Hirelings and Slaves

I was surprised to learn that The Star Spangled Banner has been criticized as racist when I looked up the song on Wikipedia. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. Everything seems to be racist these days.

The Star Spangled Banner is about the defense of Fort McHenry from the British during the War of 1812. Race is not mentioned in the song at all, so how could it possibly be racist? Well, the third, seldom sung stanza includes the lines.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

According to the Wikipedia article

In November 2017, the California Chapter of the NAACP called on Congress to remove “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem. Alice Huffman, California NAACP president, said: “It’s racist; it doesn’t represent our community, it’s anti-black.”^[111] The rarely-sung third stanza of the anthem contains the words “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”, which some interpret as racist.

Only Blacks were ever slaves, so any mention of slavery, particularly an unflattering one, must be racist, right?

Let’s look at the whole third lyric.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Who was that band who so vaultingly swore? Obviously, this is a reference to the British soldiers who were attacking Fort McHenry, and a bit of gloating that the attack did not succeed. The words hireling and slave are clearly meant to be the mercenaries and conscripts who made up the British army at the time. Race has absolutely nothing to do with the third stanza of the National Anthem. It has nothing to the National Anthem at all.

I wonder if the people who attack the National Anthem are really so ignorant of the historical context behind these allegedly racist words or if they simply want to tar America as racist in any way they can. Perhaps both. Whatever the case, the accusation that The Star Spangled Banner is racist is an accusation based not on any historical facts but on a desperate hatred of the United States. We ought not to let the America haters get away with it.