Grew up in Nashville, still have racist family there. It absolutely is like that, just look at the state's house of representatives doing shit like expelling the only two Black members of the House last year. Maybe Nashville dreams of being a liberal bastion in a sea of red, but right now it's barely an island.
Nashville dreams of tourists spending all their money on live music and dining that draws on the city's rich cultural heritage so it can use that tax revenue to oppress the shit out of those cultures
I think a lot of it is techbros that came to the city with remote jobs during the pandemic suddenly being surprised that their fantasy of "Western Country" is actually heavily rooted in racism. At the very least, that's the person I know who occasionally sends me news from the region. They keep thinking that Nashville can be a great blue city like New York or Chicago if they "just get enough people to move here", and I always tell em to keep dreaming.
Yeah, a lot of the power and political structure is old money, I don't see them letting racism go. Plus they just gerrymandered a Democrat congressional district out of Nashville and made camping on public grounds (aka occupy protests) a felony. If anything, it's more red.