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Bill Maher has mocked the NFL for announcing that they will let the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the “black national anthem,” be played at some soccer games. The “Real-Time” host said on that show that playing this song alongside the national anthem is racial “segregation.”
Maher, who is a prominent classical liberal —Democrat, anti-religious, anti-conservative, and critical of right-wing leaders— has earned some scorn within the ranks of American progressivism, especially the more radical Woke movement, for criticizing Wokeism’s lack of common sense. Thus, when he criticized the NFL for including the “black national anthem” in some games, Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of “The View,” attacked Bill Maher for his anti-Lift Every Voice and Sing stance and said, “I think because we have gone backward a good 10-15 years, we’re having to re-educate people.”
On his most recent show, number 578, Bill spared neither the NFL, Goldberg nor the woke world: “The program ‘The View’ last week devoted a lot of time to this while somehow avoiding what I actually said,” said Maher. “It seemed to be a lot about a need to school me about the Black national anthem itself. Whoopi Goldberg said, quote, ‘We’re having to re-educate people.’ Because nothing ever goes wrong when you start talking about re-education. Just ask Chairman Mao. Maybe we can set up some sort of camps.”
During his monologue, Maher argued that “segregating by race” is a “crazy idea” and that “there should be one national anthem.”
“Symbols of unity matter. And purposefully fragmenting things by race reinforces a terrible message that we are two nations hopelessly drifting apart from each other. That’s not where we were even ten years ago and it’s not where we should be now,” argued Maher who was consistently applauded by the program’s audience.
“If we have two anthems, why not three? Or five? Why not a women’s anthem? A Latino anthem? A gay, trans, Indigenous Peoples, an Asian and Pacific Islander anthem? Because ‘I’m not dealing with you, I’m not speaking to you’ is not a way you can run a country and most people of all backgrounds understand that already and don’t even want to try to do it that way,” the presenter said.
“I’m not out of step! Believing in separate but equal? That’s out of step — by 67 years. It was 67 years ago, in 1954, when the Supreme Court handed down their landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling which said ‘separate but equal’ isn’t what we do here. We decided we’re going to try to make this work together.”
Bill Maher on racial segregation driven by the woke movement
The host cited a study revealing that, of 173 colleges in the U.S., 42% offer segregated residence halls and another 72% offer segregated graduation ceremonies. “Well, congratulations, liberal parents. You just paid 100 grand for your kid to move to Biloxi, Mississippi in 1948,” … “I mean, we’re a nation that professes diversity as our strength. But now half the kids’ dorm rooms are determined by racial purity?… You see what I mean about becoming so woke, you come back out the racist side?”
Maher’s monologue is not just about the NFL wanting to implement or let the “black national anthem” be played at soccer games, it goes much deeper. When you see instances of giant and influential companies like Google, Disney, or Bank of America forcing their employees to participate in re-education programs with anti-American propaganda, or major universities, like Columbia, separating their students’ “graduation celebrations” by race, or school districts renaming schools, like Abraham Lincoln, in the name of “racial justice,” it’s quite understandable that even self-confessed liberals like Maher would get upset and explode against the woke movement.
“Because what’s next? What follows separate dorms, anthems, ceremonies, cafes, gyms, separate neighborhoods? That was red-lining! They wouldn’t let Black people live in the town where I grew up. Then they do. The word for that is ‘progress.’ It’s where the term ‘progressive’ comes from,” Maher went on to explain in his monologue.
“We need to stop regarding this new woke segregation as if it’s some sort of cultural advancement. It’s not. … Countries do disintegrate into madness when they indulge their separatist tendencies; Hutus slaughtering Tutsis in Rwanda, Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir, everyone in Afghanistan, and that one Jew. We need to unite as one nation who come together and sing one anthem always out of key.”
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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