Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson Thinks Black People Were Happy Before the Civil Rights Movement [View all]

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Thu Dec 19, 2013, 01:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: E! Online

When it comes to expressing his thoughts, Phil Robertson clearly isn't limited to just sharing his views on homosexuality.

In the January issue of GQ, the Duck Dynasty star also comments on growing up in a pre-civil-rights-era Louisiana.

"I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson claims. "Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotten with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash."

He adds, "They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, 'I tell you what: These doggone white people'—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues."

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Read more: http://www.eonline.com/news/492121/duck-dynasty-s-phil-robertson-thinks-black-people-were-happier-before-the-civil-rights-movement

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From another article on that statement of Robertson's, this one from a Hollywood Life article whose link was tweeted earlier today by Piers Morgan:

http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/12/19/duck-dynasty-star-phil-robertson-racist-interview/

Wow, so is he saying there was no point for the Civil Rights Movement to even happen? Does he not remember separate schools, bathrooms, horrible mistreatment and more? It’s unfortunate he isn’t more sensitive with his words.

Editing to add that Robertson was born and raised in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Two articles on Caddo Parish's history of violent racism here, the first from the Huffington Post in 2011:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bidish-sarma/caddo-parish-courthouse-_b_860497.html

In Shreveport, the Third National flag of the Confederacy flies directly in front of the district courthouse. The flag is symbolic of the widespread disenfranchisement of African-American jurors, and the second-class justice afforded African-American defendants throughout the deep South. Worse still, the flag discourages African-American involvement in the justice system and diminishes the actual quality of justice provided.

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This week, attorneys representing death-row inmate Felton Dorsey, joined by the ACLU, voiced concerns with how the "blood-stained banner" influenced the jury selection and capital trial of an African-American man accused of killing a white firefighter. The ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the Louisiana Supreme Court on behalf of 26 Caddo Parish and other Louisiana clergy leaders, 28 law and history professors and scholars, the ACLU, the NAACP Shreveport Chapter, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the Southern Center for Human Rights, among others.

The brief delves into Caddo Parish's sordid post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow history, which extended Shreveport's legacy as the site of the Confederacy's last stand. That legacy is explicitly and inextricably about white supremacy and the disenfranchisement and marginalization of African-Americans. As Rachel Maddow explained earlier in the week,

&quot i)n the Reconstruction era just after the Civil War, Caddo Parish earned the nickname the 'bloody Caddo' for its high proportion of black citizens who were murdered." Moreover, &quot i)n 1951, they added to (the Confederate monument), they added a flagpole and the Confederate flag. And there it stands. Still. Outside the Caddo Parish courthouse today, in 2011."

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The second is from the Shreveport Times, about a database listing lynchings in the parish:

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20050614/NEWS01/506140328/Database-lists-lynchings-Caddo-Bossier