NFL Gets Fan Backlash for Kicking Off Draft with a ‘Woke’ Stunt

Those who push a woke racial narrative should at least have to answer one question.

In short, if 19th- and 20th-century segregationists would have approved of it, should you?

Thursday night in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the National Football League, evidently unfazed by the broader public rejection of woke racial division, kicked off the first round of its 2025 draft with a ceremony that included a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” commonly known as the “black national anthem,” prompting a slew of criticisms from fans on the social media platform X.

The performance itself was fine, as the following clip shows.

Members of the James Weldon Johnson Foundation’s “National Hymn Choir” perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. pic.twitter.com/Ri0ujrwPOQ

— NFL (@NFL) April 24, 2025

Indeed, no one objects to the song. Objections begin with the very idea of a separate anthem based on skin color.

The NFL did not frame the song as the “black national anthem.” Conduct a Google search for that phrase, however, and see what appears.

“Often referred to as ‘The Black National Anthem,’ Lift Every Voice and Sing was a hymn written as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900,” according to the NAACP.

X users recoiled from the woke display.

“NFL must stop feeding woke divisive nonsense …Why?” one user wrote.

There is only one anthem
There is only one country

NFL must stop feeding woke divisive nonsense…Why?

— Joe Brunello (@GiuseppeVent8) April 25, 2025

“So sick of this ridiculous pandering. There’s only ONE National Anthem and it represents all Americans. There is no ‘black national anthem,’” another user wrote.

So sick of this ridiculous pandering. There’s only ONE National Anthem and it represents all Americans. There is no “black national anthem.”

— Ms. Pistolicious (@mspistolicious) April 24, 2025

“Stop it NFL with the black national anthem. We reject this division. The national anthem is for ALL of us. One nation. Under God. OH SAY CAN YOU SEE,” a third user wrote.

Stop it NFL with the black national anthem. We reject this division. The national anthem is for ALL of us. One nation. Under God. OH SAY CAN YOU SEE.

— FlyNavyDawg (@HereForFootbal5) April 24, 2025

This sort of garbage played during the Black Lives Matter madness of 2020, but not anymore. Too many Americans have awakened to the Marxist evil at the core of woke racial ideology.

Events like the NFL Draft should unite fans by celebrating players and their individual stories.

Above all, however, woke racial ideologues and the NFL must address that fundamental question. If segregationists would have loved a “black national anthem,” should you promote it?

What would Martin Luther King Jr. have said about the idea of a “black national anthem”? He would have called it a brainchild of the segregationists, a diabolical offshoot of the “separate but equal” doctrine.

The time to end this segregationist nonsense has long since passed.

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Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.

Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.

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