MUSIC | RACE

When They Get Racist, Still I Rise

With ‘Cowboy Carter,’ Beyoncé settles a score with the CMA, reclaims a music genre, and tips her cowboy hat to Marian Anderson & Maya Angelou.

Photo of Beyoncé by Billy Briggs via Wikimedia Commons

There’s a through line between Beyoncé Knowles Carter and Marian Anderson that goes all the way back to 1939.

Aside from the fact that they’re both African American women who sing, you might be tempted to think these two have little else in common. Beyoncé is a pop singer. Marian Anderson was an operatic contralto.

But to think like that would be misguided. Because you’d be aligning yourself with the stink that’s been brewing in country music circles ever since Beyoncé sang “Daddy Lessons” with the (Dixie) Chicks at the Country Music Awards (CMA) in 2016.

It is the centuries-old stink of American racism.

And it should come as no surprise that it flooded the nation’s olfactory nerves during the hate-filled rhetoric of Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign.

But Donald Trump did not create American racism. He merely gave it permission to come out of the closet it had been hiding in since Civil Rights.