Jason Aldean, purveyor of hate in a violently racist world

Until recently, country music star Jason Aldean was probably best known as the Las Vegas performer whose outdoor concert was the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock, an extremist right-winger, angry at the federal government’s 1992 crackdown at Ruby Ridge in Idaho and in 1993 in Waco, Texas, opened fire with high-powered weapons on the audience and in the following minutes, killed 59 people and injured 500 more.

In the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, some well-known country music stars, like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, called for gun control. But not Jason Aldean.

As Billboard reported the following year, Aldean stated, “It’s not necessarily the guns themselves or that I don’t think people should have guns. I have a lot of them.” Aldean claimed to Billboard that he stayed away from taking a position on gun control because it would mean “you’re setting yourself up to be crucified in the public eye or in the media.”

He also told Rolling Stone in 2016 that politics is “one subject I do stay away from. Politics is a no-win.”

But Aldean can no longer make that claim. He has moved further right with the passage of time, crossing over into far-right territory.

An enthusiastic MAGA supporter and a racist

Today, Aldean is an enthusiastic MAGA supporter who plays golf with Donald Trump himself. Trump even invited Aldean and his wife Brittany to ring in the new year at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and again in 2023.

Aldean has been known to sport the Confederate flag on t-shirts as recently as 2019. He also established himself as anti-vax and anti-mask during the pandemic. He has given voice to Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory.

And his wife Brittany is clearly an equal partner on the MAGA team, making clear that she is firmly transphobic in 2022, when she posted a video on Instagram showing her putting on makeup that was captioned “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase.” Some in the country music community took offense, with Maren Morris commenting “Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.” Soon thereafter, Jason Aldean’s Nashville publicity firm ended its relationship with him.

And Aldean’s newest country hit, “Try that in a small town,” aims its rage at Black Lives Matter and other left-wing protesters, as if anarchy, looting and violent crime have overtaken U.S. cities, while rural communities “take care of our own” to maintain peace and stability.

Jonathan Bernstein of Rolling Stone described the song’s video “as a greatest-hits reel of Fox News scaremongering imagery…of protests, police defiance, and urban unrest.” And for a song ostensibly about lawless violence, the video’s rapid-fire footage is notable for its glaring omission of the January 6, 2021, MAGA riot at the U.S. Capitol. Furthermore, some of the news footage is not from the U.S. but rather Canada, Germany and even Ukraine—and dates as far back as 2010. Accuracy is not the strong point of the “Try that in a small town” video.

It is not necessary to dig too deeply to realize that the song’s lyrics and its accompanying video consists entirely of a string of racist dog whistles and bigoted tropes from start to finish—as if Aldean is winking at other MAGA supporters who break out in chants of “USA! USA!” when he sings it onstage.

The song’s lyrics threaten, “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and light it up / Yeah, ya think you’re tough / Well, try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won’t take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don’t / Try that in a small town.”

“Modern lynching song”

The video’s racist message is unmistakable, featuring Aldean playing the song in front of an enormous American flag draped on the historically significant Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee. In 1927, an angry white lynch mob beat Black teenager Henry Choate with a sledgehammer and pulled him from his jail cell after he was falsely accused of raping a 16-year-old white girl. The mob then dragged him by the rear of a car across town and hung him from a second-story window of the Maury County Courthouse. The girl, for the record, more than once denied that Choate was the man who attacked her.

This is a big part of the reason why “Try that in a small town” has been called a “modern lynching song.” Sheryl Crow denounced it as “inciting violence.” And the outrage against it forced Country Music Television (CMT) to stop airing it after just three days. Singer Adeem the Artist soon recorded a parody song “Sundown Town“—about all-white towns that inflict violence on Black people who don’t leave before sunset.

But, as Newsweek reported recently, there seems to be an additional dog whistle embedded in the teaser lyric video issued on TikTok on May 19th, uncovered by TikToker Danny Collins. News clippings flash across the screen throughout the video—and one of them, as Collins shows, features a 1956 letter written by a public relations consultant from the NAACP to P.D. East, the founder of an anti-racist newspaper in Jim Crow Mississippi.

East (who was white) was known to satirize white supremacists in the pages of his newspaper—in this case, the “White Citizens Council crowd,” ridiculed in an article titled “You Too, Can Be Superior.”

Collins discovered in a Smithsonian Magazine article from 2018 that East was driven out of his small town. He was “spied on, spat upon and threatened with violence and worse” for speaking out against racism. “And why would this happen to Mr. P.D. East?” Collins asked on TikTok. “Because he tried that in a small town. He challenged the Southern racist establishment.” Collins added, “But let Jason Aldean tell it, and everybody that’s supporting this song, this song has nothing to do with race.”

Does Aldean view the fate of P.D. East a form of justice by the “good ole boys” in 1920s Mississippi?

As Aja Romano argued on Vox about “Try that in a small town,”

The lyrics and accompanying video are layered with references to Black Lives Matter protests, sundown towns (“see how far you make it down that road”), and white protectionism (“good ol’ boys … we take care of our own”). The video’s main location was no less than the site of historical lynchings, a particularly unsubtle jab. Inevitably, however, when you attempt to illuminate this racist imagery, a “Try That in a Small Town” defender will show up. They will assert that the whole thing is really just about, as Aldean himself tried to assert, “the feeling of community” and the desire for a return to “a sense of normalcy.”

Normal, to Aldean, seems to be a reality where Black protesters don’t disrupt the everyday lives of white citizens — even if those citizens are, as the song suggests, stockpiling guns and turning paranoid eyes on any and all outsiders. This attempt to reframe socially sanctioned racism as “just a community looking out for itself” has long been a part of the discriminatory tactics used against Black Americans, from lynch mobs to the racist, KKK-apologetic Birth of a Nation, to the legal defenses used by white men who murder unarmed Black ones. It’s a cultural tactic used not only to disenfranchise Black Americans but to then gaslight them about their own reality and experience. It’s a tactic that turns aggression into “self-defense.”

As Romano astutely observed, this tactic also gives the racist “plausible deniability”—so that Aldean can actually claim to be the victim in this controversy: “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it—and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage—and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music—this one goes too far.”

Fighting back against modern-day lynching

As if to illustrate how Jason Aldean has attempted to glorify vigilante violence against Black people, a series of vigilante attacks has become national news this summer, pointing once again to an epidemic of racist violence that never ceases. The following list features only some of the worst instances, since the complete list would be too long to include here, and most instances are never reported to begin with.

On August 5th, six white former police officers took the unusual step of pleading guilty to 16 felony counts of torturing two Black men, Michael Jenkins, age 32, and Eddie Parker, age 35, in Braxton, Mississippi—after the two victims filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on June 12th accusing police of entering their private residence illegally and torturing them extensively for a period of almost two hours.

On January 24th, a local white neighbor had complained to local police that “suspicious” Black men were living at the nearby property of a white woman. As it happened, the two Black men were serving as caretakers for the woman, but police never bothered to find that out. The responding cops were part of a group that called itself the “goon squad” because they routinely used excessive force when responding to cases. They entered the premises without a search warrant and without “reasonable suspicion or probable cause,” according to the lawsuit.

Sheriff Bryan Bailey of Rankin County—a county with a history of police violence—initially reported that the police were at the address for suspected drug activity. Bailey is also named in the lawsuit. Once the lawsuit was filed, however, he fired the cops involved, who then proceeded to plead guilty once the evidence mounted. According to CNN, the lawsuit describes how

Jenkins and Parker were handcuffed when the deputies, who had turned their body-worn cameras off, began punching and slapping them, according to the lawsuit. “Throughout the nearly two-hour ordeal, the six deputies would punch and beat two handcuffed men at will, hurting and humiliating both Jenkins and Parker. Deputies also repeatedly and gratuitously kicked the men as if they were animals while they lay subdued and handcuffed,” the lawsuit says.

Additionally, the deputies waterboarded Jenkins and Parker by “continuously pouring the liquids on their faces while both men were handcuffed … and forced on their backs,” according to the lawsuit.

During these acts, the deputies used “vicious racial slurs,” including the n-word and “monkey” and accused them of “dating White women,” the suit alleges.

“In their repeated use of racial slurs in the course of their violent acts, (the deputies) were oppressive and hateful against their African- American victims. Defendants were motivated on the basis of race and the color of the skin of the persons they assaulted,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit also alleges that multiple deputies attempted to use a sexual device against Jenkins and Parker, threw eggs at them and forced them to shower together.

The deputies had “custody and control” of Jenkins and Parker during the incident, and neither of the men resisted or tried to run from the deputies, the lawsuit says.

Despite their compliance, deputies “placed their guns to the heads of both handcuffed men and threatened to kill them.”

As the assault reached its peak, the lawsuit alleges, a deputy placed a gun in Jenkins’ mouth and shot him, lacerating his tongue and shattering his jaw.

After Jenkins was shot, “he was severely injured, left alone to care for and treat himself as he stumbled out the door and fell,” the suit says.

“For twenty or more minutes, each deputy consciously and deliberately disregarded their specific duty to render medical attention,” the lawsuit says. When emergency medical personnel arrived, Jenkins was taken to a hospital and underwent multiple surgeries, the lawsuit states.

“Unfortunately, Jenkins has suffered permanent physical injuries, permanent cognitive damage, long-term psychological damage, permanent disfigurement, and impairment,” the suit says. Parker also sought medical attention for injuries suffered during the incident, according to the lawsuit.

The Montgomery, Alabama, river dock brawl on August 5th, turned a white racist narrative—like that espoused in Aldean’s “Try that in a small town”—on its head. Montgomery, Alabama has a long history of white supremacy—but also a long history of struggle against it. This city is, of course, where Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a city bus in 1955, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott—which marked one of the first major victories of the Civil Rights Movement against Jim Crow segregation.

On August 5th, that history repeated itself, albeit in a different way. The Harriott II tour boat had already waited for 45 minutes for some “good ole boys” from nearby Selma to move aside after blocking the tour boat’s riverfront docking spot—while its captain Jim Kittrell, who is white, repeatedly requested on loudspeaker for them to move their boat a few feet aside to make room. His requests were greeted with a round of middle fingers from the group, who had a history of parking illegally on the riverfront in the reserved spot. Finally, the tour boat’s co-captain, in uniform, traveled to the dock in a small boat driven by a 16-year-old white teenager.

The teen’s mom said she witnessed racial slurs such as the Black co-captain approached the dock: “You could hear men yelling ‘f**k that n***er.'” When the co-captain, Damien Pickett, attempted to move the white boaters’ pontoon boat just a few feet to make room for the Harriott II, 6-7 white boaters piled on him—punching and kicking him. When the white teen attempted to defend Pickett, the white boaters attacked him also.

Kittrell, expressed certainty that it was a racist attack, stating “It makes no sense to have six people try to beat the snot out of you just because you moved their boat up a few feet. In my opinion, the attack on Damien was racially motivated.”

Things did not end there, however, since fellow Black dock workers entered the melee on Pickett’s behalf—and when passengers from the boat finally disembarked after watching the vicious attack on Pickett, they streamed off the boat and many joined the Black man’s defense. Even Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert stated at a press conference that “several members of the Harriott II came to Mr. Pickett’s defense,” in a departure from the typical scenario of blaming Black people who fight back against racial injustice.

As of now (although this could change) four of the white boaters have been charged in the attack, and no one from the Black defenders has received charges.

“Stand your ground” murders have mounted since Black teen Trayvon Martin’s 2012 murder empowered racists to murder Black people at will, as long as they claim that they feared for their lives. In one week in April of this year, four young people were gunned down in the U.S.—and one was killed—for ringing a doorbell by mistake or pulling into the wrong driveway.

One of the victims was Black 16-year-old Ralph Yarl from Missouri, whose mom had asked him to pick up his younger brothers—but instead of going to the address she asked, 1100 NE 115th Terrace, Ralph mistakenly went to 1100 NE 115th Street.

When he rang the doorbell, the man who answered the door immediately shot him in the head, through two locked doors. After Ralph fell to the ground, the man shot him again, this time in the arm.

Ralph, though severely injured, ran to three nearby homes begging for help before anyone agreed to assist him. The third neighbor explained that she came out to help Ralph with towels to suppress the bleeding even after a 911 dispatcher told her to remain inside. “This is somebody’s child. I had to clean blood off of my door, off of my railing. That was someone’s child’s blood,” she said. “I’m a mom … this is not OK.”

The shooter, 84-year-old Andrew Lester, claimed that he thought Ralph was trying to break into his home and was “scared to death.” Lester admitted that they exchanged no words before he pulled the trigger on Ralph.

After Ralph’s shooting, protesters marched through Kansas City, chanting, “Justice for Ralph,” and calling for Lester’s arrest. And his aunt, Faith Spoonmore, has pledged she’s on a mission to win justice for her nephew. “I want justice to look the same across the board,” Spoonmore said. “I want justice to look the same.”

Not “urban vs. rural” but “us vs. them”

Aldean’s “Try that in a small town” is not so much an “urban vs. rural” narrative as it is a depiction of “us vs. them”—in which “us” are invariably white “good ole boys” and “they” are Black and left-wing activists who put the spotlight on racial injustice after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020. Of course, “they” need not be activists at all, just Black people forced to exist in racist territory. Violent attacks on Black people are not confined to small or even large towns but can and do happen anywhere and everywhere across the U.S. on a regular basis.

In every instance when Black people fight back against racial injustice, they deserve the support of all of us who oppose racism—whether they be country singers or ordinary activists.