Jesse Jackson is declaring that Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson’s controversial statements to GQ magazine are worse than the bus driver who demanded that Rosa Parks give up her seat for a white person.
Jackson is referring to the comments Robertson made about African Americans in Louisiana he grew up with. Robertson he never saw any black people getting mistreated pre-civil rights era.
“These statements uttered by Robertson are more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago,” Jackson said in a statement, ABC News reports.
“At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law. Robertson’s statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was ‘white privilege.’”
The activist demanded a meeting with A&E, the network that airs Duck Dynasty and suspended Robertson after his comments were published, as well as Cracker Barrell.
The Hollywood Reporter notes Robertson’s statements about blacks were, "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."
image: Wikimedia Commons
