Year: 2014

One of the beat responses to the racists who took to their keyboard and voiced their displeasure to Coca-Cola for running an inclusive Super Bowl ad, came from an Atlanta anchor woman for WXIA station named Brenda Wood.

In a two minutes segment called Brenda’s Last Word, Wood explained that the ‘speak English’ folks – who were mad that America The Beautiful was sung in multiple languages – were apparently unaware that the English language originated in England, and that the author of the song they so love, was gay.

Here is the essence of what the Anchor had to say;

But the fact that people are outraged over this ad is outrageous itself. People indignant that others would have the audacity to sing ‘America the Beautiful’ in a language other than English, when America was built on opening its arms to the world? The quote on the Statue of Liberty doesn’t say ‘give me your English-speaking only, Christian-believing, heterosexual masses.’ It says ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, tempest-tost.’

Have we forgotten that every one of us ‘Americans’ except for Native Americans, are descendants of foreigners?

That the English language is from England?

What makes America different from everywhere else is that we are a melting pot.  We are not homogenous. It is our diversity that built this country.

How dare there be indignation over the very thing that makes us great.

And why not honor the beauty of that in song? What’s so sacrosanct about this song that it can’t be sung in other languages by other ethnicities, by those of diverse religions and diverse lifestyles?

A relevant question considering the words of ‘America the Beautiful’ were penned by a gay woman, Katharine Lee Bates, in 1895, an English professor at Wellesley who also wrote lovingly of her longtime committed relationship with another woman.