NYT: Is the National Anthem Racist?

NYT:  The continuing refusal by the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to stand during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games has set off a debate about patriotism, protest and professional sports. But it has also raised another fraught question: Is our national anthem itself racist?

The journalist Jon Schwarz, writing in The Intercept, argued yes, denouncing the lyrics, written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812, as “a celebration of slavery.” How could black players, Mr. Schwarz asked, be expected to stand for a song whose rarely sung third stanza — which includes the lines “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave” — “literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans”?

That argument drew outrage from some conservative news outlets, as well as a more scholarly rebuttal from Mark Clague, a musicologist at the University of Michigan and the founding board chairman of the Star Spangled Music Foundation. We spoke with Mr. Clague, who is writing a book about the song, about the anthem’s history and shifting meanings. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Why do you think those who call the song racist are wrong?

The social context of the song comes from the age of slavery, but the song itself isn’t about slavery, and it doesn’t treat whites differently from blacks. The reference to slaves is about the use, and in some sense the manipulation, of black Americans to fight for the British, with the promise of freedom. The American forces included African-Americans as well as whites. The term “freemen,” whose heroism is celebrated in the fourth stanza, would have encompassed both.  (Link to rest of the interview)

"a side note on the sphinxlike front desk clerks, by the way: I am legitimately infatuated with their unparalleled ability to deliver bad news"

Just How Bad Is the Scene in Sochi?

My hotel has no water. If restored, the front desk says, "do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous." #Sochi2014
— Stacy St. Clair (@StacyStClair) February 4, 2014

Luckily for @jianghomeshi, I have extra lightbulb but need doorknob in return. #SochiProblems #Sochi2014 pic.twitter.com/s67850uTuj
— Sochi Problems (@SochiProblems) February 5, 2014

"It was horrible, an absolute circus, really really bad," she said.

"Only he can understand those gestures."

Idiosyncratic then.

That is what I was thinking all along. Near the end they say outright what I was thinking from the start. Why would they hire a person who does not speak the language to interpret the language and so visibly with so many luminaries and for such a broad audience for so long? It does not make any sense at all.

Of course it does. Nepotism. I know somebody who knows all about that. My cousin. Hire him. Okay.

But what he knows is how he gets by with his brother all his life and that is it. I bet.

Worldnews. The interpreter for deaf was fake at the Mandela memorial.

Interpreted for a protracted series of speakers, including Obama, the elected leader of the most powerful nation of the world, you know *sniff*  standing right next to him and watched by millions. The interpreter did not make sense at all to the viewers who tuned in to see. Chief among them, first to remark anyway, not just any ol' schmuck, the first deaf woman elected to South African parliament.

The link describes other non-schmuck types chiming in. 

Judging what they describe without watching to avoid being irritated, so not really knowing, but by  their complaints I thought throughout something contrary while visualizing the interpreter gesticulating unintelligibly. Not to be contrary, but because similar things  happened before.

Chief of British Deaf Association:

"He has no real clue about sign language and has obviously upset the deaf community of South Africa as we have received hundreds of angry messages via Facebook and Twitter," 

...board member of the World Federation of the Deaf Youth Section, explains:

"The structure of his hand, facial expressions and the body movements did not follow what the speaker was saying."

...interpreter Francois Deysel tweeted during the ceremony that the interpreter was,

"making a mockery of our profession."

They are saying he did not use any of their conventions. There are more angry messages there at the link. None of them are supportive. Why would they do that?

It is how things are in a banana republic. Not that South Africa fully is, but this shows an aspect of that, just like America. It doesn't matter there are professional associations that can do that with mind-blowingly good interpreters immediately available all over ready to go, but somebody up high knows somebody who knows... so there you go. It's what you get. 

<alert!>

On a boat to Isla Mujeres at the dock waiting, for something, not the fast boat that hydroplanes skidding across whisking tourists to a reef of interest, rather the big old luggy ferry type, the cheap boat for locals that takes workers across more slowly and more crowded and uncomfortably for vendors and such for the day, not so many tourists. Multiple decks, I was not on top, but not on bottom either, sitting kind high up and shaded and looking down on the dock just waiting and observing when I beheld two men below on the dock talking to each other in gestures. In Spanish gestures. The whole time I sat there thinking, goodie, two of my favoritist languages right here, two *snap*  two *snap* two favoritist languages in one. I looked hard. Strained to recognize something. Something. Surely something Something logical having to do with the dock, with work, with family. Come on. Come on, I said. 

Nothing.

I was quite rude staring that long, but I couldn't help it. It wasn't idle gazing either, I was studying. And learning.  Nothing. Not one single thing. Man, I am thick sometimes.

Very frustrating. 

But apparently they understood each other just fine. Their private language was complex and contained a lot of delicate one, two, three-finger elements. 

Similar thing happened with a French guy. This time with a group. He was exceedingly animated. Father a pilot, mother an actress, I got that much, one French the other German, natural actor, this guy. My friends spoke with him for hours, it seemed. Maybe one hour.  Smiling broadly and laughing throughout. At length, and with great frustration and apologetically I turned to a friend and I said, "I don't understand a fucking thing this guy says," the person said back to me, "Me either."  Odd, because the American version is based on French. 

Too bad. The people who trusted the interpreter at Mandela's memorial looked a bit foolish and the people who tuned in for that were deprived. They could have had somebody who can nail these speeches precisely. There are awesome interpreters available and I imagine some of the speeches are poetic and touching. All of that is missed. 

But wait, a mockery of your profession?  That is a profession? This whole time I thought people were just being helpful.