner.” On the other hand, the NBA will emblazon “Black Lives Matter” on courts. According to CBS, to “retain the focus on social justice issues” the NBA will “use the hardwood to keep the spotlight on the movement.”

Black Lives Matter made news on July 4 when an 8-year-old Secoriea Turner was shot and killed near the Atlanta Wendy’s where BLM set up roadblocks. Two shooters fired into a car, killing the child. Her father, Secoriya Turner told reporters, “They killed my baby because she crossed a barrier and made a U-turn? You killed a child. She didn’t do nothing to nobody. Black Lives Matter? You killing your own. You killed an 8-year-old child. . .”

Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told reporters “You can’t blame this on police officers. It’s about people who shot a baby in a car. We’re doing each other more harm than any officer on this force.” Bottoms is a possible running mate for Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.

A 2015 memo on Black Lives Matter from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee official Troy Perry says Democrats should not say “all lives matter” nor mention “black-on-black crime.” BLM is a “radical” group that advocates “collective ownership” and Perry warns Democrats not to support BLM “concrete policy positions.” As Roger Kimball explains, those positions include destruction of the family.

“It is a sad irony indeed that Black Lives Matter is explicitly dedicated to the destruction of the nuclear family—it’s part of their mission statement—since the ruination of the black family, actively abetted by the Democrats’ welfare policies, is largely responsible for the continuing plight of black Americans.”