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    OnyxBlackmanThe Root Staff
    8/20/17 12:23pm

    I’m gonna be so salty when time travel is finally invented and I can’t go anywhere.

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      lsleeleeOnyxBlackman
      9/24/17 10:32am

      Hell, even if there was somewhere that wasn’t racist, you’d just get dysentery. Time travel is definitely overrated. I’d go back about a decade and sell before the 2008 crash and that’s IT. Okay maybe I’d take a list of Superbowl winners too.

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      decgeeklsleelee
      9/24/17 2:00pm

      Powerball and Megamillions tickets. Yeah. i’d have to share but then I might just track down the winners and prevent them from playing.

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    BlanchardDudeThe Root Staff
    9/24/17 10:11am

    Holy shit. Francis Scott Key is an ancestor on my mother’s side, and this upsets me. Now I fully support anyone who wants to kneel at the National Anthem. It is your right to protest.

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      HeatherBlanchardDude
      9/25/17 8:01am

      That is really a stupid statement. . Key wrote that in 1815 who really knows what he said, really wrote or done? To say they have the right to take a knee is so disrespectful. What if our soldiers decided to not go fight for this country? You are not standing to give praise to that song or give honor to that song. You are standing to shown respect to this country to the men and women who are fighting for this country and for all of those who had perished fighting for this country. Weather the National Anthem is racist or not, people are missing the point. YOU STAND TO SHOW RESPECT TO THIS COUNTRY AND OUR SOLDIERS. . It’s a shame that people are so stupid that they think they are giving honor to a song that was wrote on the intentions of being a poem for someone to just get out of him what he was seeing and what he was feeling. People shouldreally be ashamed of themselves.

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      Flynn the Fine IXBlanchardDude
      9/25/17 10:08am

      - Has Francis Scott Key as an actual ancestor

      - Knows apparently nothing about Francis Scott Key (nothing in this piece was new information to anyone)

      - Believes his opinion nevertheless matters.

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    STLOrcaThe Root Staff
    9/25/17 10:18am

    Not gonna lie, if I was a freedman back then I probably would have sided with the British. I mean, how much worse could they have been? What are they gonna do, clap me in irons and ship my ass halfway around the world to an inhospitable hellscape?

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      skipsthebossSTLOrca
      9/25/17 1:47pm

      You have to be kidding. If you were free why would you fight at all? #notmywar

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      STLOrcaskipstheboss
      9/25/17 2:22pm

      That’s true—I would have lit out for friendly territory if I didn’t have any local ties. That said, my first thought would have been “better the devil you know”, especially if I had been treated badly by the colonists. It’s the same reason some southern Indian nations supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, or the British in the War of 1812—because they’d been so screwed over by the powers that be.

      I mean, let’s face it—it’s a case of damned if you do, more damned if you don’t.

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    HoodooGirl finds White Fragility funnyThe Root Staff
    10/28/17 6:51pm

    I have visited the USA on a number of occasions. I always found the American flagpole outside the houses a bit weird. From my perspective, the devotion to the US flag and the anthem kind of borders on hysteria. I mean racist elements aside, is rigid devotion to the flag and the anthem going to pay a person’s monthly bills?

    I could care less about my own country’s flag and national anthem. In fact, I make a conscious effort to put stickers from other countries on my car just to piss off the nationalists.

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    AfroluvThe Root Staff
    10/12/17 12:28pm

    We should talk about the pledge of allegiance too while we’re at it...
    “I choose NOT pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all but POC.”
    BTW, why would anyone want to pledge their loyalty to a flag anyway—wouldn’t it make more sense to pledge one’s loyalty to one’s country? But I digress. You can’t argue about what is patriotic when these are the same folks honoring confederate traitors.

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    JennyThe Root Staff
    1/19/17 12:18am

    I have also read that he was not for slavery, freed many of his slaves, and founded and taught at a school for free blacks. I read his anger was at the enemy, be it the white British hirelings or the blanks marines that he viewed as traitors. What are your thoughts on us?

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      SinnJenny
      8/20/17 7:44am

      What book did you read this from?

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      NilexifusJenny
      9/13/17 11:13pm

      It’s a bit complicated. He did free his slaves, he did teach freed slaves, and he worked pro bono for slaves attempting to gain freedom in court. He was also highly critical of slavery as an institution in public. But, it’s important to note that he was also anti-abolitionist, and rejected the idea of freeing slaves to live in America. As a founding member and a well known leader of the American Colonization Society, before they acquired abolitionist principles of their own, his ideal solution probably would have been to free all of the slaves and ship them off to Africa. But, that’s only if you keep the bit where they’re all removed from the country. In short, it’s accurate to say that he was racist, but calling him pro-slavery is absurd.

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    yilichiyaoThe Root Staff
    7/04/18 9:11am

    My playlist for this year was going to be America, fuck yeah and Lift Every Voice and Sing. Fuck the star spangled banner. Belize's angels in America monologue on America is one of my favorites. So that's my day! ROCK FLAG AND EAGLE!

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    DJPossessThe Root Staff
    9/25/17 11:05am

    Have you ever played Stairway To Heaven backwards?

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      Black68usmcvetDJPossess
      9/25/17 12:43pm

      No, If I do, what will I hear?

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      DJPossessBlack68usmcvet
      9/25/17 4:13pm

      Well, if you’re a young impressionable Catholic boarding school boy and your band teacher plays it for you one day after class during your Junior year, you wont like it.

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