{"id":131818,"date":"2023-08-05T09:59:46","date_gmt":"2023-08-05T13:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/?p=131818"},"modified":"2023-08-05T09:59:46","modified_gmt":"2023-08-05T13:59:46","slug":"professors-jump-on-anti-jason-aldean-bandwagon-coded-anti-black-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/professors-jump-on-anti-jason-aldean-bandwagon-coded-anti-black-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"Professors jump on anti-Jason Aldean bandwagon: ‘coded,’ ‘anti-Black’ messages"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘It\u2019s part of the founding of our country’<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

More professors have jumped on the anti-Jason Aldean bandwagon, calling his song \u201cTry That in a Small Town” racially “coded” and “implicitly anti-Black.”<\/p>\n

Hunter College’s Philip Ewell, a music theory professor who earlier this year<\/a> called his black Communist father a “racist” for admiring classic white composers like Beethoven and Bach, said Aldean’s song is “part of a phenomenon of subtle yet unmistakable ‘anti-Blackness.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Ewell told\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> (via Fox News<\/a>) <\/em>that while he thinks Aldean is a “pretty good artist,” America’s racial history “plays out in these extremely subtle ways sometimes.”<\/p>\n

“[I]t\u2019s just something that kind of comes out in culture, anti-Blackness,” Ewell, who researches “race studies in music theory” among other topics, said. “Because it\u2019s part of the founding of our country. We shouldn\u2019t run away from that simple fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ewell added that images where “someone\u2019s robbing a liquor store” implies the crook is a black guy: “It\u2019s just in our minds. It\u2019s supposed to be that way […] the owner of a liquor store is probably Asian or maybe white. And there are these racial stereotypes that play out in lyrics like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE:<\/strong> Prof: Country music facilitates \u2018reproduction of racial and gender inequalities\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DonaldBelmont University’s Don Cusic (pictured)<\/em>, “one of the premier historians of country music” according to his faculty page, agreed with Ewell, saying the images in “Try That in a Small Town” are racially “coded” despite the fact that rioters shown are of multiple races.<\/p>\n

Cusic “theorized” that Aldean (or those behind the production of the song’s video) were “deliberately subtle, yet purposeful” in their message: “They knew what they were doing […] instead of taking some of the bricks off the top of the wall, I think Aldean added some bricks to that wall, or at least the video did.”<\/p>\n

He added that \u201cpeople who are Trump supporters are looking at it a lot differently than intelligentsia.”<\/p>\n

Last month, Professor Minoa Uffelman of Austin Peay State University claimed Aldean’s song is a “white nationalist call for vigilante violence presented as benevolent a small-town community protecting its values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uffelman also said “Small Town’s” lyrics of “sucker punch somebody on the sidewalk” are based on an “urban myth” of blacks “slugging unsuspecting pedestrians.”<\/p>\n

MORE:<\/strong> Student op-ed: Country music is \u2018toxic trash\u2019 that \u2018hyper-sexualizes young women\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

IMAGES: Jason Aldean\/YouTube; Belmont University<\/p>\n

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