Editor’s note: Amanda Marie Martínez is a Ph.D. candidate in the history department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work focuses on how race, pop culture and capitalism intersect, with a special focus on country music. Her dissertation is called “ ‘The Industry Is Playing the People Cheap’: Race and the Country Music Business in the Age of the New Right, 1969-1998.”
Currently, Martínez is a fellow at Middle Tennessee State University, where she’s teaching a course on the history of country music in the Department of Recording Industry. Journalist and author Andrea Williams spoke with Martínez about why it’s important to provide a fuller picture of how and why racism became ingrained in the country music business, from the early decision to market “hillbilly records” separately from “race records” and beyond.
What drew you to the study of race in country music?
I wanted to better understand how country’s supposed whiteness was maintained beyond the ’20s, when the racial color line [in music] was created. I went into the archives expecting to find a smoking gun, of many overtly racist businessmen explicitly barring nonwhite people from the business. The truth is much more nebulous, a lot of coded racism that has kept a lot of people out in much more covert ways — which is a much more insidious form of racism when thinking about the past half-century, because it’s been much more effective than overt racism in maintaining the racial color line.
Things like label heads refusing to sign or support nonwhite artists, with the belief that their fans, who they only envisioned as racist white listeners, wouldn’t support the artist. Or refusing to believe that Black listeners exist. And then there is the issue of advertisers and needing to appeal to them, which has meant that the business has had to work very hard to define their listeners as white and not poor. So this has meant a lot of market research historically has only focused on putting evidence together to only show this, specifically. And in the process, Black listeners, for instance, have been very consciously not involved. Just a few examples of how the racial color line has been maintained.
How are your students receiving this material?
When I taught the class [last semester] it was just “History of Country Music,” and it took a while for them to really see race. It was me trying to talk with them about racial double standards that have existed within the industry, but students were wanting to talk about women — that women have always had it hard in country music. So that was something that was interesting to me, and I wonder if that will be different this semester, because race is in the title of the course.
But initially, with all this rhetoric about critical race theory and [accusations that people are] talking too much about race, I was a little bit scared that I would get some pushback. But I honestly didn’t. In my classes, I really try to take a “show, don’t tell” approach. I try to use a lot of primary-source documents and have students read those, and then make the class really discussion-heavy. I just present them with the evidence, and say, “Let’s talk about it.” Then, hopefully, it becomes hard for anyone to dispute it.
Why do you think people find it easier to see and discuss the women’s issue? Do you think we should be talking about one or the other, or both issues at the same?
Country music is so far behind in terms of equality, at every level. Whether you’re a woman, not white, not straight, et cetera, there’s so much fear going on. So the thing that I think is problematic, when it comes to not just women but also LGBTQ+ issues, is that collectively, a lot of people with knowledge of country music view any movement toward inclusion for one person as progress for all, which is absolutely not the case.
And they can really get ahead of themselves with thinking that a lot has changed because this one other person was included — never mind the fact they still look like a blond, blue-eyed white person. That is definitely most vividly apparent with the issue of women, where — as far as I’m concerned — it’s not feminism if you’re only talking about white women. So I think that we need to be thinking about equality for all and not just letting a few more people in.
What is the biggest lesson from history — country music history, or history in general — that we should all be applying today?
Well, I think that things don’t change overnight, you know? They don’t change quickly or easily, right, and you’re gonna have to face a lot of resistance in that process. Or people are gonna look at you like you’re crazy. So, you just have to be comfortable with that fact, that people might look at you like you’re crazy, and it might be uncomfortable. But it’s just a long-haul thing, you know?
Are you hopeful that things can change?
It depends on when you ask me. I wrote that [essay for The Washington Post about Morgan Wallen’s use of the N-word], and basically, I was trying to say that country music is at a crossroads. It has all of this potential to be this really beautiful thing for all people. Or it can continue to do what it’s done for the last 100 years and has been incredibly successful at, which is to ride on whiteness and backlash politics.
So I am hopeful on the one hand, and I think that there has been this great community that has developed, and is developing, and I hope that it can somehow transform into something that can feed people. But I’m also more cynical in some ways too, because you see these clear opportunities that the industry has had to do something different — and then they don’t, ’cause they don’t have an incentive to.
I agree, but I wanna talk about your use of the word “they.” When you say “they,” who are you talking about? And I’m asking this because I catch myself doing that — using really these vague terms like “they” — and I think it makes it easy for people to say, “Oh, she’s not talking about me.”
I think that’s a good point, because I talk to people in the industry, and they’re like, “You know, off the record, country music does have a race problem, and there are very racist people in this industry, but that’s not me.” Or, “They’re over there, they’re in radio.”
Right. But how can everybody in the industry say, “It’s not me”? It’s gotta be somebody.
I think the “they” is people in power in the industry, obviously people in radio and at labels. But also, a lot of people are complicit in the process at different tiers. So when we’re saying “they,” it’s so rampant. It’s harder to say “Who isn’t ‘they’?”
Your students are in the Recording Industry program and could very well become the new generation of industry “theys.” What do you hope to impress upon them so that they take a different route?
I think there is a tendency to vaguely see the past as the past. I want them to see we’re still living the effects of the past and also to understand that progress and the push for equality hasn’t always moved in a straight line. Sometimes we’ve backtracked, and even now some things may be more unequal than they have been in the past.
Unfortunately, inequality often doesn’t go away, it just evolves and looks different. I want my students to see all of this, but most of all I want them to see that they have agency. They, like people in the past, have a choice to continue participating in and upholding unequal structures, or thinking about how they can reject them and envision a better, new way.
The state of country music now and in the year ahead
