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What’s Wrong With Kumbaya?
How an old spiritual became a punchline
Something caught my ear when I heard an excerpt of JD Vance’s speech at the Charlie Kirk funeral. In the midst of his reminiscences, he argued that the world was full of evil, and pledged not to downplay that fact “for the sake of a fake kumbaya moment.”
The current administration seems to view “kumbaya” as a useful cultural reference. Earlier this summer, Vance told Theo Von that he didn’t understand modern animosity toward the Confederacy given what he says happened in the aftermath of the Civil War:
But, you know, we’re all part of the same team. After the Civil War, we all came together, shook hands, and, you know, kumbaya, and you could even, like, respect the other side, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with what they were fighting for.
More recently, his boss, Donald Trump, tried to alleviate anxiety about an unusual meeting of the country’s top generals by calling it a “kumbaya moment.”
Why was everybody talking about “kumbaya?” Looking into the use of the word as a signifier in political speech, I found that it has a history that goes back at least to the 1990s.
In 2011, John McCain asked, “Are we gonna be all kumbaya in the new Congress? I don’t think so.” The next year, Mike Huckabee told…
