“Accidental Racist”

(You can listen to the song here.)

Last semester in Professor McKinney’s Civil Rights Movement class, we discussed the song “Accidental Racist”, as it pertained to many of the topics relevant to our course, particularly prevailing racism within our society and the Master Narrative. I decided to bring it up again with this class because we are currently studying some of the same ideas and I think that some of you may have some interesting thoughts on it.

One of my main criticisms of this song is that it continually reinforces the Master Narrative. First, it portrays these two men in a very stereotypical fashion – Brad Paisley is “a typical white Southerner” in a cowboy hat and confederate flag t-shirt, and LL Cool J is the “average black man” in saggy jeans and gold chains. Maintaining these stereotypes only serves to reinforce the Master Narrative ideal that all whites are the same and all blacks are the same, when this is obviously not the case. Also, defending the Confederate flag simply as Southern heritage completely eliminates the idea of black people as Southerners. The Master Narrative is further perpetuated with lines like “RIP Robert E. Lee, but I’ve gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me…” This makes it sound as though Abe Lincoln freed the slaves all by himself out of the goodness of his heart, and deserves endless praise for it.

Secondly, I dislike the manner in which Brad Paisley discusses his own experiences with racism. He comes across as somewhat callous and defensive, as though he feels that having to justify his accidental racism is a burden to him. In the lines, “I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done/And it ain’t like you and me can re-write history/Our generation didn’t start this nation…” Paisley glosses over generations of slavery and oppression towards African Americans by inserting a euphemistic “We’ve done some things I’m not proud of” line. He also appears to be saying that, because he was not directly responsible for the treatment of blacks in the past, he feels no responsibility to improve racial tensions today. As we have learned, it takes an overwhelming amount of people to illicit real racial change (despite what the Master Narrative tells us), and therefore everyone is responsible for eliminating racism.

Lastly, “Accidental Racist” presents the notion that the only way we will ever reach racial equality is by forgetting the past entirely. The lyrics say things like, “The past is the past, you feel me”, “Let bygones be bygones”, and the ridiculous “If you don’t judge my gold chains, I’ll forget the iron chains.” It is as if simply ignoring generations of enslavement can completely fix all of the problems we face as a society today. This is obviously misleading - it is incredibly important to learn about our country’s history so that it doesn’t someday repeat itself.

On one hand, "Accidental Racist" has made a multitude of people think and talk about what race means to them and how it affects their lives - this is a positive step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the idea was not well executed; the song has received more negative feedback than positive due to its ignorant lyrics and notions, which are "accidentally racist" themselves.