Dolly Parton Speaks Up About BLM: ‘Of Course Black Lives Matter’
After George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed by police this year, there has been a reckoning in the world. That includes country music, where bands formerly known as Lady Antebellum and The Dixie Chicks decided to remove Southern terms with racist connotations from their names. This is not new to Dolly Parton.
In a new interview with Billboard, the country legend discussed her support of the Black Lives Matter movement and opened up about renaming a Dollywood Civil War–themed dinner production back in 2018. The Dixie Stampede was accused of romanticizing the South and blissfully ignoring the era's racism by a 2017 Slate article.
“There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that,” Parton told Billboard of her decision to remove “Dixie” from the attraction's title, adding, “When they said ‘Dixie’ was an offensive word, I thought, Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it The Stampede.”
“As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it,” the 74-year-old continued. "Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.”
As for BLM and the ongoing protests, Parton is supportive. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she said. “And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”
“First of all, I’m not a judgmental person. I do believe we all have a right to be exactly who we are, and it is not my place to judge,” Parton also said in the interview. "All these good Christian people that are supposed to be such good Christian people, the last thing we're supposed to do is to judge one another. God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”
Originally Appeared on Glamour
