The Star Spangled Banner Analysis

The stars that shift in the wind are, to many, a sign of hope and freedom. The elation felt from a patriotic tune lulls their mind from the past and present regarding their country of genocide and inequality. When I hear the melodic anthem, or perhaps our pledge of allegiance, I feel anger and disgust at the words that are so hypocritical to the true America. The America that favors war and division, though it claims freedom is its cause. This “new” world of ours was an asylum of sorts to the European people, who sought freedom and riches. Thus, they fought to create America under the premise of liberty and justice. When “The Star-Spangled Banner” graces my ears, liberty and justice is the least of my beliefs. A native people once dwelled here, in this stolen land, which lived in harmony with the earth and its resources. These native peoples, at one point in time, even welcomed our pale ancestors with curiosity in their eyes. Those eyes soon reflected the horror of beheadings, gunshots, and pestilence incarnate. “Good,” Christian men and women urged for the eradication of these people from a land they now claimed as their own. Children and mothers were wrenched from their homes and forced to walk for
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” the U.S anthem promises, however the opposite has been true for a very long time. In fact, inequalities and enslavement have rooted themselves into the country since its very birth. To build a nation, our European ancestors were thieves of life in the continent of Africa. In the country of liberty, men separated families and sacrificed human live merely to construct, profit, and control. Those slaves, however, were not the sole victim of a freedom less world, and though not as harsh, women were entirely at the mercy of men. The liberty promised to all was yet limited to the few, thus planting the seeds of unequal hypocrisy from the start of the United