Around couple of quotations. The first is from an anthropologist. Aaron fox. And fox writes, Country Music is widely disparaged in racialized terms and assertions of its essential badness are quickly framed in specifically racial terms. For cosmopolitan americans especially, country is bad music because it is widely understood to signify an explicit claim to whiteness, not as an unmarked neutral condition lacking or trying to shed race but as a foregrounded claim of cultural identity of bad whiteness, unredeemed by ethnicity, folkloric authenticity, progressive politics, or elite musical culture. I want us to think about that. Country music as articulating and conveying this type of marked white particularity. Thats the first quote. The second is from the writer and historian Roxanne Dunbar ortiz in her book red dirt which is a memoir of growing up in oklahoma. She writes, Country Music, evangelism, romanticism, patriotism, and White Supremacy have been able to coalesce my people, the descendents of the original settlers, as a People United despite class differences of social roles, mirroring black latino, asian, and native american nationalism, which exhibit similar contradictions and limitations. Okay. So what we have here is basically two expressions that Country Music and whiteness belong together in some sort of fundamental way. And i want us to think about my people here. Dunbar ortizs expression my people, the descentants of the original settlers, People United despite class differences read Country Music as one of the things that are putting these people together. I wanted to talk about that, in addition to thinking about Country Music and its basic oppositions. So we have what we might call the twin poles of Country Music. And these poles are oppositions and they structure the thematics of Country Music. And you might say that they correlate to specific country artists. In particular the two artists which peterson is concerned with in the early phases of this book which are jimmy rogers and the Carter Family. So im going to sort of put them up there as representing there are exceptions but basically representing these two poles. Again, as i said, Country Music is a music that responds to my modernity. What is modernity . Well modernity begins with the rise of capitalism, with the rise of political livalism in the 17th and 18th several ris and with new developments in technology. Its within modernity also that we know from this class, we see race get constructed. Race is something that gets built during this age of encounter between the 15th and 19th centuries. What we know from that is that race is a modern invention. Country music, too, is invented in the crucible of modernity. So the Carter Family representing these different poles first is home. Correspondingly, jimmy rogers represents in some ways the road. Now marxen angles described the experience of living in modernity is all that is solid melts into air. Everything is in flux. Everything is tumult. All of the things that used to be fixed are now called into question. It is a time of tremendous liberation. Literally liberation from one social station. Under feudalism, people cannot move up or down. In modernity with the rise of capitalism, all of a sudden people have much more mobility. They are emancipated from the land. This is experienced as tremendously exhilarating, but also terrifying, to have this newfound freedom. The Carter Family represents all the virtues of home, rootedness, whereas jimmy rogers represents the allure of the road. One of the things that happens in modernity is that people move greater distances and with greater frequency than they had before. The Carter Family representing piety, morality, they need to hold to the old virtues, a moral code. Jimmy rogers, this new word that comes into being in the 19th century, fun, an sin. All the new opportunities that modernity affords. Modernity remembers the time of the rise of cities, the rise of places where different people come together to engage in commerce, not just economic but sexual commerce as well. If the Carter Family represents a type of parochialism, staying in ones place, being loyal to one specific neck of the woods, so to speak, jimmy rogers increasingly represents a type of cosmopolitanism, a type of worldliness that you dont necessarily see in the Country Music aligned more with the Carter Family. These two poles, they structure all sorts of opposition in Country Music, and it is because Country Music is always the music of the people on the move, the people who are displaced by various developments in modernday and modernity. What we see is that this happens very early on. Now we can get back to Roxanne Dunbar ortizs expression of her people. Who are her people . Well, the people who create hillbilly music are going to be known as the scotts irish. The scotts irish, also known as the ulster scotts are a white ethnic group that immigrates to the United States in the 1600s and 1700s. Where do they come from . You might say, well, were from ireland, but its much more complicated than that. Ulster scotts are from Northern Ireland and they are people on the move because of empire. And we noted that from the 15th to the 19th century this is not only the era of just encounter of people of different racial groups but also the era of colonialism and imperialism. The british empire, its first Imperial Holdings starts out on the mainland. First, the english colonize wales and scotland and then turn their attentions to ireland. This is a map of the irish sea, england over here, wales and scotland up above it. The people known as the scots irish or the ulster scots are basically what we might think of as imperialism shock troops. The reason is that ireland is ca colonized by the english beginning in about 1169, but it is very haphazard and loose affiliation of states and small principalities. It is not until the 16th century under henry viii that the british create a system that they call plantation. In which the english want to create a stable colony in ireland. Its anything but stable up to that point. They want to create a stable colony. So what they do is they basically plant they basically plant subjects of the king in ireland, especially Northern Ireland. And heres what james i says about these people and what he wants there to happen in Northern Ireland. He writes in 1603, james i the setting of religion, the introducing of civility, order and government amongst a barberous and unsubdued people acts of a piety and glory and worthy always of a Christian Prince to endeavor. These settlers as he described were of a middle temper between the english tender and the irish root breeding and more likely to adventure than the english. These early settlers are mostly going to be from this part of england and scotland. The ulster scots. And they come into ireland. The king has opened all this land for settlement, but what he really means is land to be dispossessed from the indigenous irish. And the ulster scots come into ireland in the 15th and 16th, through the 17th century are essentially set exemplar colonials. It means they are going to be there to dispossess the indigenous irish of the land, to establish some sort of English Settlement there and to stay there, to live, to transform this region into well, into englishness. Dunbar ortiz calls her ancestors empires shock troops. The westward soldiers of empire. So the understanding of the king and of the english government is that these settlers will be always fighting, always under threat. The temperament that develops among the scotsirish is the temperament of battlement. Of constant vigilance against n incursions, here among the irish. The irish, as you can imagine are construed by these soldiers, by the english government, by most literature, with this term savages. It is not really a new term, but it comes into currency with the english and scottish settlement of ireland. If we go back a few class periods and we think about the ideology of race that develops, what we see is that the ideology of race is absolutely essential for people who construe themselves as christian to be able to do what . To be able to do what . What does race enable europeans to do . Alley . Set one group higher than another. Set one group higher than another. For what reason . To displace power, i guess. Displace power . Set whites apart from everyone else. To create a hierarchy, for sure. To take over land with a mandate. So somebody wants something or somebody has something that you want and you got to take it. Christianity tells us what . Cant steal, dont do that. Christianity basically says, be good to each other. Under this context of violent dispossession of people from their land and their goods, their resources, you need some sort of justification. And race comes in to do that very handily. And the understanding of the irish as subhuman or at. N place from very early on. As early, in fact, as the 1340s. Theres a set of statutes that prohibits intermarriage between irish people and english settlers. This is a racial distinction. I dont understand why if they are white people also, why did they get segregated out so much as compared to the european settlers . This is a great question. Because we look back historically with our only understanding of race in the 21st century. We look and say theyre all white people. But that isnt the way they were seen at the time. They were seen as barbarians, close to animals. Their condition is so low, so brutalized, that they are not really white. And also whiteness as we understand it is itself a racial formation and construction that comes into being for whiteness, i would say the key decade is the 17th century and ill talk about that in a minute. For example, tyler, if i were to look around this room today and i say, theres a lot of people who are white in here, who are caucasian, the same version of me in the 19th century would look around and say i see a celt, i see a tuton. I see an angelo saxon, i see an iberic, i see a he bro. I would see with different eyes. Now what we see is whiteness that is right monolithic, one big thing. They certainly did not see that at that time. But its a really good question. Wait a minute, these people were all white. Well, the british did not understand the irish in those terms. Remember, race is coalescing at this time. So, these foot soldiers of empire dispossessed the indigenous irish and sort of remained there for many years. Its ulsters settled by the british and in fact remains, you might say, the last british colony, even to this day. But over the next couple centuries, there is a number of factors that push the scotsirish out of ulster and into the american colonies. Primarily, desire for land, desire for new fortunes, things getting a little bit economically tapped out in ireland. And its a perfect situation for scotsirish who are soldiers of empire to keep pushing westward. In fact, what we see is this pattern replicated as many scotsirish enter into the american colonies. Highland and scotsirish is an interesting distinction. What you see is many highland scots who are more closely allied with the british crown, mostly go north. Upstate new york, vermont, new england, whereas the ulster scots come down here primarily landing in philadelphia and spreading out across pennsylvania. Low and behold, york, gettysburg. So this ridge that were in right here what do they call this mountain to the north . Its a really poetic name its called north mountain. And the mountain to the south, a really beautiful name, south mountains. These ridges of the appalachians wilderness row, here, stretching down into virginia, and the piedmont, north carolina, south carolina, and kentucky and tennessee as well, this is the path of most of the scotsirish settlers. Couple more maps. Enlarge a little bit. Settlers originally coming into the wilderness road Cumberland Gap into the present day southeast. We should say that they are primarily small farmers, and they dont even settle necessarily the best land. But land is of such a premium that the desire is to arrive somewhere to settle and if its too crowded, then to move on. And we see this pattern replicated over and over again, and one of the things that dunbar ortiz tells us, moving even further down and all the way over into texas and oklahoma by the 19th century. Dunbarortiz very much wants to establish that her okie family are the descendents of these scotsirish who kept pushing west. So to get back to this notion of whiteness and why whiteness is so important to Country Music thinking about foxs statement that it represents that sort of bad whiteness. One of the things we see today is that whiteness can mean not having a racial identity. What are you . Im white, i am nothing, i am just normal. Country music reflects a particular claim to a sort of whiteness, and what we see with the scotsirish people as they come to the United States, they are both privileged in terms of their racial identity and subordinated in terms of their class identity. That is the real interesting thing about Country Music, is that it is the music of poor white people, people who are privileged to be white i will talk about that in a second but also people who are underprivileged in terms of their class identity and economic opportunities. I am going to argue that for all intents and purposes whiteness in the United States is an invention of the 17th century. And it is a corollary to another racial formation that is developing at the same time, which is blackness. What does it mean to be black, what does it mean to be white . What we see is by 1792, the late 18th century, whiteness as a category of identity is baked right into citizenship. The 1792 naturalization act, does anybody know what it specifies . What types of people can become citizens . Free white males. They dont say males but they say persons. Free white persons. So if we look back into the 17th century and all of the racial discourse that in many ways this naturalization act culminates, what we see is these two categories increasingly being constructed. So we have to ask, if free white persons can become citizens of the new nation, who cant . Who cant become a citizen . We know who can, right . What other types of people are there . Matt . Slaves. Slaves. Okay. So people who are not free. Who else . Native americans. Native americans. Absolutely. So people who are not white. Who else . Women. Women can become citizens but had no voting rights. Who else . Who is free and who is not free . Slaves absolutely are not free. But most white settlers to the United States are going to be poor. How do they come, how do they arrive, under what conditions . Indentured servitude. Yes. Most white settlers arrived under conditions of indenture, where you essentially bond your labor out. You say, in return for passage to the new world, im going to bond myself to some sort of master for a specified period of time, usually seven years not always, sometimes more, sometimes less. It is essentially a contract into which a person enters, saying i will not be free to do what i want until the period of indenture has elapsed. Most white settlers, especially most scotsirish come under conditions of indenture. Somewhere in pennsylvania of 18th century, 17th, too. Somewhere between 60 and 70 of white settlers come under condition of indenture. Theyre not free. So you cannot be indentured, you have to be a free white person to be a citizen by 1792. What does indenture really mean . Well, one of the things we see is an is something that is going to be developed mostly in jamestown by the Virginia Company. Most enterprises in terms of settling the new world are companies, commercial ventures. The Virginia Company that starts jamestown and other settlements is going to be a very big on indenture, because one of the things that jamestown needs his workers and soldiers. Workers to clear land, harvest crops, built all these things, and soldiers to defend the colony against the incursion of mostly powhatan confederacy native americans. But also to use violence to obtain more land. So indenture is going to be a very handy way of binding white settlers, who might want to go off on their own and do Something Else binding those people to the colony and the enterprise. All right, so what does this mean . Well, also in jamestown in 1619, you have the first african slaves. But slavery at this time you have a ship load of slaves brought to jamestown but slavery at this time is a very ambiguous condition. What does it mean to be enslaved versus what it means to be indentured . So what you have in the virginia of the 17th century is a tremendous underclass. You have a very small planter class, the elite, who are in the Virginia House of burgesses, who control the political economy of the day. But they are very few in number. The vast majority of people are poor, often abjectly so, and theyre also unfree. So you have a tremendous biracial underclass. Why would this be threatening to the planter elite . Why would it be threatening . Very small planter class, large underclass. What is the threat . Matt . Revolt. Revolt, and conspiracy revolt and conspiracy. Between these two groups that might come together and say we are getting a raw deal. Why do they control all of the resources and we are doing all of the work . So if youre virginia leaks at the time what do you you do . Try to divide the underclass. Divide the underclass. Good. Because im not saying theres some sort of racial utopia happening here. The scotts irish and others, english settlers, they arrived with preconceived notions of racial difference they work together, live together, they hooked up and played music together. So there are correspondences and alliances forming that if youre a member of the planner elite you want to prevent that from happening. You want to drive a wedge between those two groups. And what we see is over the course of the 17th century laws being put into effect that define increasingly what it means to be black and what it means to be white. And what it does is it ess essentially creates whiteness as a form of capital. What do i mean by whiteness as a form of capital . Anyone own any capital . You own any capital . Yeah. Money. What can you do with that money . It is kind of a social statement. It empowers you. I want to think about imparting a very important piece of capital. What we see is as whiteness coalesces it gets you something really good. What is it . What does it get you . Citizenship. Absolutely. So whiteness as a form of capital, something you can use as leverage, something that elevates your life chances. This is what capital does. So what we see are a few key dates here. In 1639 the Virginia House of bu stipulates any slave caught with a firearm will receive 20 lashes. The forbidding of arms to slaves. In cases of extreme danger from indian ina slave might be allowed a firearm that will be taken away right after. What this means for white people, what it means to be white ultimately is to be able to defend the settlement against indian incursion, to be able to equipped to take territory through violence and one other thing, to be a white person means to be able to put down. Here comes that wedge between this group. Whites can bear arms. Blacks cannot. From 1639 forward this is the law of the land. What this means is that military service is both a duty and a privilege of whiteness. Its forbidden for people of color. If we think about Country Music today whats its stance generally speaking on the military. Positive. Yeah. Its very promilitary. Many songs are about a certain type of nationalism thats backed up through military force. If we go back and trace that vision of whiteness to 1639 we see that the privilege and duty of whiteness is military service. What does military service get you in addition to potentially getting you killed or maimed . What does it get you . Oftentimes a lot of respect. Respect. What about other types of resources . What happened after the Second World War . Sold areas came back. What did they get . Money to go to school and stuff like that. What was that called . The gi bill. Yes. So military Service Remains large sli a privilege and duty of whiteness. It gets you certain things. So what are we seeing happening to that class of white laborers and soldiers . If the condition used to be one of rough equality certain lie f laws begin to raise whiteness up a notch and create increasingly hierarchy in which the poor whites can feel themselves, well, were not rich but were also not down here to create a sort of intermediate group is very effective as a means of social control. There were free people of color. Slavery again, not terribly cot fied until later in the century. But its the 1660s where things really increasingly get more locked down in terms of who can be a slave, who cannot be a slave. Slavery becomes a condition and suffice it to say slavery becomes exclusively a condition of people cot fied as black. A few laws. The first stipulates that slavery is a lifelong condition. Slavery is a lifelong condition and slavery an inheritable condition. You can be born into slavery and that is your condition. Theres a lot of interracial contact, contact between a slave woman, for example, and a planter white man. What type of baby does that give you . They sort of do this sort of racial math. They say white momma, white daddy, white baby. Black daddy, black mom my, black baby. Now ive lost track. White momma, black daddy, what color baby . The point is in three or four of those crosses you get somebody who is black. For example, barack obama, is he black or white . Black. His mom is white. So how is he black . Because hes not white. Yeah. I guess like if we are going to skin pigmentation is what its getting at. Any other reasons . Well, one of the things that happens in the 1660s is theres a law passed that says the condition of slavery is going to be a condition thats inheritable from the mother. So its whatever your mother is thats what you are. And because there was so much interracial contact, sexual congress, rape and otherwise that the will always be a slave. The other law that gets passed is the condition of slavery is exclusive to those who were not baptized christians in their home country. They were not baptized christians in their home country. Since all of the indentured and poor are from they are christian. Since they are originally seen as somewhere in africa, well, they are going to be susceptible. So as blackness is increasingly circumscribed within the per ram ters of slavery whats happening to whiteness at this time . Whats the corollary . Conditions of whiteness are expanding. They are expanding but you also might say they are narrowing. Three of those crosses are going to net you a black child. Only one is going to get you a white child and thats the cross between whites. In fact, what you see also is prescriptions and laws immerging that prohibit intermarriage between black and white which happened in colonial virginia and elsewhere. But now what you see is laws policing whites in terms of who they can marry. If you marry a person of color you will be banished from the colony. And so what this creates around whiteness is whiteness is a precious thing, a precious commodity. If you mix it, if you ruin it youre no longer entitled to it. What happens to whiteness at this time as blackness increasingly becomes legally associated with slavery . Whiteness becomes legally associated with freedom with various forms of opportunity. As this happens that wedge is driven between these black and white groups. 1676 in western virginia it is a coalition of poor whietes and slaves who come together. They are sent out onto the frontier to essentially fight native americans and they sort of look at each other and say why are we foughting them between the real enemy is the planter class. The Virginia House says after 1676 says no more. We are going to drive that wedge between the poor whiets and the slaves. We will do it by elevating the waits and dem the slaves. The whites who are the beneficiaries and the victims, the beneficiaries, because what you get when you buy into this is im white. Im free. If im white what it means is no one can ever own me. They might put me in conditions and ensure i live in poverty but they cant own me. They can only own black people. And this creates also some sort of aspiration to upward mobility for many poor whites from the 17th through the 19th centuries. The aspiration is not to necessarily equalize things but is instead to become a slave owner yourself. The mark of my freedom is that i can own other people. No one can own me because im white. In that way there are beneficiaries. In what ways are they victims of it . Well, one thing that happens is theres less and less possibility of some sort of Multiracial Coalition that would have the numbers to be able to overthrow elite power and to create some sort of new configuration. So whites are increasingly victimized by this. Theres no possibility of any real change. Youre always going to be theres always going to be an underclass. You might be able to get out of it if you get rich but theres always going to be an underclass. So what we see over the next couple of centuries is this idology. Poor whiets say at least im not black. I might be poor but nobody can own me. I can be a citizen. If we push this up to the 1830s in the time of mass democracy in the United States we see the immer jens of universal man hood suffrage. Property requirements are asc d ascended. It is a time of time of tremendous ferment in the United States. How many of you like Country Music . By the end of class you will all love Country Music. But country is one of those dispara disparaged musical forms precisely because it articulates a specific white identity. Thats not simply the unmarked whiteness that most white people live, but instead is a particularity that is usually southern and emphatically white. This offends more cosmopolitan listeners. So what was the music of these scotts irish people . Well, they are primarily ballots. We have heard of ballots before. Because most of the people who came to the United States and other parts of Northern Ireland, they will be it literal. We are very much in the same realm as that we are talking about a people with oral literature. How does it differ . Theres a few ways but one in particular its not a defined author. Its kind of evolving to whatever is being told by it. You cant accurately trace. It doesnt really change interpretations of but its always the same. Oral literature you can clang to fit whatever the situation. Its always kind of changing and evolving. Okay. Always changing and evolving, yes. So this is an oral literature they take with them. These are significant because of the values that they impart, because of the stories they tell. This is particularly true of hill billy music. These stories are didactic. Anybody know what that means . Its kind of imparting like a moerl lesson. Absolutely. I could nlt have said it better. So these stories, as they travel they become sort of code for living for people without a very robust gof nance structure, just to give you an example i guess it was about 25 years ago a psychologist did an experiment where he had men go into a room and take a test and he said all right. Come out with me. Well go to another room and take another test. As they walk down the hall another confederate of the psychologist comes to the man and bumps him and they move on or didnt move on. What it was supposed to register was levels of assertiveness. They were testing whether or not southern men have higher levels of aggressiveness and assertiveness. He found in fact that they did. They were bumped by the other expeer mentor the southern men got angrier and took longer to back down and demanded some sort of apology. They found they do have to escalate even smaller slights. They also tested it with the level, how hard the bump was, how what lij rant. And he theorized that the reason for this is that on the southern frontier in which you have the settler colonials threatened by indig nous irish and then in appalachia by native americans. This is lifted and placed into the american context. In a situation of menace all around you like that an also in a situation where if hannah steals my sheet and she definitely would. You know. She looks wool. She would definitely steal my sheet. What can i do . Keep in mind, im not on the frontier. What do i do . I have to execute the law myself. I have to maybe even kill hannah. Sorry, hannah. Why . Why would i have to kill her for stealing my sheep . Yeah. As a warning to anyone else who might ever attempt such a thing, that i ultimately, i will control justice and no one will slight me wrongly. So theres a sense here that for People Living out on the frontier that a moerl code and stories, they are all stories of breach and tremendous violence. Have we seen this before . Stories of tremendous violence. Stories of tremendous assertiveness. The after ray condition american community, they cant look to authority to avenge their loss. They have to create a situation. The songs that arise are largely songs about violence, about the dangers of getting overly emotional. What happens to people if they are swept up in emotion . Whats the biggest emotions you get swept up in . Love, which leads to anger. There are a number of dift ball lods that make this trek across from from england and scotland and those Border Regions to Northern Ireland, to appalachia. One of the key generas are what we call murder ballots. Murder ballads are tales of love gone wrong. They are stories of how not to live and they abound in the tradition of hill billy music. Just to give you an example, in the middle of the 20th century great Country Music duo record a song called knoxville girl. He murders her with a stick abdomen comes back and has blood all over them. He tells his mother, i had a nosebleed. What we see is traceable back to an event in 1684 and with was variously called oxford town the transformation is its esz en, its tiebl speak to different audiences in different circumstances. Me siesly because this was the music they valued as they came over. We see in the 19 in 1916 cecil sharp, these are mus musicologists who have heard that there are english folk songs. They find they do this great thing called song catching. They go out and they go to places like piedmont and hills of tennessee and kentucky and go to front porches, do you know any old songs . Yeah. I know many old songs and they would trance scribe them or record them. This remind you of anything else . Remains of those who are hunting ballads. His what they do and they find you can trace the subject they are often the same tune as well. When they asked an old woman do you know any old songs . Yeah. I know a song and they sing Barbara Allen and thats one of the earlier ballads and they say where did you get that . What did they say inevitably . [ inaudible ]. Yeah, my grandmother sang it to me. Her mother, her mother sang it to her. Its a song that gets passed orally that has no real author, and again is basically serving the social fungts of a group of people out on the frontier surrounded by potential violence, but also people who are fundamentally shaped. People who fundamentally shaped by the flux and upheaval. And the reason you might argue is precisely because their whiteness enables them to exploit the opportunities that come with the pushing west of the frontier. The economic growth, for example under slavery in the southwestern cotton frontier, to be able to buy into that. The possibility of becoming home staeders in places like kansas and oklahoma and member. Whiteness gets you zit sen ship. It g it gets you the possibility of maybe even a public education. So people these and other scholars of Country Music want us to understand, Country Music and the people who developed it not as premodern but as shaped and sort of formed all right. Ill leave it there and ill see you on tuesday or thursday. Tonight the legacy of president woodrow wilson. American history tv begins at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan3. Friday American History tv will be live in virginia for the 7 59 anniversary for the battle of midway. Featured speakers include richard, the five star admirals who won the war at sea. Elliot carlson, the honesty of a code breaker. Anthony tully the untold story. And never call me a hero, a legendary american dive bomber pilot remembers the battle of midway. Watch the 75th Anniversary Special on friday beginning at 9 30 a. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. On sunday will be our guest on in depth if you grow up looking at thousands and thousands to have faces until one day you see that face you feel was put on earth just for you, instantly you fall in love in that moment. For me trump was like that except it was the opposite. When i first saw him on the campaign trail i thought this is a person whos unique, horrible characteristics were put on earth specialically for me to appreciate or unappreciate or whatever the verb is. I had really been spending a lot of the last 10 to 12 years without knowing it preparing for donald trump to happen. He is a contribute to to Rolling Stone magazine and the author of several books including dispatches from a rotting empire, the great der rangement, war, politics and religion. Griftopia and his most recent book insane clown president , dispatches from the 2016 circus. During our live threehour conversation well take your calls, tweets and facebook questions on his literary career. Watch in depth with matt taibbi noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern sunday. Told supporters a vote on Scottish Independence should take place at the end of the brexit