GMU ‘anti-racist reading group’ featured discussion on Beyonce's country album ‘Cowboy Carter’
The reading group claims that American society is ‘founded on racist values and practices.’
Several of the suggested readings for the Beyonce discussion claimed that much of country music is tied to racism.
The College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University wrapped up a summer-long “anti-racist reading group” featuring racially-centered conversations, including a discussion about Beyonce’s country music songs.
The “Kritikos Anti-Racist Reading Group” began meeting on June 14 and finished its last summer session on Friday. The group aims to promote “anti-racist practices, racial justice, and the creation of conversations as well as systems of compassion and healing.”
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Its first session discussed the 2024 Beyonce country album, “Cowboy Carter,” which was “born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” the singer claimed on Instagram.
GMU provided participants with several articles that examine the album and the alleged ties of country music to racism.
One article quotes an Oberlin College “chair of Africana Studies” who said: “Country music has been so successful the last few years of becoming the staging ground for a certain type of white grievance and conservatism in politics.”
Another article, “Five Scholars Discuss Beyonce’s ‘Cowboy Carter,’” featured a professor who called the album a “decolonial project” and claimed that “there is a racialized rejection of Beyoncé because country music is now gatekept by a White centricity.”
The professor also said the album is “decolonial because it is directly addressing antiblack oppression in a musical style that has Black roots.”
Other topics of the reading group in the weeks following the Beyonce discussion included “Imagining Black Eco-Justice,” “Anti-Blackness & the Family,” and “Land Justice, Land Back: Gentrification, Reclamation & Reparations.”
The next anti-racist reading group series at the Virginia university will continue throughout the fall semester beginning on Oct. 4 and ending on Nov. 15.
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The group’s organizers claim that racism is present everywhere and pervades everything, writing: “Grounded in the knowledge that it is not a question of whether we are racist, but rather, how racism is expressed and experienced in ourselves, our lives, our behaviors, and our institutions, we explore books, music, art, essays, podcasts, and documentaries that allow us to critically question and consider our roles as artists, thinkers, citizens, and creatives in a society founded on racist values and practices.”
Campus Reform has contacted George Mason University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
