Essence Festival, an annual event put on in New Orleans by Essence Magazine, took place this year from Jun 29 to Jul 3. I wrote about Kamala Harris participating in the Global Black Economic Forum on Thursday where she groused about the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action. Then, on Friday, she delivered a speech that included her take on ‘reproductive rights’ which is code for abortion on demand. What wasn’t mentioned about Kamala’s appearances at Essence Festival was singer Jill Scott’s rendition of the national anthem. She remade the Star-Spangled Banner to suit herself and it is garbage. She opened the festival with it.

Everyone please rise for the only National Anthem we will be recognizing from this day forward.

Jill Scott, we thank you! #ESSENCEFest pic.twitter.com/WrYrP1nhTc

— ESSENCE (@Essence) July 5, 2023

Essence was swooning. It declared that this is the only national anthem the festival will recognize from here on in.

The ending was “This is not the land of the free, but the home of the slave.” Quite a flex for Ms. Scott. She is a multi-millionaire performer who has received much recognition during her career, including platinum records. Her idea of slaves in America is twisted. She wasn’t talking about real slavery like that of the illegal migrants being brought in by the cartels on the southern border, thanks to Biden’s border crisis. She is well aware of the fact that the world is her oyster and yet she is pushing race-baiting grievance to a festival audience. Shame on her.

Home of the slave huh pic.twitter.com/metC86dHRH

— 🇺🇸🕷️🕸️Konservative_Kratos_10/20/23🕸️🕷️🇺🇸 (@nashywil93) July 5, 2023

It got Jill Scott trending on social media and her version went viral, so mission accomplished, I guess. She is a 51-year-old woman who knows better. Just in her lifetime, she has seen lots of changes in America, including the election of a black president – twice – and her own life is a proof of what can happen with hard work and talent. America is, in fact, the land of the free. She is free to pursue her career and she does.

This is the kind of garbage children hear and believe. She could use her platform to promote positive messages and encourage young people but instead she remade the national anthem and used it to promote a false narrative of American history. It’s why parents don’t want CRT taught in elementary school or middle school, for that matter. Young kids don’t know the difference between American history and what leftists re-write to push their own agenda, one of racial grievance. It is divisive and not productive.

The kicker? She wrote this version of the Star-Spangled Banner more than 30 years ago, as a teenager.

Fans often ask R&B singer and actor Jill Scott why she doesn’t sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sporting events.

The reason: She knows a completely different anthem would leave her lips, Scott told an audience during a March show in her hometown of Philadelphia.

The anthem she’s referring to is one that she wrote as a teenager living in north Philadelphia, a biting critique of racial inequality in America. And after more than 30 years, she performed her rewrite while touring this year. The neo-soul icon gave the highest-profile performance of the anthem so far Saturday at Day 2 of the 2023 Essence Fest in New Orleans. In front of a packed Caesars Superdome audience — where the festival celebrating Black artists and Black women has taken place since 1994 and has drawn crowds of nearly half a million — Scott belted out her remixed anthem. She received ovations and applause from the arena and gained buzz across social media.

She doesn’t see the changes made in America, eh? That speaks volumes about her, not America. In 2023, she decided to start singing the song. Will Joe Biden or Kamala Harris ask her to sing at a campaign rally? How about the DNC at their convention? I’d take that bet.

Leftist have to pretend it is the bad old days of segregation and Jim Crow. When BLM protests turned into riots, as they regularly did, I didn’t see any fire hoses or German Shepherds being used by police as crowd control. Those days are long gone and our country has continued to be a place where people are literally risking their lives to come to for a life of freedom. In other countries, people try to get out, in our country, people are trying to get in. There is a reason for that. They pretend it is 1950 and the struggle is real. It’s particularly popular during election cycles. Remember when Joe Biden and Kamala decided to dredge up the Jim Crow South to claim Georgia Governor Kemp and the Republicans in Georgia were racists because they successfully signed election integrity reform law into effect? Why wouldn’t Ms. Scott feel emboldened to sing such a garbage song?

It’s her choice and she chooses to be a race-baiting opportunist. She is furthering her career, not helping others who are coming up with rhetoric. It’s a missed opportunity.