8d • Whiteness
CiW Case Study: Tried that in a small town
Jason Aldean is opening up about the aftermath of his song "Try That in a Small Town." The song proved to be controversial, with some accusing it of being racist.
Aldean said that some of his own crewmates confronted him about the song. It was very frustrating for Aldean.
Aldean recently said, "Here's my issue—when you're riding around on a tour bus that I'm paying for, and I'm feeding you three meals a day every day and a paycheck to pay your rent, or whatever it is, and you're out there on those buses in our catering and you're bad-mouthing me and our crew, you got to go."
He also shared, "We were very proud of that moment, and we know what we meant by it, and there were some people in our crew that found it okay to disrespect it. You don't have to like the song, say what you want to say. But you started drawing attention to it out in public."
Aldean didn't understand the backlash to the politically charged song. According to Aldean, he didn't single out any race in the song or the music video.
"There was people of all color doing stuff in the video. That's what I don't understand," he told CBS News. "There was white people in there. There was Black people. I mean, this video did not shine light on one specific group and say, 'That's the problem.' And anybody that saw that in the video, then you weren't looking hard enough in the video, is all I can tell you."
Critics latch on to the fact that Aldean filmed the music video at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn. It was the site of a lynching in 1927. However, Aldean said that he didn't know the history of the location or that a lynching had taken place.
"But I also don't go back a hundred years and check on the history of a place before we go shoot it either," he said. "It's also the place that I go get my car tags every year. It's my county that I live in."
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Tldr;
Bad Apple: Racism would need to be explicit and intentional to count.
Token Diversity: Black people appearing in the video becomes evidence against racism.
Intent > Impact: We know what we meant.
Historical Amnesia: The racial history of the location becomes irrelevant because he didn't personally know it.
Power + Gratitude: I employ you, therefore publicly challenging me is a betrayal.
What changes when we stop asking "Did he intend to be racist?" and instead ask "What histories, power relationships, and assumptions does this response require us to ignore?"
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Dissecting the Jason Aldean Response long form
Intent is treated as the final authority. "We know what we meant by it" positions the creator's intention as more important than historical context, symbolism, or audience impact.
Literal race language becomes the threshold for racism. His defense is essentially: I didn't name a race, and Black and white people appeared in the footage. That reduces racism to explicit racial targeting and makes racial coding, history, imagery, and context disappear.
Diversity becomes an innocence shield. "There were Black people [in the video]" functions similarly to I have a Black friend: Black presence becomes evidence that the work itself cannot communicate something racially harmful.
Historical ignorance becomes exoneration. "I didn't know" answers the question of intent, but not impact. Not knowing a courthouse was the site of a lynching doesn't change the location's history.
Normalcy obscures history. "It's where I get my car tags" is fascinating. A place can simultaneously be an ordinary government building and a site of racial terror. His familiarity with it doesn't erase its historical meaning.
Economic power becomes moral authority. "I'm paying for [the bus]... feeding you... [giving you] a paycheck." Employment is framed almost as personal generosity rather than an exchange of labor for compensation.
Gratitude is expected in exchange for silence. Employees may privately disagree, but publicly criticizing the person who signs their checks becomes "disrespect." That's a power dynamic worth examining independently of whether someone thinks the song is racist.
Dissent becomes disloyalty. The problem apparently isn't merely disagreement: "You started drawing attention to it out in public." The boundary becomes public criticism of the person with institutional/economic power.
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CiW Case Study: Tried that in a small town
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