Watch Conservative Pop Singer Pervert Civil Rights Anthem

Conservatives co-opting the language and trappings of the Civil Rights movement is nothing new, despite and/or because of their longstanding support for a party that’s been on a 40-year march to the overtly racist candidacy of Donald Trump, but this weekend’s Western Conservative Summit provided a particularly noteworthy example of the phenomenon. Pop singer and former The Voice contestant Biff Gore told the crowd at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver that a “change is about to happen in America, for the better,” before wowing them with a beautifully-sung and slightly-altered version of Sam Cooke’s Civil Rights-era anthem “A Change is Gonna Come”:

If my people will repent, and return, to those old school values that this country was fightin’ for…

Even giving Gore the benefit of the doubt that the “change for the better” he was referring to wasn’t the ascent of an overt racist to the presidency, but just the victory of the conservative movement that created him, and even granting the depth of religious conviction that would allow such a bargain in order to achieve noble aims like ending reproductive freedom and protecting the right to discriminate against LGBT people, Gore’s song selection isn’t the most jarring part of this performance. That’s saying a lot, because it’s pretty damn jarring.

It’s the sentiment in his alteration of the lyrics, which he sung beautifully, that stings, because it was those self-same “old school values that this country was fightin’ for” that the Civil Rights movement was fighting against, and they were fighting the same people who want to “take our country back” now. They weren’t fighting to change laws and policies and hearts and minds in some far-off land, they were fighting America. If you want to sing an ode to regressive social politics, don’t pervert something that’s the opposite of that, write one yourself.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.