Duck Dynasty Season 5 still might have support from some in the black community even after Phil Robertson’s “racist” comments.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , the Westboro Baptist Church has no love for Duck Dynasty fans, saying the show is for “lazy, gun toting, emasculated men.”
Although the original GQ interview barely gave any context for the allegedly racist quote, this is what the Duck Commander said in full:
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. 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.”
The only thing GQ said about the quote was that Phil was referring to living in Pre-Civil Rights Louisiana. The comments over homosexuality, on the other hand, were woven into the main portion of the article.
Some people claim GLAAD defamed Phil Robertson by the way they reported the controversy over homosexuality and racism . Even the NAACP was criticized for claiming the Ducky Dynasty star said “African Americans were happier under Jim Crow” even though the full quote never specifically mentioned Jim Crow laws. Instead, Phil seemed to be focused on welfare and entitlement laws in relation to his own personal experiences.
Interestingly enough, one CNN writer reports her friends in the black community have been supporting Phil Robertson . Even her own uncle claims Phil was just using “old talk” and plans on continuing to watch Duck Dynasty Season 5. But some of the writer’s black friends on Facebook were even using analogies to the Civil Rights movement to defend Phil. For example:
“Where would we be if Rosa Parks had went to the back of the bus. She had rights, he has rights. Have you noticed that anything and everything can be said about Christians now. Our beliefs are now wrong and we are outdated.”
In the last 10 years the percentage of people in the black Christian community who believe homosexuality is a sin has increased from 74 percent to 79 percent. In the same time frame the white community has gone from 82 to 78 percent. Given this context, it’s no surprise that black Christians would support Duck Dynasty . In fact, some high schoolers are starting Christian “Duck Dynasty clubs” in order to pray while at school. These clubs are modeled after how the Robertson family ends the show by praying together and discussing what they’ve learned.
But Shannan Hicks, a researcher on Lousiana after the Jim Crow era, believes Phil was truthfully relating his personal experience but that it may have been based upon a false representation:
“This was the age of black lynchings. A black person would never have reveled their true self to a white person who looked and talked like Robertson.”
Will you continue to watch Duck Dynasty Season 5? What do you think about Phil Robertson’s comments about the black community?