# Disturbed that Duck Dynasty Phil's \*racism\* is getting overlooked **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 20, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788 "2013-12-20T02:10:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/1 "2013-12-20T02:10:21Z")
Am I the only one that found that part a lot more retrograde and offensive than the stuff about homosexuality? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/2 "2013-12-20T02:16:24Z")
Not the only one. I thought it was worse than Paula Deen’s comments. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/3 "2013-12-20T02:18:58Z")
I’m offended as a heterosexual that he says being straight comes down to liking vagina. Really, there’s equal opportunity stupidity throughout that article. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/4 "2013-12-20T02:38:14Z")
Everyone has some pretty messed-up thoughts. It’s just that everyone doesn’t have a microphone and a camera thrust in their face. So I’m not surprised that we can add one more person to the People Who Said Something Really Stupid Pile. I also can’t make myself feel particularly bothered. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/5 "2013-12-20T02:54:10Z")
He said it badly but I understand the point Phil was making. I read his brother Si’s book a couple months ago. The Robertsons (Si and Phil) grew up dirt poor just like my grandfather. Poor field hands worked side by side. It didn’t matter if you were white or black. Everyone’s hands were raw and bleeding at the end of the day. Picking cotton is brutal work. My grandfather was a sharecropper for much of his life. He didn’t buy a small farm until he was almost 50. I heard a lot of stories from my dad and his sisters. We’re from the same general area of Louisiana as Phil. Thats why I watch Duck Dynasty. I am baffled why Phil claims he doesn’t recall any racism. Poor whites were called white trash back then. :rolleyes: They were at the bottom just like the blacks. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/6 "2013-12-20T03:12:35Z")
I’m more disturbed that Duck Dynasty is a _thing_. Or why there are bathmats at Walmart with their faces on them. One set of comments were more “the gay is bad.” The race part, from what I read, was just denying that racism exists by his anecdotal evidence. But the article also suggested that the latter will hurt him more. Re: Paula Deen, her comments weren’t as bad as her hiring exclusive black servers for her whiteass lawn jockey party or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/7 "2013-12-20T16:11:47Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Am I the only one that found that part a lot more retrograde and offensive than the stuff about homosexuality? No, you are not. I am surprised that has not gotten more attention than it has. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/8 "2013-12-20T16:24:03Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I’m more disturbed that Duck Dynasty is a _thing_. Or why there are bathmats at Walmart with their faces on them. I might not toss one of the doormats if someone gave it to me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/9 "2013-12-20T16:33:55Z")
Not having read a transcript of his remarks, I’m curious as to what, specifically, his racist comments were? ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/10 "2013-12-20T16:39:55Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Not having read a transcript of his remarks, I’m curious as to what, specifically, his racist comments were? I smell a gotcha coming. You don’t have access to Google? ---
**Author:** ![Cerealbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ab992/32.png) [@Cerealbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerealbox)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/11 "2013-12-20T16:40:15Z")
I’m assuming that the kind of people who watch Duck Dynasty don’t really care about some mild casual racism. Also, didn’t you know? We have a black president now. That means racism is over. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/12 "2013-12-20T16:44:33Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Not having read a transcript of his remarks, I’m curious as to what, specifically, his racist comments were? I don’t know if a full transcript is available, but [here](http://www.gq.com/entertainment/television/201401/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson) is the interview in GQ in which he made the controversial comments. One of his comments, "Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.” As Stephen Colbert pointed out, this was the time during which the blues were being developed, so, yes, they were in fact singing the blues. ---
**Author:** ![Doyle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doyle/32/439_2.png) [@Doyle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doyle)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/13 "2013-12-20T16:46:05Z")
You do know Willie Robertson does have an adopted bi-racial son? ---
**Author:** ![Cerealbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ab992/32.png) [@Cerealbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerealbox)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/14 "2013-12-20T16:46:52Z")
> [@Doyle](#): > > You do know Willie Robertson does have an adopted bi-racial son? That’s even better than having a black friend! ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/15 "2013-12-20T16:47:55Z")
> [@PlainJain](#): > > I smell a gotcha coming. You don’t have access to Google? I don’t have access to sound on this computer. I have read articles which offer what are presumably excerpts, and the only mention of race sounds perhaps a bit blind, but not what I would call racist. But on a more fundamental level, isn’t it up to the person who claims a given statement is racist to provide the text of that statement? Why is asking for that a “gotcha?” ---
**Author:** ![Doyle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doyle/32/439_2.png) [@Doyle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doyle)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/16 "2013-12-20T16:50:42Z")
> [@Cerealbox](#): > > That’s even better than having a black friend! That is true. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/17 "2013-12-20T16:51:16Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > One of his comments, "Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.” As Stephen Colbert pointed out, this was the time during which the blues were being developed, so, yes, they were in fact singing the blues. To correct myself, it was actually Jon Stewart who pointed out that this was in fact when and where the blues were developed. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/18 "2013-12-20T16:51:20Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > He said it badly but I understand the point Phil was making. I read his brother Si’s book a couple months ago. The Robertsons (Si and Phil) grew up dirt poor just like my grandfather. Poor field hands worked side by side. It didn’t matter if you were white or black. Everyone’s hands were raw and bleeding at the end of the day. True in a limited way. Take it away, [Ta-Nehisi Coates](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/12/phil-robertsons-america/282555/): > [@](#): > > One should not be lulled into thinking that the murder of Freddie Moore was out of the ordinary in Louisiana. Between 1882 and 1936, only Georgia, Texas and Mississippi saw more black people lynched. For part of that period four of Louisiana’s parishes led the nation for counties with the most lynchings. > > That is because governance in Phil Robertson’s Louisiana was premised on terrorism. As late as 1890, the majority of people in Louisiana were black. As late as 1902, they still lived under threat of slavery through debt peonage and the convict-lease system. Virtually all of them were pilfered of their vote and their tax dollars. Plunder and second slavery were enforced by violence, as when the besiegers of Colfax massacred 50 black freedmen with rifles and cannon and tossed their bodies into a river. Even today the Colfax Massacre is honored in Louisiana as the rightful “end of carpetbag misrule.” > > The black people who Phil Robertson knew were warred upon. If they valued their lives, and the lives of their families, the last thing they would have done was voiced a complaint about “white people” to a man like Robertson. Ignorance is no great sin and one can forgive the good-natured white person for not knowing how all that cannibal sausage was truly made. But having been presented with a set of facts, Robertson’s response is to cite “welfare” and “entitlement” as the true culprits. > > The belief that black people were at their best when they were being hunted down like dogs for the sin of insisting on citizenship is a persistent strain of thought in this country. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/19 "2013-12-20T17:02:18Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I don’t know if a full transcript is available, but [here](http://www.gq.com/entertainment/television/201401/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson) is the interview in GQ in which he made the controversial comments. > > One of his comments, "Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.” As Stephen Colbert pointed out, this was the time during which the blues were being developed, so, yes, they were in fact singing the blues. But who was the “they” in that sentence? You quoted only a part of that quote insert grey box that appears on page on. Here it is in full: > [@](#): > > Phil On Growing Up in Pre-Civil-Rights-Era Louisiana > “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.” Shorn of that first part, as you presented it, it sounds like Robertson is saying that as a people, black folks were happy and godly pre-welfare. It seems to me, though, that when you add the rest of his statement in, Robertson is talking about the specific black people that worked for the farmers, alongside him. Now, I grant you that there’s a definite tone-deafness in ever saying black people were “singing and happy,” as they worked in the fields hoeing cotton. But I don’t agree it’s racist. And in my view, Robertson is describing a situation in which he viewed himself as no better or worse than the other farm laborers, no matter their color. Is that not correct, in your estimation? ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788/20 "2013-12-20T17:07:19Z")
I don’t know much about the show, but A&E can’t be surprised that these guys have some non-politically correct opinions. The Phil guy should have kept his mouth shut though, because corporations tend to bow to the PC crowd these days. And after all, it’s a “reality” show, shouldn’t it portray reality for better or worse? A&E should just air a disclaimer saying they don’t share the views of the show cast members and leave it at that. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disturbed-that-duck-dynasty-phils-racism-is-getting-overlooked/676788.md?page=2)