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Contributed commentary by Minoa D. Uffelman, Ph.D., History Department, Austin Peay State University:
Jason Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town” is white nationalist call for vigilante violence presented as benevolent a small-town community protecting its values. He does not use racial terms but the video makes the point. The video is incendiary; it is no surprise that the blah lyrics did not create much notice when released as a single, but the video caused a firestorm of controversy. The music video uses images of violence and protest not only from the US but from Ukraine, Spain, Germany and Canada, one from 2010.
Aldean asserts that small towns are inherently good and cities are the evil source of crime and violence. Small towns and rural communities do help their friends and neighbors who are in need. However, historically, small towns have also been home to violence and oppression. Pulaski, Tennessee, is a small town and was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. The popularity of the Klan spread like wildfire, and most small towns had KKK chapters. These small-town Klansmen espoused white supremacy and used intimidation, violence and murder to prevent African Americans from obtaining equality. African Americans knew their white neighbors’ veiled threats were actual threats. For decades, lynchings occurred in small towns. In fact, in the town where this video was filmed, Columbia, Tennessee, a 17-year-old African American was lynched by a small-town mob for accusation of rape after the grand jury did not indict him because of lack of evidence. (Editor’s note: Henry Choate in 1927.)
The song mentions “sucker punch somebody on the sidewalk,” an urban myth of African Americans slugging unsuspecting pedestrians. “You cross that line” could be metaphorical or it could refer to sundown towns where Blacks knew to get out of town by dark or face violence.
Guns are not the solution. The residents of the small towns of Uvalde and Newtown can attest to that. Aldean, himself knows firsthand about the problem of gun violence. He was on the stage in Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire, killing 60 and injuring about 500.
I grew up in a small town. I also teach Southern history. This song is an insult to people in small towns and contributes to the concept that everything rural is good and everything urban is bad. The song fits into a long history of white supremacy that is cloaked in the language of small-town values. “Try That In a Small Town” is disgusting and dangerous. It is just sad that a singer who was on the stage in Las Vegas when the largest mass shooting in our history calls on small-town “good ole boys, raised right” to use their grandfathers’ guns for vigilante justice. It’s even sadder that so many people have embraced this horrific song as an ode to the virtues of small towns. Today many small towns are ravaged by the opioid epidemic and have real problems without Aldean making up some outsider boogeyman to create more fear and division.
Minoa Uffelman