Bob Dylan, who is known to be a huge supporter of civil rights, is being sued for alleged racism by a French Croatian community.
According to Billboard, the accusations stem from an interview Dylan had with Rolling Stone.
In the interview, the "Hurricane" singer was asked about present-day American and similarities to the country in the 1860s. He replied that the U.S. is "too f--ked up about color. It's a distraction. People at each other's throats just because they are a different color. It's the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back. ... Blacks know that some whites didn't want to give up slavery."
The singer then added, "That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood." This sentence is what drove the Council of Croats in France to sue both the folk singer and the French edition of Rolling Stone.
The International Business Times reports that the Council feels that what Dylan said is really a racial slur. "It is an incitement to hated. You cannot compare Croatian criminals to all Croats," Vlatko Maric, secretary general of the Council, said. "But we have nothing against Rolling Stone magazine or Bob Dylan as a singer."
If found guilty, Dylan could be fined as France is known to have stricter rules on freedom of speech. The ruling likely won't be for awhile as authorities look into the incident.
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