Gary Clark Jr. wasn’t present in 1619 when enslaved people met a horrifying destiny on the shores of Jamestown. He still hadn’t been born in 1865 when African-Americans in his own home state finally found freedom. But in 2018, supposedly hundreds of years removed from black oppression, Gary Clark Jr. still found himself at the mercy of a white man’s suspicion.
Born and raised in Central Texas, after traveling the world playing the blues, performing with the likes of Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, and the Rolling Stones, winning a Grammy, and undoubtedly earning millions, Gary decided to bring his family back home. He hadn’t grown up dirt poor in the middle of nowhere, but like every parent, he’d hoped to give his kids better, and on his newly-purchased 50 acres with a big house and a shiny vintage car, everything was going according to plan. Until a nosy white neighbor, obviously unaware of Gary’s daunting resume and without regard to Gary’s children present, insisted that all of this couldn’t belong to HIM.
That night in the recording booth, Gary forgot his fear of being stereotyped as an angry Black man, and unleashed his justifiable rage that after hundreds of years, after all of the money he’s made, after as hard as he’s worked for what’s his, that he’d still have someone question it, just because of the color of his skin, and “This Land” was born. “That’s what came out as a result of you know, life being black in this country, in this world, unfortunately,” he explained. The song is of course inspired by Woody Guthrie’s iconic folk protest, “This Land Is Your Land,” a tune that had evolved for Gary over the years. “I remember singing that song as a kid. I love the song and I love what it stands for, but I unfortunately don’t think we can all sing that song as a nation unified.”
The video opens with a little boy gazing out a car window at the passing countryside. It’s generic sleepy, Southern scenery in Elgin, TX, suddenly disrupted by three Confederate flags atop a mailbox. From there the video is one powerful, captivating scene after another – black children among a lynching tree, those same children unearthing arrowheads from beneath Confederate flags, a boy with the universe for a heart standing in shell casings, and a pervasive snake in the grass that eventually meets its doom.
All of this is only the backdrop through for the song’s furious, driving chorus based on words hurled at Gary when he grew up: “N***a, run, n***a, run / Go back where you come from,” quickly followed up by his answer – OUR ANSWER – that no one has a greater claim to this land than Native and African-Americans, and we’re still owed a promise made to us in 1776 that we intend to collect today.
𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘:
“Well, f**k you, I’m America’s son
This is where I come from”