Musical Color Lines: Deconstructing Racial Categories in the Culture of the United States

The study of modern and contemporary US culture is shaped by the historical reverberations of colonialism and slavery. The discipline of American Studies provides a site and practice where these histories can be encountered and understood. This chapter applies the insights of civil rights activist and writer James Baldwin to illuminate pernicious racialized barriers that continue to structure US culture in the digital age. With specific reference to the country trap hit “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X, the chapter contemplates Baldwin’s conceit that Whiteness defines itself through racist exclusions. Baldwin argues that White Americans have circumscribed a narrow version of life for Black Americans in order to avoid confronting the brutality of their history and to preserve what Baldwin calls the “lie of whiteness.” Lil Nas X’s removal from Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart points to how the rituals that protect Whiteness rely on constraining definitions of Black selfhood in the United States of America. This chapter provides a theoretical framework and history of American musical culture that deconstructs the nation’s ritualized and ahistorical fantasies of racial identity.