Tennessee NAACP Denounces Jason Aldean Video

Source: Variety / Getty

The fine folks on Twitter are still stirring over the controversy regarding country music star Jason Aldean’s lynch-happy song and video, “Try That in a Small Town,” which Country Music Television recently pulled from its platform.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the video, it has been criticized as lowkey racist because that’s pretty much what will happen when a white man sings the lyrics, “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / That shit may fly in the city / Good luck trying that in a small town” over what appears to be anti-police violence protest-turned riot footage.

Oh, and it probably doesn’t help that the whole thing was filmed outside the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where in 1927, a white lynch mob dragged an 18-year-old Black man, Henry Choate, through the streets behind a car before hanging him from the courthouse window.

Predictably, white people got upset over CMT’s decision to pull the video, which Aldean, of course, defended. Now, the NAACP’s Tennessee chapter is joining everyone else in rejecting Aldean’s justification for his American flag-heavy ode to racist frontier justice.

From TMZ:

The Tennessee chapter of the civil rights org is strongly condemning the country singer — President Gloria Sweet-Love tells us Jason’s tone, his message and the imagery he’s using are all deeply offensive to people of color, especially Black people. Sweet-Love says the Tennessee State Conference NAACP, as an organization, finds the song/music vid for “Try That in a Small Town” awful and racist. She adds, in their eyes, the lyrics are bad enough, but Aldean’s adding insult to injury by filming the video in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, TN … where a Black man was lynched in 1927.Making matters worse — GSL says the KKK has recently been hanging flyers in that town as well, and Aldean’s project is only adding unneeded fuel to a fire.Sweet-Love goes on to say she believes Aldean’s track is clearly promoting racism and violence, adding Tennessee doesn’t need that — instead, she says the focus of artists should be uniting people, and protecting their children and communities.

So, what do y’all think? Is the song/video as racist as people say, or did CMT overreact by pulling it from its platform?

See how Twitter’s reacting below:

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