Brad Paisley has won 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 14 Country Music Association awards, and three Grammys. However, nobody will remember him for his outstanding contributions to country music. Instead they will remember Paisley for the unfortunate and terrible ”Accidental Racist.”

“Accidental Racist” is a ballad from Paisley to his African-American barista, rapper LL Cool J. The singer is wearing a confederate flag shirt in front of the black man and realizes the situation is uncomfortable calling it “the elephant in the corner of the south.”

Although the confederate flag is the symbol for a group that upheld the ideas that people can be property and human rights do not count for people of color, Paisley sings that the only meaning the flag has is its symbolism for 1970s southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.

He goes in the chorus to say, “I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done,” and that he’s “caught between southern pride and southern blame.”

While Paisley may have some convoluted process for convincing himself that proudly wearing a confederate flag is somehow not racist, he has failed to convince the rest of us. The thought of donning a confederate flag to show pride for the south is as blasphemous as someone wearing a swastika to show his pride for Germany.

If this was not bad enough, LL Cool J decided to join in on the ordeal. He comes in for the third verse and raps about what it is like being a black man in the south and how the confederate flag symbolizes hatred and exclusion to the black community. However, he also demonizes aspects of black culture and fashion.

Just as Paisley half-heartedly defends his appearance, LL Cool J does the same saying, “just because my pants are saggin’ doesn’t mean I’m up to no good.”

This is where the song crosses the line. Sagging pants were never an official symbol of hatred towards anyone. The confederate flag however, represented hundreds of years of slavery, hatred and human rights violations.

LL Cool J goes on to reiterate by saying “If you won’t judge my do-rag, I won’t judge that red flag” and “If you don’t judge my gold chains, I’ll forget the iron chains.”

What?

Necklace and shackles are two very different things. One is a fashion choice. The other quite literally kept millions of black men, women and children in captivity until they died. To put the two on the same level is not only ignorant, but appalling.

Paisley stands by the song and recently tweeted “Well, we wanted to start the conversation. This is fantastic.”

LL Cool J however, admits that the song is flawed. “I can’t defend the song, but I can clarify my intentions…” he said in an interview with Jay Leno.

The intentions were to allegedly bring together the worlds of hip-hop and country music and start a dialogue race relations in America that will lead to a stronger bond between the disparate communities.

However, this is the wrong conversation to be having. The only unity that has come from the situation of “Accidental Racist” is the consensus on all sides that this song is a mistake.