(07-04-2020, 02:40 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: Let's look at the verses that people love to claim are racist:

Quote:And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The line that often gets mentioned is the one about the hirelings and slaves. The British armies had paid mercenaries, such as the German Hessians. They also paid and enlisted those who would defect, including slaves. They were doing all they could to overwhelm and disrupt the American forces. Francis Scott Key went aboard a British ship to negotiate the release of one of his friends, and they wouldn't let him return until after they shelled For McHenry. This was during the War of 1812. So, Key watched as the British shelled the ship through the night. The Brits had some of their infantry attack the fort, along with the paid Hessians and a unit made up of former slaves known as the Colonial Marines (who were badasses in their own right), but the Americans were able to fend them off. 

His penning of this entire poem is a recount of that night, and meant illuminate that the Americans could withstand such an overwhelming show of force. The first 4 lines is a stab at the Brits, who were probably gloating about how they were going to destroy the fort and take it that night, only to be forced into a retreat, which included the hireling and the slave. 

Francis Scott Key may have been a racist. Good chance, considering the times. However, the poem is not inherently racist unless you really want it to be. Just because it contains the word "slave," doesn't make it racist. This is like saying, "Yeah...  you talked a lot of trash, but we beat you. You even went and got help and we whooped them, too." Side note: Key had faced the Colonial Marines in a previous battle, so it wouldn't surprise me if he had some resentment towards them. This doesn't make the entire poem racist, and it definitely doesn't make our official national anthem racist. 

Keep peddling the divisiveness.

Rollerjag is still correct that Key did not write the song for all Americans.  The song celebrates that an attempt to free American slaves failed.
It's just the truth. Don't shoot the messenger.
That said, the German national anthem also has verses people have forgotten. it was originally written to cheer on the battles for German unification, but the Nazis appropriated it and emphasized one of the verses only. Modern Germany now only sings a different verse that the Nazis were known to omit.
The process of naming, shaming, and deplatforming racism needs to be taken with all the diligence that the process of denazification entailed. We're not there yet, but at least we're pushing in the right direction at the moment.

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