Thursday, April 11, 2013

The "Accidental Racist" and How to Write a Post-Racial Pop Song in The Age of Obama

Pop music is disposable by design. Pop music is also a space for society to work through its collective anxieties, hopes, and dreams. As such, LL Cool J and Brad Paisley's recent song "Accidental Racist" is a product of a confused post-racial America where the "national discourse" on race is moribund, twisted, tired, and empty.

In the post-civil rights era, white folks apparently just want "forgiveness" and to "get past" this race stuff. Black and brown folks want some type of justice and an acknowledgement of how structural inequality along the color line persists into the present. The former want to limit racism to "mean words" and "hurt feelings." The latter would like to discuss substantive efforts at improving live chances and the social inequalities caused by racism, both structural and inter-personal.

For both groups the twice-election of Barack Obama has meaning. Both groups are also unsure about what this means in either the short or long term.

Because America is "a country without a history"--perhaps except for black and brown folks--there is no reasonable way to negotiate this impasse.

This dynamic is made even more complicated by how white privilege allows white folks to conveniently discover their own history on terms that are amenable to them.

This move is often used to blunt conversations about how racial inequality is trans-historical with a living past and present, one that shapes American society even in the post-civil rights era.

"My ancestors came from Europe and never owned slaves"; "slavery was so long ago, why are you still talking about this stuff?"; "we were immigrants who came here with nothing and didn't complain or ask for handouts" or "my father was white and he marched with Dr. King, we were 'good' white people, don't get mad at me" are appeals to history in order to avoid a conversation about culpability and systems of privilege in the present.

These claims on history--as we saw with Mitt Romney--are often exposed to be lies. There are likely more than a few good white folks who claimed that there families never owned slaves, only to do a little bit of research, and then find out that their ancestors were human chattel merchants. History can be very inconvenient.

LL Cool J and Brad Paisley's song is a narrative of false equivalence where the Confederacy's (a white supremacist terrorist state) crimes against humanity can be compared to the still incomplete work of racial justice that began with the Black and Brown freedom struggles centuries ago, but was prematurely pronounced done and complete with Dr. Martin Luther King's much misunderstood "I Have a Dream Speech."

LL Cool J and Brad Paisley are in good company. They are trafficking in "low culture" as they conspire to flatten the history and present of America as a society structured in racial inequalities, but where "race and reunion" can come through a country-rap song.

Then candidate Barack Obama, who is/was an elite opinion leader, played a similar game in his much vaunted Philadelphia speech on race during the 2008 campaign. Obama, in an effort to win the White House by distancing himself from the "political blackness" embodied by Reverend Wright, suggested that African-Americans' justice claims are somehow morally and ethically equivalent to the racial resentment felt by many white Americans towards people of color in their backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement.

I would not expect LL Cool J or Brad Paisley to fully understand the political work done by their song "Accidental Racism."

Barack Obama, the country's first black President, and a constitutional scholar, ought to know better. But then again, Obama's move in 2008 (and since) was both tactically shrewd and intentional: blackness is a liability in almost every area of American public, social, and political life. Consequently, it is a social marker to be avoided at all costs.

There are a few rubrics for how to write a hit pop song. There may not be a definitive guide, but we know a few things about the preferred process and outcome. To point. The Guardian explores:
How do you write a hit song? Through the decades, many books have been written on the subject – usually by people who aren't songwriters themselves – using analyses of previous hits to come up with solutions.Music industry publication Billboard recently revealed the stats of all the songs that had featured in the magazine's Hot 100 charts. 
Since the 50s, songs have become longer, from an average of 2.36 minutes to 4.26 minutes this decade. If you want a hit, it may be best to stay away from writing ballads – ever since the 40s, the average tempo of chart entrants has hovered between 117bpm and 122bpm (ballads usually play at around 90bpm). You should also stick to major keys, with C major being the most popular. Of the top 10 most successful songs of all time, only Kanye West's Gold Digger is in a minor key...
If anyone was hoping to stumble on a secret formula, that hope was quickly shattered. As Motown legend Lamont Dozier once said: "I've written about 78 top 10 songs, and I still don't know what a hit is. I can only go by what I feel." His point was brought home as Chambers got together with Mark Ronson (most famous for his collaboration with Amy Winehouse) and budding artist Thalia to write her a breakthrough hit. After trying out a few ideas they settled on an African highlife sound. Ronson noted that very few hits had that particular sound, bar Vampire Weekend, which probably should have been a reason to abandon the idea. A view echoed by the radio pluggers who thought it could possibly be a fourth single, adding: "It's not bad, but it's not great." 
As a fellow songwriter once told me: "The world doesn't need any more good songs. What we need are great songs." Or, to take the idea a bit further, the enemy of great is good.
"The Accidental Racist" demonstrates that the key to writing a pop song about race in the Age of Obama is to avoid any serious discussion of American history, make "everyone" feel good, and create a fiction where black and brown people's experiences with racial oppression in the United States are made the same as the "misunderstood" white guy whose feelings have been "hurt" because of his love of "Southern pride" and the Confederate States of America.

Public opinion research suggests that white people are feeling "oppressed" in the post-civil rights era and the symbolic change brought about be the election of the country's first black president. Social science data also demonstrates how many white people feel that "anti-white" racism is a bigger social ill than discrimination against people of color. 

"The Accidental Racist" is a perfect soundtrack for a political moment possessed by such absurdities. LL Cool J and Brad Paisley's song may be a creative failure; yet, it succeeds wonderfully in capturing the spirit of the age.

22 comments:

Miles_Ellison said...

You can't "get past" racism when you refuse to acknowledge its existence or its starring role in American history. There's nothing accidental about the racism that the confederate flag represents.

_ _ said...

Paisley and LL should be admitted into the "False Equivalency Hall of Fame" for writing that asinine song. Hearing LL's shout out to robert e lee, equating gold chains to iron chains and doo-rags to rebel flags was one of the most befuddling moments I've ever had while listening to music

Paisley whining because he couldn't wear a rebel flag t shirt and not be perceived as a racist when he goes down to the local Starbucks is clearly an indication of the oppression that white folks are suffering from when they venture out of their gated communities to purchase a $5.00 cup of coffee !

As someone online recently said
"I forget how hard racism is on white people"

SunKissed said...

I wonder how people would react if Germans wore Nazi swastikas as symbols of brotherhood and national pride. At least the Germans could say that the swastika existed as a religious symbol before Hitler highjacked it. It still wouldn't stop the outrage, but it would be plausible that someone could view the swastika void of all Nazi affiliation. But, the confederate flag has no such benign origin.


P.S. Chauncey have you played Bioshock infinite yet? I have already beaten it and would love to hear your thoughts on its depictions of race and racism. Personally I applaud the developers for creating an honest depiction of race relations in 1912 America. At least for the first half of the game, I don't want to spoil anything but I felt like the devs copped out and went full on false equivalency for the remainder of the game. I'll wait until you write on it before I give my full two cents.

Abstentus said...

Well said, Chauncey. I have managed to avoid listening to the song yet. But all of a sudden I have the urge to hear Open Letter to a Landlord. Here goes that!

i.mean.really said...

It's not like the world has disavowed the swastika. It pops up all the time in religious ceremonies and popular culture in Asia. Kurosaki Ichigo's bankai sword has a swastika on the hilt in Bleach. Hyuga Neji has a swastika sealed on his forehead in Naruto. When ignorant western audiences see these things, they of course make incorrect assumptions about the symbols meaning, but it's not like people are not using it.

Agree with you, though, that there is no other meaning to the rebel flag. Ironically, Brad Paisley is from West Virginia. A state that exists because of its refusal to cede from the Union. He has no connection to the Confederate flag, unless, you know, he likes what it stands for.

Sujata said...

The most baffling thing about this whole debacle is LL Cool J's hand in the song and its genesis. I find it impossible to believe that he wouldn't have had even the barest, most instinctual realization of what that song ended up being.

Was it the call of filthy lucre that made LL Cool J peddle his dignity and common sense? Did he genuinely believe that contemporary black cultures are equivalent to the terrorist state that was the Antebellum South? Was it a canny move by an aging musician hoping to ingratiate himself to the white supremacist tastes of "post-racial America"?

There's a certain bleak irony if that last one's the case. Paisley said that "Accidental Racist" was partially inspired by his attempt to "refute" movies like Lincoln and Django Unchained. And yet, we potentially have a black man consciously selling out his dignity and the dignity of people like him to ignorant white racists. Shades of Stephen, anyone?

chauncey devega said...

It is hard out there for white folks who want to go to Starbucks and wear their csa regalia in peace.

chauncey devega said...

On the list! Don't ruin it for me :)

chauncey devega said...

Educate a brother--Open Letter to a Landlord?

chauncey devega said...

Well LL being the great race healer that he is said that black people just need to get over racism. He is a sage.

Abstentus said...

Song from Living Color. Black rock band from the 80s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V5VkMqM07s

Magda Kamenev said...

See Absentus' YouTube link. Great song by a great band.

Magda Kamenev said...

Thinking about this song makes my head hurt. But I do wonder ... Did Paisley ask Darius Rucker first? Rucker is country, after all ...

Wavenstein said...

"R.I.P. to Robert E. Lee" LL is pretty much dead to me after this track. I seriously feel betrayed by this clown

nomadfiles said...

Ignorance is a blast! Neither the black ignant nor the white ignant seem to have a clue. To wit: most racists are accidental. That's the main problem with racism. The blatant acts of racism aside, in the long run the most corrosive and insidious and deleterious form of racism is the accidental. Pffft! Like adding the word 'accidental' makes it less odious!

SabrinaBee said...

Thank you CD. I was hoping you would address this. There are no words. First, who made LLCoolJ representative du jour of blacks. If Paisley really want to be sincere he would have reached across the aisle for someone less likely to be his yes-man. I thought LL was simply content to play a lip licking, meat-pie showing TV character and stay out of politics. Especially since he can't or doesn't seem to want to address the race portrayals of the party he belongs to. Point is, he hasn't had a meaningful word to say since "Mama Said" Now he's the arbiter of modern blacks? Where he can collaborate on a song handing out passes that erase the historical significance of black experience in this country? Or at the very least, trivialize it and reduce its meaning to the equivalent of a durag? I had wondered when he was going to be the next face of black republitopia, he certainly covered have remained silent for all of this.
Oh and thanks for the reminder about Obama. It gets easy to lose oneself in defending him against the irrational, and remind oneself that he is certainly not the ideal, either.

nomadfiles said...

Yes, indeed. I'm sure that many readers of this blog would agree. We must heed the words of such wise men. Look forward! Not Back! Forget the crimes of the past. There is nothing we can do about it. Even if we were president.

Abstentus said...

Having trouble with the discus and might have replied already. Open Letter was a song by the black rock ban, Living Color. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V5VkMqM07s

chauncey devega said...

Duh! Thanks.

Theodoor Westerhof said...

Is it so hard to be reasonable?
Edgar Rice Burroughs was not Tarzan, and was not John Carter either. Jules Verne was not Captain Nemo. Stan Lee is not Spider-Man and Paisley is not the guy who went to a Starbucks on Main. Paisley made up the guy who went to that Starbucks on Main. The topic is T-shirts with rebel flags, not Starbucks.
This song seems to pack a reasonable lesson, "Boys, them ol' rebel flags is maken that respectable negro, look there, feel very unwelcome!" Unfortunately the musicians got a bit carried away...

Theodoor Westerhof said...

Of course, that flag stands for other meanings too... Independence, home, liberty, rebellion, political incorrectness, country music, rural folks against city folks, a rejection of certain parts of the USA...
It is easy to forget it originated in a war to promote slavery. This song just reminds one it did.

_ _ said...

The fact that Paisley was inspired by "Django" to write this racist song says it all.. White folks can't deal with their history..Well not unless they white wash it first ! I wonder if Paisley has issues with "Gone with the Wind" or "The Birth of a Nation" by guess, probably not..