Songs of Protest: Gary Clark Jr. Warned Us: What His 2019 Album This Land Tells Us About Racism Today

Recent protests against police brutality and racism call to mind Gary Clark Jr. 's 2019 album This Land, a solemn warning of what’s to come should systemic change fail to occur.

Music is one of society’s best teachers. In Songs of Protest, writers analyze some of music’s greatest hits, using their findings to make sense of the world around them.

Written by Camryn Garza

In the days following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, the national conversation turned, yet again, to police brutality and the need for justice. As millions across the world participated in tributes and expressions of outrage, noticeably absent from the conversation was blues rock musician Gary Clark Jr., who has been known to call attention to issues of inequality in years past.

However, six days following this needless loss of life, Clark expressed his frustrations in a solemn video posted on his Instagram account.

“I’m tired of crying on TV,” Clark said. “I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of being sad about it, tired of feeling depressed and anxious and f-cked up. I’m a six-foot-four Black man. I’m probably some of yall’s worst nightmare. If you didn’t know me …”

“My intentions are good, my heart is good — as George Floyd, as Breonna Taylor, as Ahmaud Arbery,” Clark continued. I know that some of you right now are sitting around and jamming to Jimi Hendrix or Kendrick Lamar and Robert Johnson … But where are you standing up when we’re lying on the ground?”

While this video addressed a recent string of racist violence toward African Americans, Clark’s frustrations aren’t new. He expressed similar sentiments in his 2019 album This Land, itself a response to the racism that has been lingering since the dawn of America.

The album’s titular track comes from a point in time when Clark was able to do for himself what he could never do before. A young Black man living in Austin, Texas at the peak of his musical success, Clark was able to purchase a sizable piece of land, fifty acres to be exact, “right in the middle of Trump Country.” Prior to the album’s release, Clark recalled the time he was approached by a neighbor, referred to in the album as Mr. Williams, who asked him: “Who owns this house? There’s no way you can live here — who owns this house?”

This encounter follows Clark throughout the album. “Call it what you want, you can call it what you want,” he sings in “What About Us.” While he admitted that perhaps the comments made by Mr. Williams weren’t racially based, he interpreted the question as Williams’ disbelief that a successful Black man could find himself in that living position. This disbelief is a way of thinking Clark has grown tired of, urging the audience to “call it what you want.”

This way of thinking has unfortunately followed, and continues to follow, all Black people living in America today. Clark’s album was released in 2019, but stems from the anger built throughout years of oppression. Recent lows like the 2016 election and the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally brought “flashbacks” of Clark’s childhood, in which kids called him names and wrote racial slurs on his mailbox. Clark’s outrage reached a new high, and took the form of “This Land,” in which Clark sings of someone “Paranoid and pissed off now that I got the money / I see you looking out the window / Can’t wait to call the police on me.”

Clark attempts to warn us throughout This Land of the violence that will continue should systemic change fail to occur. But if his message was not made clear by the album, Clark tells us once more in his IGTV video:

“I don’t have any answers, but I do think this,” Clark said. “Talk to your people and raise your children up. Show them love and light so they can return and be beautiful gifts and share with you what they saw in the world, how they were opening and full of love. Don’t f-ck up the dream for everybody because you can’t say nothing. You don’t get to eat off of us and then leave us to die or just leave us some scraps.”

Talk to your people. This is Clark’s message. There is a difference between hearing and listening, it’s 2020 but this story is not new. Clark’s message isn’t one that hasn’t been heard before, but perhaps now people will listen. This is more than reading a headline or listening to an album. Non-Black people must realize their role in racism, and have tough conversations with each other in order to truly eradicate it. Talk to your people. While Clark may not have all the answers, his song “Feed the Babies” may serve as a good start:

“Well, it’s hard out there for a man
So come on brothers and sisters
It’s the same path you walk
Come on mothers and fathers
Teach the babies to talk
Stand up for your cause
Teach the babies to love”

A cry against oppression and a warning for the future, Clark’s album provides us with a plausible step that at its core seems so simple: “teach the babies to love.” Teach the next generation about equality and inclusion, but acknowledge the hate that was and still is there.

Media coverage dies down and social media feeds go back to normal, but silence is not acceptable. Anti-racism is an ongoing conversation, not a lesson easily wrapped up in a one-stop album. Gary Clark Jr. said it more than once: we must talk to one another and educate ourselves beyond the point of breaking news. Otherwise, history will repeat itself once again.

Afterglow ATXJuly 13, 2020camryn garza