In Being White Today: A Roadmap to A Positive Antiracist Life, Shelly Tochluk and I make a distinction between White people, White culture, and whiteness. This is not an easy distinction to understand, and it has taken us years to internalize it ourselves. To get there in workshops, I often ask participants to give examples of White music. “Country” and “classical” easily ring out. 

Country music provides a rich example of the dual-edged blade of White culture: the beautiful, which we can appreciate and feel pride in, and the ugly, with which we must reckon. We have the artists we cherish and who speak up for justice: the Chicks and Johnny Cash. And we have the racist history embedded in country music.

In a recent story on It’s Been A Minute, “How Racism Became A Marketing Tool for Country Music,” host Brittany Luse spoke with historian Amanda Martínez about the genre’s history of using anti-Black racism to appeal to its White fan base. Despite the critiques of its dog-whistle racism, or perhaps because of these critiques, Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is now number one in the United States music charts.

Their discussion of the song’s popularity and the history it taps into highlights two phenomena we wrestle with in Being White Today. The first phenomenon is how White people facing some of the moral dilemmas of racism often double-down when they feel that free speech and whiteness are under attack; hence, the rallying to support Aldean and his song as evidenced in its #1 position. 

While this may generate a whole host of emotions in us, Shelly and I ask our fellow White antiracists to breathe and generate curiosity to engage Aldean fans. Why do they like the song? Listen for a shared value that allows for some level of connection. Work to build a bridge for the long game — toward the day when we can openly discuss the dangers of the invocation of violence in a discussion of race without denial and dismissiveness.

The second phenomena is how People of Color, Black people specifically in this case, are scapegoated when the US faces a moral panic. In Being White Today, we address the moral panic around diversity, equity, inclusion and critical race theory. (Check out the great Code Switch episode on this topic, “The Folk Devil Made Me Do It.”) 

The moral panic surrounding country music follows this tradition of pinning immorality on Black people while uplifting and/or protecting White people. It happened with jazz, “the devil’s music,” which was to be avoided while righteous hill-billy/country music was embraced. And Martínez traces this legacy forward to how White conservatives hold country music morally superior to rap and hip-hop. And Aldean experiences streaming and financial success with a song/video that taps into a history of lynching and anti-Black violence.

This process of asserting the superiority of White culture is whiteness. This is where our work is within the White community. We begin by acknowledging the reality of the emotions that accompany the panic. Building emotional capacity (for ourselves and for those activated by the moral panic) can generate the possibility for change. With less heightened emotions, we can locate some shared values that allow us to pivot to important questions: Who’s framing the panic? To what end? What lesson may there be for us to learn? 

It can feel overwhelming and/or defeating to see the racist side of White culture assert itself; however, we offer that it does not have to be that way. We believe in positive White culture and positive White identity. Join us. Let’s not concede.
Please check out Being White Today: A Roadmap to a Positive Antiracist Life by Shelly Tochluk and Christine Saxman to learn more about navigating being White today.