How do you feel about Jason Aldean’s song?

[blissinanarchy1]

So, everyone is bitching it’s racist, promotes lynching, etc is racist towards Blacks.

Now me, being a center left, I wanted to see the lyrics. I didn’t find any racial attacks in it.

What I think is that the “woke” attributed the behaviors he described to Black people, which is in itself pretty racist. There are plenty of white people who do dumb shit. My neighborhood, Kensington, in Philadelphia, is considered the worst neighborhood in Philly, and it has a significant white population. It truly is diverse. By diverse, I don’t mean majority Black. There are large White, Black, and Puerto Rican populations. They had the National Guard in my neighborhood when there was rioting. There were Blacks involved, yes, but a lot of Whites too. Jason’s song could hypothetically be aimed at them, too.

The only thing that ever makes me laugh is when small town folk think they’re tough as nails compared to inner city. You’re armed, we understand. You’re ready to commit violence to protect your community, we understand.

We live in a state of broad day shootings, robberies, getting jumped, murders, etc. We know it happens in small towns too. But the frequency of how much it happens here is much more. We’re more conditioned to it. The law abiding armed citizens in inner cities are much more conditioned to extreme violence.

[caring__1]

Though the setting of the video is a bit questionable, let's focus just on the lyrics. I've lived in large cities, suburbs and small towns. Though close living conditions and population numbers tend to raise the likelihood of overreactions and the ability to hide behind anonymity, I have found caring people, closed-minded people and entitled people in all settings. Though crime exists in all settings, I must admit I observed more police helicopters and sirens when I lived in the city. I presently live in a small town, where there are some community-minded people, yet my neighbor was at the storming of our Capital building. Chances are, many of those who participated in that despicable event lived in small towns.

There will always be people who care about their community and environment, and not all of them are red-necked. Implying one group is better than another is just stirring the pot to escalate conflict. Let's stop pitting one group against another and start promoting consideration and harmony. Life will never be perfect, but we only have control over ourselves. Let's model the behavior we would like others to show us.

[WhiteSteve]

I feel like the video could’ve been done better to avoid controversy. If you listen to the lyrics, I can’t say they don’t feel dogwhistle-y.

“Sucker punch somebody on the sidewalk”…. can anyone do this? Yes. But a few years ago, delinquent ass kids were snuffing randos on the street, aka “The Knockout Game”, and it very often was a group of black teenagers on an unsuspecting white guy, and every white guy on the internet lost their fucking minds about it, even though it probably happened only a handful of times in reality. But in the right-wing mind, just from what I’ve gleaned from hearing people rant on the internet, obviously it’s a shitty thing to do, but it’s definitely something they directly attribute to black folks, so it doesn’t feel like he means just anyone.

He’s got some other line about carjacking and holding up a liquor store…. again, I only need like 15 minutes in the right place on the internet to know who they’re envisioning in their mind. It doesn’t help that the surveillance videos they used of crimes being committed were black dudes (in the cases where you could make it out). The only “bad” white people they showed were supposed “liberal white women” protesting at what looked to be a BLM thing, and screaming in the face of a cop, so that’s kind of a “and you’re just as bad as them if you support them” move, as I see it. Shit, I had a fairly active guy on HERE message me “n——r lover” before, lmfao, the shit is very real.

”Around here we take care of our own”…. who is that exactly? Here’s where I think they could’ve avoided some controversy. If you showed small town black folks, or anyone, just something to say “we don’t just mean white people”, when he sings that line, I think that would’ve gone a long way. Because otherwise, it’s very easy to hide in the vagueness and just be like “what…. you SUPPORT carjackers?”, and that’s what these people do, live in these gray areas of plausible deniability to cover up fucked up shit they say and believe.

The courthouse they chose to shoot in front of was an interesting choice, given the lynching history. I could maybe chalk that up to coincidence, but at the same time, I know some film school types, and they don’t do ANYTHING by accident, there’s always some kind of hidden allegory going on behind their creative choices. So that’s a little suspect to me too.

Objectively, I think the song is musically pretty good, and I don’t usually even like country. But I think America is plagued by some demographics with unhealthy attitudes that drag our society down. They certainly aren’t alone on the list, but somewhere near the top is “gassed up hick who thinks vigilantism is cool.” Like that may top the list for me in terms of cringe-factor. “Try That In A Small Town”, if not offensive to me, is for sure CRINGEY to me. “I dare you to try that with me around” will always make me roll my eyes and laugh at you, lmfao. My new catchphrase this week has been humorously inserting “Try THAT in a small town!” in goofy situations. Like my girlfriend’s dog was barking out in the yard when she let her out, and I poked my head out and yelled to the dog “HEY! Try that in a small town!” Fake-tough people will always and forever be the height of comedy to me, so I feel like I’m going to beat the shit out of this joke for for months, if not years, lmao.

[Anonymous]

The provocative lyrics and imagery in the video are clearly aimed at the BLM movement. The Maury County Courthouse depicted in the video was the site of Jim Crow era race riots and lynchings. It’s difficult to not pick up on Aldean’s not so subtle message. Predictably, he’s taken the coward’s route and denies the obvious. Unfortunately, the country music crowd won’t hold him accountable.

[slatyb]

It definitely promotes additional violence in crime-ridden small towns.

[BarryLiverstone]

I haven’t heard it