On Jason Aldean and All that Racism In Country Music

Author’s note: The following open letter concerns about the state of country music, but I’d like to dedicate this post to the one and only Jason Black, and I’d like to just be as real as possible about what country music has devolved into.

Dear Mr. Black,

First, as a woman whose ancestry is actually a mix of a bunch of different things, but honestly, Mr. Black, I’m in a state of lamenting what country music is supposed to be. For the black population, country music once could have been a good possible avenue, but with a white supremacist anthem such as “Try It In a Small Town” by Jason Aldean, we have a huge problem. Forget the lack of authentic bluegrass instruments in the music, we are now facing a lyrical crisis. The stereotypical bullshit against the black population Aldean sings about could also have very well been about my Cajun family. the Hebert family (mind the French spelling) had been sold right and left as slaves upon being expelled from the Northern Acadia homeland, the blood line that produced my Papa (Rodney Hebert) settled in Beaumont, Texas, strangely enough one of many places you can’t turn the radio on and not hear country music. I’ve been to Texas only once, to Dallas for some stupid conference I was forced to attend, the National federation of the Blind, equally as racist.

It sickens me to see that Jason Aldean has joined the White Supremacist Fan Club. I wish that Cletus T. Judd could fuck with this song because as it sits here, the song sucks. My partner, Clay, believes the same. It just plain sucks.

The sad fact we’re all about to become unaware of, and this is really heartbreaking, is that more than half the country instruments originate in one way or another in a West African setting. The Banjo, for example, not only has an African word that bears its name, but the stringed instrument was played first by the Africans of differing tribes, but forget which ones, the white people wanted to make the blacks so much less human than their pale flaky selves. These white masters were just so cruel they’d simply hijack all the fiddles and banjos and all other musical instruments and they’d have told their slaves they were not allowed music or literacy. You can’t expect a people this oppressed to stay that way forever. black people and women, different vulnerable groups of any sort usually will come kick the dominant oppressive idiots in the proverbial ass. White supremacy and the Confederate cause have had their way in NASCAR as well. Forget Bubba Wallace. For a long time, I was a NASCAR fan, but before I could say one more word, I found what this association of stock car auto racing really stood for. Of course, NaSCAR has been attempting to clean and paste their good side all around, but the ratings for races are no longer what they were. NASCAR clearly began in places like Daytona Beach, Florida, an hour or so away from my growing up space in Titusville, a seemingly nondescript coastal town thirty minutes also from Canaveral National Seashore and the Kennedy Space Center. My adopted father, David Taurasi, worked this space center for practically all my life, first working the shuttle program from about 1989 until it sunset in 2010. Last I checked, David now works the Artemis project, sending man to the moon. White supremacists are also trying to backpedal all black women in STEM as well.

Regarding the Florida educational standards, Mr. Black, I’m horrified. I’m not 100% white, and my Cajun ancestors I swear are rolling in their graves. Beaumont, Texas might need a few good women in sciences. Personally, I’d ask if you and your brothers and such could donate a huge sum to get a black astronaut woman to the Artemis moon Project. I would do the same, and I wish my partner Clay and I could walk together on the moon’s surface. David clearly also had a Neil Armstrong commemorative Christmas orname,ornament, the famous words speak when you press a button on a disc below the feet of the figurine that looks like Neil Armstrong. David is a nut when it comes to space. We need more African Americans in STEM, and that leads me to another point.

I grew up in the Brevard County School system in Florida. Brevard County is so military brat that even clay made that observation when we were kinda browsing and looking at a recent school board meeting. It makes me kinda sick when this county being pro military has a boatload of disciplinary problems at its schools. It is very important that all children, even the ones in Brevard and other Florida counties learn the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the god honest truth. Clay and I named our son after Malcolm X, and it saddens me that his cousin, a little girl, was named for the first biblical wife of Jacob, Leah. He’s at the stage where this little guy loves to coo and make sounds, so as I type you this letter, he’s talking to me. I love to copy his little vocalizations, and I literally attempt to speak his narrow but opening and developing language. Malcolm came into this world on April 15, 2023 and he has become the light of both mine and Clayton’s lives. I’ve literally promised to fight for all of Malcolm’s aspects of life, including his right to a truthful education about all subjects. Malcolm was named after a civil rights icon that sadly, Leah will probably never be able to learn about. I can only imagine when Malcolm reads his namesake’s autobiography, and then Leah says, “But that guy was mean.” Malcolm would laugh and say, “What are you talking about!” He’d whip out the video to Malcolm X’s most prominent speech, the ballot and the Bullet. I love that speech because it essentially predicted what is happening now. Clay and I play endlessly with this kiddo, and I have begun to kinda change with him. But the painful reality becomes undoubtedly a surface issue, especially when Leah Taurasi, the daughter of an Italian American engineer at some jet firm, and a wife Lauren, a school psychologist, can’t even gain access to material that tells the truth about the shameful and cruel and heinous acts of white people. Leah will be imprisoned in a world filled with pale faces. She will never hear the field holler, or the siren song of black freedom. Only Malcolm, due to his geographic location in Denver, Colorado, could get access to the same education, but we’re planning way more for him because Colorado’s genocide education requirement doesn’t go far enough. The five steps to genocide, or Nazi Germany as you spoke of a while back, are pretty obvious in all the genocides of old and new. When people started whispering bad things about certain ethnic groups, Hutus were doing this in Rwanda, it got worse. Once you get to a point where you’re singing evil shit about opposite ethnic groups, Muslims in Kosovo for example or jews in the Nazi occupied Germany, you’re pretty much dead. The final step in the White Supremacy takeover happening in America could happen sooner or later. clayton is predicting a second civil war, and I’m actually pretty sure it might happen in our lifetimes. However, clay does not endorse Confederate shit or the extreme Boogaloo movements. I could care less what anyone endorses, if the Second Civil War were to occur, I’m outa here. I’d pack clay and the kids up, grab all my black buddies and head for Toronto. If I’m crazy for doing this, tell me now. The worst thing I could imagine happening could be my ex, Trenton, being roped into being “sold south”, a term the slave would use to refer to being placed in a southernmost state plantation with the cruelest “massa” imaginable. It’s pretty silly people say. I won’t let our Malcolm be a sacrificial lamb for the Second Civil War, but if he wishes to fight, I have written a personalized song for him. It has his name written in it, and if that’s not enough, well, I hope that he can be in uniform for a side that does not favor Florida’s governor.

Mr. Black, I want to finally address a small blip in the radar. You said females were in charge of marriage. Mr. Black, in about 75% of this entire global population, that is actually untrue. In many remote African tribal villages, it is the male elders and fathers who make all the marriage decisions for their daughters, selling them for a value that befits what the groom will pay. A lot of times, bride sales in these places spell plenty for the family selling the bride. Poorer families don’t want to rely on Heifer International, or send the daughter to school. It makes me mad that fathers would dare do this all the time. In Yemen, a man is told that if he wants good luck, “marry a nine-year-old girl.” If that’s sick, if you think that’s bad enough, look at the life of Nujood Ali. She was famously divorced at age ten. This young lady was forced to marry Faez Ali Thamer at age nine or so. She was pulled out of school in San’A, the capital city of Yemen, and forced to relocate to a village called “Khardji” which is an Arabic word for “outside.” Thamer raped Ali for a period of about six months I’d wager, but Ali went to court and begged three judges to grant her a divorce because she was fed up. If that isn’t badass, I don’t know what is anyhow.

It is all rampant patriarchy that has ruled the world for what seems like forever.

Thank you for your show, and I enjoy your broadcasts.

Beth

Florida Schools Through the Years

Dear Readers,

I’d like to open a good series of blogs about Florida educational woes. I want to first, however, congratulate Mark Rendell for being school superintendent if I’m not mistaken. I can tell you all that Mr. Rendell was a dynamo at THS, and he got stuff done. I’d like to, however, dedicate this post to him. Mark, if you’re reading this, sorry I can’t call you Dr. Rendell because I’m not in your schools anymore, but Mark, I’d like to just let you in on a few secrets. It’s been so long but I dedicate this whole series to you and the Brevard County School Board. I lament the state of education in the state I once called home. I lament that there is just no way anyone will gain the knowledge necessary without taking matters into their own hands. Clayton Jacobs and I plan to homeschool our son, and maybe later, a daughter???? WE don’t know. Homeschool is the way to go for many reasons, but everybody’s pushing so har for Malcolm our son to be infant vaccinated, something we can’t imagine him being out long enough for, but still, we want to let Malcolm find some common ground, but he will also be educated in sciences and that includes health and medicine.

LEt me start this show. I was first enrolled in a Brevard County school facility in about 1990, I was supposedly at Coquina Preschool. I was there for a year or two, then was transferred to Atlantis Elementary for the next phase, followed by Imperial Estates Elementary school, located in my old neighborhood of Oak Trails Meadowridge, about a bike path or walk from a street we lived on called Little Oak Circle. You just walked to this bike path, walked straight up that bike path, and a few turns and stuff later, you were at Imperial Estates Elementary School. Throughout my years at Brevard schools, though there were disciplinary issues, mainly because the teachers in some classrooms were not informed and didn’t seem to care about the issues with my family and all the shit going on, Brevard County’s school curricula was a decent mix of all the subjects needed. In the social studies class in fourth grade at Imperial Estates Elementary school, we learned some stuff. However, my tenure at Brevard schools was rudely abruptly interrupted because David and Patricia Taurasi decided that spending over thousands of bucks for a private school with nobody blind around it was more important than my needs. It was all about Catechism, all about the purity bullshit. So St. Teresa’s School kinda stole all opportunities for me to join strings and chorus at Imperial. After eighth grade graduation in May 2001, I enrolled again at Brevard Schools, Titusville High School, which had only days before my first day there been under the direction of a Dr. Kristy. Then came Mark Rendell. I was at the school from 2001 until my graduation in 2005. The curricula at this period at Titusville High was still a decent mix of all sorts of stuff. At least I was given opportunities to learn about Rosa Parks, but Malala YOusafzai was not in the news just yet, so her book not having been composed was not even banned! Rosa Parks became a name to know when I was at Imperial for fourth grade. For whatever reason, the word “Negro” and other sorts of information began filtering its way into my subconscious level of thinking, and lo and behold, I met Krista Waters in about my third grade summer. I regret I didn’t get along with Krista at first, and I can’t sleep sometimes because I might have some heavy feelings of guilt. Note it’s not anything to do with her being black, but … she was the first black person I even looked at, that I even spoke a word to. Fast forward past eighth grade year, then into about eleventh grade. I can tell you that Brevard County School curricula still mentioned slavery and the Underground Railroad, and contained the full truth. Black history wasn’t separated as “Black History” only. At least some of the teachers taught about Malcolm X. However, it was my Parochial school English and social studies/history teacher, Mrs. Marylou Miller who actually encouraged us to learn about Malcolm X. Malcolm X and his teachings and autobiography became more important as time went on. Fast forward to the present day.

While Mark Rendell, former principal of Titusville High School, is now the County Superintendent of Schools, Florida’s entire population of young people faces a huge crisis. I have a lot of problems with this “Stop Woke” business that Dear old Ronny put into his little law book. For no reason, many young teenagers and prepubescent children at a school now have to put up with the drama that Conservative right wing hooligans have now embedded into the people’s lives. There are right wing pressure groups such as “Moms for Liberty”, and others associated with the belief that a lot of affirmational stories about LGBTQ people contain instructions on “how to have anal sex” among other disparaging bullshit they use to thwart kids from being their authentic selves. The other dogwhistle they love to blow at the faces of Brevard County children is all about how white kids should not be guilty or feel uncomfrotable about anything in the past dealing with race or gender. The broadest dogwhistle attack these numnuts and hooligans frequently use to spur on their actual hellish indoctrination is accusations of “liberal indoctrination” at Florida schools. You could never be more wrong.

The so called liberal indoctrination dogwhistles that are blown loud and clear by these evil groups, Moms for Liberty among them, has led Florida schools and the board of education to ban so many titles, including Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, all of which are classics that foretell futures that are almost happening before our eyes. It gets worse. The governor has also been trying to twist and abolish truth and change the narrative to show respect to hateful white supremacists. I’ve never seen anything so horrible in my life happening to my state’s school systems.

My darling niece, sadly in some age to be doing Early Head Start, maybe she’ll be in a preschool program, but Leah would have a catch 22 between the public schools where they teach insipid and bland and untrue things, and the literature is so bland you don’t know who Malcolm X is, and the Parochial school system, which contains inaccurate and glossed over information about sexual infections, STI’s, and promotes a heterosexual normative about marriage, setting up my niece for a life in which she is considered “an abomination” if she even speaks one word about who she loves, even worse, if that one she loves is a girl! Leah will be at super high risk of suicide or bullycide, especially on social media platform as she grows and develops in Florida, but … our son Malcolm, safely in Denver, Colorado will have a different path to take. More on that in a future posting.

Leah’s lifespan in Brevard County schools could be much shorter, and so could her mortal life itself. Leah can look forward to either being told that “girls wear dresses” and “boys wear pants” in a public school setting, or she could be forced to wear ugly plaid uniforms and walk with her hands folded in prayer position in front of her along with a single file line of other children dressed exactly the same way, on her way to a Roman Catholic mass. At Roman Catholic masses each Friday morning at St. Teresa’s, Leah could look forward to boring homilies, or if they’re any good, indoctrinating slabs of the Purity Myth could permeate every word written or spoken. In her middle school years, Leah will be indoctrinated to believe that being bisexual, gay or lesbian is “a sin” and that her existence as any but female is “an abomination before God.” If she wishes to become male, or she feels that her soul is male, Leah could be at grave risk of being attacked, assaulted, or being pushed to commit suicide because of the bullies and their desire to “kill all the trannies”. They could flood her social media and other pages with all manner of hate speech, tear into her like one does with bread while devouring it, all of this being done at her peril. With Florida homeless shelters not willing to take LGBTQ teens, it will be up to Leah to find her way to safety. And where is safety? Leah, sweetheart, if you really need a safe spot to just recuperate from anything, anything at all, and if you want to be yourself, if you wanna laugh and just hang out, if you wanna learn things your peers are now banned from learning, come over to Denver, Colorado. I’m here, and as your aunt, and the mother of your dear cousin Malcolm, I will welcome you with wide open arms, and I promise you will always have a shoulder to cry on and a couple or more ears to bounce things off of. I will listen, and that’s because one person who understands can save your life in a heartbeat. Leah, if you don’t like boys, I’m fine with that. Bring on that girlfriend, and just bring her to me and Uncle Clayton. Btw, that dude is pretty dashing, but don’t worry he won’t bite. ANd if it so happens that your father wants to axe you from the family tree, no worries. I will do some type of adoption plan for you so that you may dispose of your last name, and all the vestiges of the family that might bother you. Your cousin will have a beautiful life, and I wish I could give you the same. As your aunt, and … as a scared mother, I just want you to know that you are always in my thoughts and prayers. You are always just a heartbeat away. When comes the time for you to read a large book, I want to give you a Kindle copy of Margaret Atwood’s the Handmaid’s Tale. Open the book, my child, just read it. It may be a bit jarring, but just read the darn thing. I love you, and we all do.

I’d like to apologize to my reading audience. Leah Taurasi will need all of us to help her fill in the gaps where the public or parochial schools will leave holes in her knowledge base. IF you live in the Titusville or Orlando area of Florida, I want you to send the brother, his name is Danny Taurasi, a few notes that pretty much say that Leah needs a full and truthful education. As Leah’s aunt and my son Malcolm’s devoted mother, I will fight daily so that both of the kids, not just Malcolm because of homeschooling and living apart from Florida, should be able to receive a proper education complete with classic and modern literature, math, science with empirical data included about all things, health and medicine, accurate and timely information about sexual matters and consent, all of it. I want the little ones to live peaceful and happy lives but as they become adults, Leah and Malcolm need to be responsible and carry the torch of leadership into the next decades.

I hope that all of you find this post and realize that we have a serious education gaps issue and we must stop it.

Beth

A Tale of Two Children, A Tale of Two States

Dear Readers,

The following is a direct response to the rapid book bans that have taken place, but furthermore, there are some twists in the Florida education saga that make me question why the state was even annexed by the greater United States in the first place. I’d like to actually begin this post with a chilling tale of two children, my own son and the daughter of my brother. As a worried and scared aunt and the mother of my son, I speak in this post directly from the bottom of my heart regarding both these children’s educational outlooks.

It seemed a bright cool day in April, and though we didn’t have the clocks striking thirteen, Malcolm Jacobs came home from Denver Health and Hospital to begin his new life with us, parents Beth Taurasi and Clayton Jacobs. Now we’d decided we’d home school our son, and boy we’re so glad we made the right decision. Keep reading. It occurred to us one fine evening, I was nursing Malcolm tenderly with a Boppy breast feeding pillow about my waist, my tiny one comfortably positioned, suckling away, we were watching YouTube videos. We are always a big fan of literature. At least I am, but I’m sure Clay gets a bit freaked out about the way I tend to put a bit more expression etc into my reading. Malcolm is read to every night. Studies show that reading while a baby’s present, especially to baby, increases a baby’s chance of a great outcome in terms of language development. I purposefully am reading every book in the world to Malcolm, but especially Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and I’m thinking why not piss off the Conservatives, the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, both books have become targets for Ron DeSantis and his book banning campaigns. Malcolm Jacobs will likely have an advanced education, homeschooling allowing Clayton and I to tailor every aspect to his specific needs and wants. Malcolm will advance quickly, math being one of Clay’s subjects, he will be able to do way better even with the language development. Let’s now take a look at an eighteen-year-old Malcolm, and look at his bedroom library. Perhaps by this point, our son will probably read one of a few different books at his bedside book. 1984 by George Orwell, the aforementioned volume by Atwood, or possibly his namesake’s autobiography, the one by Malcolm X and coauthored by Alex Haley. Malcolm will likely be educated like this and depending on graduation, Clayton and I will then begin teaching him things no public schoolchild is ever taught, financial literacy, adult skills like cooking, bill pay, managing your own bachelor pad or heaven forbid, if Malcolm marries, the entire household, same with any daughters we acquire. Malcolm will not have to wonder if he’ll be prepared for life outside our protection, he will be prepared for that life outside parental protection. He will also be learning responsible use of technology, and I’m planning to buy a pair of Nest Audio speakers to place in my son’s room so that he and I can chill together and listen to music, and at sleeping times, Malcolm will be able to have his own musical scenery to fall asleep to. Call me irresponsible, but that’s what I plan to do to create a beautiful scenery and help him with independent sleep. This stems from a fond memory of David Taurasi, the man who thought he’d be my dad, placing a radio near my bed at 3 years old or something, K92FM was a staple in my entire life. Malcolm does not worry about K92FM, but he is also blessed to have music at the drop of a hat.

Okay, now let’s meet my niece. Leah Taurasi is a couple of years older than Malcolm, but because she lives in Florida, her outlook appears much bleaker. With DeSantis’s attack on education continuously ripping apart Florida schools, many of my teachers friends ought to be worried. I have a chorus teacher buddy, Kristen Bowne, who lives in a spot near Winter Haven or something? Honestly I’ve not read my facebook timeline enough lately to confer where she lives. Kaitlin Money teaches elementary education in Bradenton, FLorida. Both of these women should be so worried about their children’s education, and I’ve offered Kaitlin to get the heck out of that fascist playground. Leah’s outlook being so bleak may scare people and get questions going, but here’s why her future is so bleak.

Leah Taurasi might begin her education at a preschool, but even if parochial school had been a possibility, I’d still have a huge problem. No education setting in Florida is ever going to be safe between Parochial schools spewing out hate and inaccurate information about LGBTQ individuals and the public schools banning multitudes of books. Leah’s preschool chants might carry a pang of racist glee: “Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go.” But imagine Florida kiddos around Leah sing the original white supremacist chant that appears to be a manual for catching a runaway slave: “Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a nigger by the toe, if he hollers, let him go.” Clay showed me that second line and the N word, just as it’s written, shows that this chant is racist and could have a horrible impact on Leah, so she is stuck. Florida children starting in first grade will get so few books, and by twelfth grade, Leah can look forward to a life of being unable to discern literature and fiction. It’s pretty sad that her educational outlook appears so bleak, but the reason is that Florida and its people need a makeover. Clay and I have repeatedly called for everything from Florida being axed from the union to the hanging of Ron by his head. While I admit Clay and I are passionate about books and Ron is not, I personally would piss off the whole of Florida, and if tried and convicted of something, I’d ask a judge to hang Ron the way they actually do in Gilead, but instead of a sac on his head, I’d say let his whole head lull and be empty and let his face show! The entirety of the First Amendment will be written on a large plaque below Ron’s dangling and decomposing body. In Gilead, signs are usually pictures. By denying children the book they want, Florida has begun lulling my niece to sleep. Leah’s entire schooling will appear to be indoctrination, not education, and it will be as if she was attending a religious extremist school either way if she had Parochial education or not. ON one side, she’s taught inaccuracies regarding sexual health, and encouraged to save her so called virginity for marriage. Now let’s put her and Malcolm in a room one bright and cold day in April, perhaps then the clocks strike 13, and the cousins at age 16 are sitting down together, and Leah grows curious. Malcolm figures she’s probably curious about a book in his hand. Imagine Leah’s outcome, and she asks Malcolm what book is in his hands. “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” he replies, and the questioning begins. “Who’s Malcolm X? Who’s dDr. King?”

To make matters worse for Leah, she will learn black history as a means to benefit white supremacy and not understand the entire concept. Recent educational changes state that Florida teachers must twist things and say that slaves took advantage of benefits etc. There is however no pleasure in making someone work 24/7 without pay. I never cease to be amazed at the lack of true depth and understanding students get when they’re in the South, and they say slaves benefited at all from a cruel arrangement. Leah will not only be banned from reading Malcolm X’s work, or know who he is, she will never know the true purpose of the Black Panther party, not read 1984 and likely become a servant of a head of estate that treats her so bad. While Malcolm is able to provide for himself financially, his education being so carefully tailored, and our reading list jampacked with social justice and great literature, Leah’s book list is going to be quite bland. This bland education could well be myself, and Brevard County schools used to be reading any number of slave narratives, including Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and so many others. I’m a worried aunt, and I wih I could whisk Leah over here to play with her cousin Malcolm, I feel Leah’s book learning will benefit from that step. However, my brother and his wife are caring for her, probably oblivious to DeSantis and his minions.

Thank you all for reading this. I apologize for not writing here because I’ve been parenting and lots of things have happened.