By Tonja Renee Stidhum
Sometimes you just need someone to put it plain. Enter country legend, Dolly Parton.
In a recent cover story interview with Billboard, Parton discussed her life during the global pandemic, the possibility of selling her publishing, and she even opened up about the importance of making sure her estate is in order. The standout part of the interview, however, involved three words: Black Lives Matter.
“I’m not out here to tell you what to do, I don’t want you to tell me what to do. But, I just do what my heart tells me to do,” Parton told Billboard. “I ask God to direct me and lead me and if I got his direction, then I don’t have to worry too much about anything else. I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course, Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”
“First of all, I’m not a judgmental person. I do believe we all have a right to be exactly who we are, and it is not my place to judge,” she added. “All these good Christian people that are supposed to be such good Christian people, the last thing we’re supposed to do is to judge one another. God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”
I’m not one to praise white folks for basic human decency (because after all, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement is simply the humane thing to do), but I do want to note that it is primarily white folks’ responsibility to check their own folks. It is their “9 to 5,” indeed. We tired.
Perhaps now that an icon of many racists’ beloved music genre said it, maybe it’ll stick? Like Lauryn Hill once spit, “I add a ‘Motherfucker’ so you ignant niggas hear me.” Maybe Parton had to throw in some “white asses” so you ignant racists hear her.
Will they listen, though? Eh, I’m sure the embarrassingly proud upholders of white supremacy will just dig into their bag of oppression and throw out some misogyny at her for daring to speak up for Black lives.
Yeah…I won’t be waiting on that, so I’ll just take my hat and go home. Then again, for a Black person, that’s not an entirely safe place, either.