Black national anthem to be performed at Super Bowl LVIII, stirs debate on social media

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The NFL announced its pregame lineup for Super Bowl LVIII earlier this week and the league drew criticism over its intentions to have the Black national anthem played before the game.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing," known as the Black national anthem, has been played at each Super Bowl since Super Bowl LV and has stirred controversy on social media since. This year, the NFL said the song will be performed by Grammy-winning R&B singer Andra Day.

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Andra Day arrives for the 81st annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, on Jan. 7, 2024. (Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images)

Radio host Larry Elder was among those to speak out. 

"Sigh… While they’re at it, how about the University of Michigan fight song?" he wrote on X.

"Bro, we're American. Why tf do we need Lift Every Voice and Sing?" one NFL fan wrote in response to ESPN’s Adam Schefter’s post on the NFL’s announcement.

Others wondered what would happen if Americans had a "White national anthem." Nikole Hannah-Jones argued the U.S. already had a "White national anthem."

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Andra Day at Variety x Adobe Conversations on Jan. 19, 2024, in Park City, Utah. (Casey Flanigan/Variety via Getty Images)

"The white national anthem is played. It was written by a racist enslaver who believed Black people were inferior and fought abolitionists in the courts," she wrote of Francis Scott Key’s "The Star-Spangled Banner," pointing to a 2016 Smithsonian article on the composer.

"It did not become our national anthem until the 1930s partially because the song itself