As I watched the Grammys, I noticed it was a little colorless...er, colorblind. Yeah, colorblind. That's the word I wanna use. As the country music group Lady Antebellum racked up on awards and honors I felt my spirit burn. And as I tweeted with my twitterati, I noticed I was not alone in my crooked neck moment.


I have nothing against the folks in the Lady Antebellum group. Their name, however, makes my soul quake. I flashed back to my Nana and Paw Paw's stories about their struggles to be southern and black while interacting with white folks. I also conjured up memories from my high school history classes that glorified the Confederate south, realizing that world was not meant for me or my people. The Antebellum south, as frilly and bougie as it is remembered, was certainly no lady. And this is not to say that the North was a gentleman, but southern romanticized nostalgia for plantation parties and black men dressed in tattered coattails irks the hell out of me.


Lady Antebellum's branding and their presence via the Grammys assists me in working through my ideas about race and consciousness for my dissertation. Again, it's not the music the group produces as I'm only familiar with a small snippet (like, a single song) of their work. I'm curious about the workings behind the name and why it is not discussed. Perhaps one angle to attempt to contextualize their name is with the good ol' postracial glaze. I tend to think it's dystopian instead of utopic, removing the Otherness that makes whiteness visible. Lady Antebellum flourishes because of America's intentional sleeping on race matters but also because it is profitable.


The peculiarity of this "postracial" period suggests that the historical significance of Lady Antebellum's name, because it is racially charged, is not publicly relevant. George Lipsitz refers to white America's post-Civil Rights investment in supremacist discourse as the Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Paying attention to the white supremacist notions Antebellum signifies makes whiteness visible, therefore invalidating the postracial movement. In order to maintain white privilege and dominance in this moment of history, white supremacy needs to hide in the open.

I'm not quite sure what is more disturbing, the continued investment in white supremacist culture or our avoidance of naming and addressing it in the name of racial harmony. Yeah, racial harmony. Those are the words I wanna use.