In the interest of honesty, I will admit that I started out liking Jason Aldean’s song Life in a Small Town. I liked it because at first glance, I thought that the values of taking care of each other, respecting authority, loving our country, and so on are true. Then I started thinking about “true for whom?”  Again, because I value honesty, I have to admit that I was helped along in thinking about that by a few friends. So, I started reading a little about the backlash. Finally, I asked one of my friends who happens to be a very intelligent young man of color to give me his thoughts once he had processed them. George happens to be a former student who calls me “Mama Sol”; I am lucky to be one of his surrogate mamas. George got back to me the next day. His intellectual honesty was almost shocking.

George said that as a black man from a small town, he recalls hearing that very sentiment, from blacks as well as from whites. And he loves how people do often come together to help one another. Then he reminded me that the song would have had a terrifying meaning 60 years ago or more when lynchings were happening, noting that Jason Aldean’s point of view is rightly that of a white man surrounded by like-minded people. He admitted that it is hard for people to understand the point of view of the “other,” whether the other is the oppressor or the oppressed.

“Black and white culture in the South… has and always will be intertwined. We have been molded by the same landscape, and raised by the same mothers,” he observed.  But he keenly feels the vastly different experiences in that shared culture.

As a white person, I don’t understand fully what black people deal with. As a woman, I do know what it is like to be minimized, marginalized, condescended to, set aside, and abused. And as a human, I have empathy, and I can look at the abuse, torture, injustice, and death, and I feel some of the horror, shock, and outrage my brothers and sisters of color feel. I am appalled that I didn’t see it myself, I, who pride myself (in itself, the first mistake) on seeing the symbolism in music and literature. The song is an anthem for patriotism, love of family, and community. It is also a rallying cry for violence against those who don’t agree with those values.

One of the things I admire about George is he always so practical; he comes back to the basic truth of life. Let’s not stop with the protest for or against the song, but rather let it show us ourselves and our shortcomings. What we need are compassion and empathy. George reminds us that “what wins in the end is compassion, the willingness to understand, and love. Love always wins.”