Last week, the NFL opened its 2025 season with The Star-Spangled Banner—as always—and Lift Every Voice and Sing, widely recognized as the Black national anthem. Since 2020, Lift Every Voice has appeared at games without much fuss. But this time? Outrage. “Wokeness.” Boycotts. Claims it was “replacing” the national anthem.
Both songs were performed. That’s it. Yet some felt that Lift Every Voice belongs exclusively to Black people. That alone was enough to trigger fury. Suddenly, a centuries-old song rooted in Black resilience became a cultural flashpoint, and conversations devolved into tribal arguments over patriotism, tradition, and who gets to claim a nation’s music.
Fast forward a week. The Saints held a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk, assassinated on a Utah campus. The stadium erupted in boos. This wasn’t about whether violence occurred—it was about whether the man “deserved” recognition. Kirk was known for mocking racial justice, attacking LGBTQ+ people, targeting women, immigrants, and anyone who challenged him. Conservative followers celebrated him; others called him a tyrant.
Ironically, the same voices outraged over Lift Every Voice as a “woke anthem” suddenly became “awake” to political violence when Kirk died. Within 24 hours, photos circulated comparing him to Martin Luther King Jr. The hypocrisy is hard to ignore.
Honoring Lift Every Voice does not erase The Star-Spangled Banner as the national anthem. A moment of silence for Kirk does not erase his record. Both demand confrontation—but our reactions reveal a deeper problem: selectivity. People claim they’re tired of division, yet they pick sides, stick to party lines, and eagerly engage in culture wars while refusing to face inconvenient truths.
New Orleans is one of the most diverse cities in the country. But NFL crowds don’t always reflect the city—they are global, mobile, and unpredictable. And yet, back-to-back moments like these—a song honoring Black resilience, a moment of silence for a divisive conservative figure—show us something important: the NFL isn’t creating division. It’s holding up a mirror.
We’ve forgotten how to listen. How to understand. How to disagree without distortion. We’ve lost the patience to confront complexity, to accept that honoring something or someone doesn’t automatically erase context. Both Lift Every Voice and Kirk’s moment reveal discomforts we refuse to acknowledge: the weight of history, the contradictions of patriotism, and the fragility of selective empathy.
If anything, these moments should push us toward reflection, not reaction. To recognize nuance instead of choosing a side. To demand honesty instead of optics. To see that division isn’t a product of ceremonies or songs—it’s a product of how we engage with them.
The NFL didn’t spark these controversies. We did. And until we learn to face the mirror it holds up, every anthem, every moment of silence, every gesture will be interpreted through the lens of our own biases.
We are the problem. And the solution begins with listening.
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