The Patriot Post® · NPR Labels Country Music Racist

When your hammer is racism, everything looks like a nail. National Public Radio (NPR) has been hammering away at the racism narrative for decades. The latest claim made on its podcast entitled “How racism became a marketing tool for country music” is that country music panders to white conservatives and is therefore racist.

The podcast host, Britany Luse, sets the stage by claiming she’s a big country music fan and was so happy that three out of the five top trending songs were country. That happiness was short-lived, she explained, because the top song was “Try That in a Small Town” by Jason Aldean. Aldean’s song about the lawlessness that started during the 2020 “Summer of Rage” and has continued in major U.S. cities asserts that such behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in a small town because neighbors there take care of one another.

Rabid race baiters on the Left (specifically Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones) immediately attacked the song because they saw it as an anti-black song. Aldean’s protest song isn’t against a particular race; it’s against violence. The problem is NPR and other leftists don’t acknowledge that the BLM riots were in fact lawless acts of terror. They see them as “protests” … you know, the “mostly peaceful” kind.

As Luse looked deeper, the other top two country songs just became more tainted with racism. Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” is bad because Wallen once yelled the N-word at someone and was caught on tape doing it. Luke Combs’s “Fast Car” is bad because it’s a cover of an ‘80s-era black woman’s song, which, through Luse’s racial lenses, is cultural appropriation. (Who wants to tell her about Disney’s “Snow White” remake?)

Luse next brings on an “authority” to ask her burning questions about why country music is so racist. The so-called expert, Amanda Martinez, is a country music historian from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Martinez explains that country music has always been racist and music today is no different. We have country music, pop music, and rap — or, as she then clarifies, white music, music for everyone, and black music. She then introduces the idea that people have moral panic about rap music and hold country music up as the more virtuous art form, but then quickly moves on without really addressing that claim further.

This was an interesting proposition that deserves addressing: Is there a moral superiority/moral panic surrounding rap music vs. country music? An open-minded individual would be able to see that there are levels of greatness and talent associated with each art form.

Good rap takes great skill, poetic ability, and verbal flexibility. One could argue that in its best form, rap is a viable art form. Take, for example, the musical “Hamilton” or some of the more profound Tupac songs (“Dear Mama”) or the immense skill that Eminem has in being able to come up with fast-spitting rhymes on the spot. Bad rap (the one that is mostly consumed by the masses) is an expression of the worst of humanity, both emotionally and content-wise. To some, it even seems like the antithesis of music as an art form (the modern art of the music scene).

Good country music tells a story (generally about the human condition) or conveys an emotion. Bad country music has similar problems as bad rap in promoting bad morals, such as about drinking too much or the wife leaving.

Both art forms talk about not respecting the cops. In country music, that generally takes the form of a redneck running from the cops because he did something stupid. In rap, it’s about killing the cops because cops are bad. Both genres resonate with poorer people.

However, if the contest is about overall moral superiority, it must be conceded that rap, in general, does transgress more egregiously on the moral front than country does. Country doesn’t really have anything quite on the same level of explicit smut as Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” which was the top song for several weeks in 2020. All in all, you can find good and bad music in both genres of music, and people are going to dislike songs that go against their beliefs and moral values regardless of the genre.

Martinez’s willingness to paint country music as this purveyor of racist tropes erases the richness and intricacy of the history of country music. Some of you may recall Ken Burn’s “Country Music” documentary. It’s one of his best works and opens up the doors to the rich history of country music both from its African and Scots-Irish roots. It highlights the stories of country musicians from all races. It’s one of the great stories of America and its musical history.

But that doesn’t matter to NPR. Country music can never make up for any of its racism. However, NPR also complains that country music doesn’t try or even listen to criticism that it caters to a certain demographic.

By dismissing country music as irredeemably racist, then ending with the hope that someday that’ll change, listeners are left shaking their heads. It’s historical black-washing in an attempt to shame a genre into being less “racist.” What leftists really object to is that country music tends to talk about issues of family, love, marriage, freedom, love of country, and other such conservative values that they despise. Calling it racist is just an excuse.