Dolly Parton is Billboard magazine’s latest cover story, and she takes the opportunity to show her support protests of racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement. The 74-year-old said that although she herself did not attend any protest, she understands “people need to make themselves known and felt and seen.”
“Obviously Black is alive,” Parton said in the Billboard interview. “Do we think our little white asses are the only ones who matter? No. Everyone matters.”
She said she believes “we all have the right to be exactly who we are.”
“All these good Christian people who are such good Christian people to be, the last thing we need to do is to judge each other,” she said. “God is the judge, not us. I’m just trying to be myself. I’m trying to let everyone else be themselves.”
Although the star of country music rarely speaks about her belief in political or social issues, in recent years she has taken more progressive actions to hold herself and her brand accountable for matters that have racist symbols or undertones.
In 2018, Parton changed the name of its popular Tennessee and Missouri tourist attraction to the Dixie Stampede because of “Dixie’s” connections with the Confederacy. The attraction, now called Dolly Parton’s Stamply, is a themed civil war dance show, centered around a “friendly competition from North and South.”
“There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of it,” Parton told Billboard. “When they said ‘Dixie’ was an insulting word, I thought, ‘Well, I do not want to offend anyone. This is a business. We’ll just call it the Stampede.'”
“Once you realize that [something] is a problem, you need to fix it. “Do not be dumb,” said Parton. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of someone with the intention of hurting. “
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