COMMENT:-[/B][/SIZE]
Although it's going just a bit too far to say that if a trio composed of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Pol Pot were to sing "God Bless America" with the same quality of sincerity as Ms. Smith sang it then I'd play it regardless, it isn't completely outside the realm of possibility that I would either.
Does what someone did 90+ years ago diminish the fact that Ms. Smith actually BELIEVED what she was singing? And, if so, why?
Red:
What?
- The fact that someone sang/said X strongly indicates that person believes whatever s/he said/sang.
- The issue isn't whether Smith believed (or believed in) the notions about which she sang. The issue is that she believed (believed in), sang about and/or extolled reprehensible notions.
Other:
Perhaps you're among the crowd that doesn't ascribe to the notion that there are attitudes and actions that, ethically/morally speaking, are existentially right/wrong.
I find that any given attitude or action can be classed, ethically/morally speaking, as existentially right/wrong, some in the absolute and others to some greater or lesser degree. An implication of my hewing thus is that I assert that though cultures may variously accord or withhold their approbation of any given attitude or action, hindsight affords one information that allows one to accurately assess the probity of formerly held ideas and undertaken actions.
Obviously, we cannot undo the past, but we can eschew exhibiting its ethical errancy. And, frankly, why would one not do just that?
To illustrate, the rubric article states:
"Smith...endorsed the “Mammy Doll” in 1939, which was based on a racist caricature of a black woman in the same vein as Aunt Jemima."
Perhaps Smith didn't know better than to endorse and propagate racist caricatures of Black women. Maybe she actually believed those caricatures weren't racist or that they were verisimilitudinous. Maybe Smith was just a plain ol' racist as were many of her contemporaries.
Whether she did or didn't is, in 2019, irrelevant. What's relevant is that we know they're racist, and knowing so, we are obliged, assuming we do not want to abet their persistence, to consign them, their progenitors and perpetrators, of which Smith was clearly one, to ignominy. Smith's rendition of "God Bless America" was good in its day, but its day and hers has passed.
My dad was, roughly, among Smith's contemporaries. There's plenty Granddaddy did and thought that I hold in high regard, but his racist notions aren't among them. Even as I will acknowledge and embrace the good Granddaddy did, there are others who, sans his racism, the same or substantially similar good things. In choosing between Granddaddy and one of those other folks' as a figure whose legacy and life I tacitly idolize in a broad public setting such as a baseball game, I'll pick one of those other folks.
Sure, Smith's version of "God Bless America" became iconic. It did so in an era of general insouciance (at best) toward, if not flat-out condoning of racism. Does song's sentiment, it's patriotic message, change with the singer? No. Accordingly, because we now know are better constituted messengers of the song's theme, and because we care not to canonize actual or potential racists (past or present), and because there are alternative personalities who've sung the song quite well, we need no longer place Smith on the cultural pedestal she once occupied.
