RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Jason Aldean’s his country song isn’t racist

Amid a ruckus over a country music song, allow me to put in a good word for small towns.

I was raised in a farm town in central California that was home to fewer than 10,000 people, and I’m grateful for my upbringing.

Since leaving my hometown — which was more than 60 percent Mexican American — to go to college nearly 40 years ago, I’ve lived in several large cities including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas and San Diego.

In a country that worships growth and expansion, we romanticize big cities with their skyscrapers and bright lights.

Yet small towns are the backbone of America. There is not a lot of elitism or arrogance there, but you will find plenty of kindness and authenticity. Folks care about one another and lend a hand when help is needed. They stay on the straight and narrow because the accountability system is strong when nearly everyone knows who you are, where you live and whom you’re related to.

Singer John Mellencamp is a believer. In his song “Small Town,” he sings: “Got nothing against a big town/Still hayseed enough to say/Look who’s in the big town/But my bed is in a small town/Oh, and that’s good enough for me.”

The small towns of America deserve love and respect. Yet they’re often unfairly maligned and stereotyped by city folks who want to feel morally superior. The rap against the provinces is that they’re close-minded, backward and bigoted.

What brings us here is the reaction to a country song performed by Jason Aldean.

Aldean didn’t write the song, “Try That in a Small Town.” That distinction goes to a quartet of songwriters: Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy and Kurt Allison. But Aldean has made the tune his own and does it justice by belting out the lyrics with confidence and conviction.

He sings: “Got a gun that my granddad gave me/They say one day they’re gonna round up/Well, that (expletive) might fly in the city, good luck/Try that in a small town/See how far ya make it down the road/Around here, we take care of our own/You cross that line, it won’t take long/For you to find out, I recommend you don’t/Try that in a small town.”

The song is about folks drawing the line and not putting up with lawlessness and chaos. It’s about small-town values and holding people accountable when they behave badly.

Nowhere is there any mention of race. As a person of color, believe me, I looked. Sure, in the song’s video Aldean poses in front of a courthouse with an ugly and racist history. But there is nothing explicit.

That didn’t stop the Rev. Jacqui Lewis — a faith leader, author and podcaster — from characterizing the song as being “about lynching,” adding that the lyric “‘See how far ya make it down the road’ … invokes a very particular legacy.” Lewis and others cited the history of white people running off Black Americans or warning them to be out of town before sundown.

Aldean is a white male country music singer who grew up in Georgia. It’s easy for liberals to condemn anything he does as “racist.”

But in this case, the label doesn’t fit. The video — which has been viewed more than 24 million times on YouTube — shows a woman flipping off police officers, another woman yelling at police, a young person lighting an American flag on fire, another young man hurling a large metal object at a store window, and two young men jumping on top of a burned-out police car while another patrol car is on fire nearby. It appears that, in each case, the offender is white.

What is really offensive is the attempt by the left to make criminals synonymous with Black Americans. As a Mexican American and the son of a retired cop, and someone who was outraged by the events of Jan. 6, 2021, I totally reject that. Scofflaws come in all colors.

The controversy seems to have only helped the song, which recently reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Aldean is striking back at critics who he says want to turn the song into “something that it wasn’t.”

“I love our country. I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this (expletive) started happening to us,” he told fans recently at a concert in Cincinnati.

He’s right. America is due for a restoration. It used to be OK to have different views. Not everyone had to agree on everything. We gave one another the benefit of the doubt. And we didn’t take ourselves so seriously that we thought our view was the only correct one.

That’s the country I miss. Let’s make America civil again.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.