And that’s exactly what the fine folks at the Kentucky Derby did - they absolutely refuse to give in to the mob and go woke. These people know exactly who their fans are and refuse to disrespect them. Too bad Bud Light didn’t realize that.
The American Tribune reported that Despite pushback from the Left during the chaotic months of 2020 and 2021, the state song of Kentucky, “My Old Kentucky Home” was played before the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in 2021 and will be played again this year, 2023. The event, in making that decision, has refused to bow to its woke critics and cancel the song, which was first played at the race in 1921 and has been played every year since.
The controversy over the song began in 2020 and heated up in 2021, with woke critics demanding the derby nix the song. Newsweek reported on the controversy surrounding the song at the time, saying, “while some people consider the song to be a powerful condemnation of slavery,” others have a problem with “its original title and lyrics, and the contexts in which it has been performed, including at minstrel shows.”
Despite the criticism from the woke left, even Smithsonian Magazine described the song as “a condemnation of Kentucky’s enslavers who sold husbands away from their wives and mothers away from their children,” and as “the lament of an enslaved person who has been forcibly separated from his family and his painful longing to return to the cabin with his wife and children.”
But, as usual, the woke mob didn’t care about facts, history, or tradition. It cared about trying to force a beloved event to cancel a beloved aspect of itself, thus bending the knee before those who hate it. Fortunately, the Kentucky Derby refused and played the song despite the woke attacks.
Yet better, the Kentucky Derby has stuck by that decision and will play the song this year as well, as Tonya Abeln, Churchill Downs VP of Corporate Communications, said.
Good! We’re so happy to hear this. Now, if only more groups and companies would do this, we’d all be better off.
Once you start standing up to these bullies you start to realize that they’re a small group, they’re just really loud and coordinated, that’s all. Stop letting them push you around.
