Dolly Parton weighed in on the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests across the nation and said “of course Black lives matter.”
“I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” the 74-year-old country legend shared with Billboard magazine in a piece published Thursday. (RELATED: LIVE UPDATES: Here’s What Every State In America Is Doing To Combat The Spread Of The Coronavirus)
“And of course Black lives matter,” she added. “Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” (RELATED: Celebrate Dolly Parton’s Birthday With Her Most Memorable Looks [SLIDESHOW])
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At one point in the interview, she talked about the decision she made a few years back to rename her Dixie Stampede dinner attraction to Dolly Parton’s Stampede at her Dollywood Theme park because she would “never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.”
The piece noted how it came after a Slate article in 2017 about the dinner event that “cast a critical eye on its rosy, family-friendly depictions of the Civil War.”
“There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that,” Parton shared. “When they said ‘Dixie’ was an offensive word, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it The Stampede.'”
“As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it,” she added. “Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.”
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Later, the “Jolene” hitmaker said her philosophy in life is that “God is the judge, not us.”
“First of all, I’m not a judgmental person,” the “9 to 5” star shared. “I do believe we all have a right to be exactly who we are, and it is not my place to judge.”
“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,” she added. “God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”