In a wild interview with Darius Rucker, a country star who was arrested for drug possession this year, former Fox News Channel personality and current CNN anchor Chris Wallace asked Rucker about the state of country music. Particularly, he and Rucker talked about “racism” in country music, with Rucker having said it was known for “rebel flags and racism.”

That part of the conversation kicked off with Wallace bringing up Beyonce’s attempt at a pop country song, asking, “So this spring, Beyonce tore up the charts. Cowboy Carter was a huge hit. How big was that?” Rucker, responding, said, “Huge. It was so big. I mean, I can’t express enough how big what she did was because she brought so many eyes to the to the genre.”

Continuing, Rucker then brought race into the conversation, telling Wallace, “You know, one of the things I love about what Beyonce did is when I started making country music and having hits I’d have African American women and men come up to me and go ‘I love country music. I could never say it until now you’re playing, and I can say it, you know.'”

Rucker then added that Beyonce, with her pop country song Cowboy Carter, “brought I think even more eyes to the to the genre and more people looking at it and more black people going alright man, I like country music and that’s, I always say I want country music to look more like America and I think she did a lot to make it go that way.”

That’s when Wallace brought tup the “rebel flags and racism” line, asking, “A couple of years ago, you wrote that country music still had the stigma of rebel flags and racism.” Rucker told him, “It’s still around, you know, it’s still these you still see it some places and I don’t think that’s I don’t think that’s ever going to go away. I mean, it’s still, it’s still there. It’s not as prevalent as it was. It’s not, it’s not the majority of country music, but it’s still there.”

Wallace then followed up, asking, “Still, a couple of years ago, you still think it’s there?” That’s when Rucker told him that the “racism” is still there because it’s “in America,” saying, “It’s still there because it’s still in America. It’s still part of America, the American. What we what we know is America so yeah, pretty sure it’s still there.”

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Rucker, as background, said in a 2021 article for Nashville’s Tennessean newspaper and its “Hallowed Sound” series, which was about black musicians and their contributions to music in America, “Country music has this stigma of rebel flags and racism, and that’s changing. I think it’s changing drastically. And I’m just glad. I hope I’m remembered as one of the people that tried to fight that, and one of the reasons that changed.”