Jesse Jackson Sr. has jumped into the controversy surrounding comments by Phil Robertson, star of A&E's backwoods reality TV show, "Duck Dynasty."
In an announcement sent out Tuesday, Jackson Sr. compared Robertson's recent comments about African-Americans, gay people and women to comments made by the driver of Rosa Parks' bus.
"At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law," he said in the release. "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.'"
Jackson's human rights group, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, has demanded meetings with A&E and with Cracker Barrel regarding the two companies' treatment of Robertson, who stars in the show as the head of a Louisiana family that makes duck calls.
Jackson's group, along with LGBT group GLAAD and the National Organization for Women, urged A&E to keep Robertson on an indefinite hiatus from the show, which the network started following Robertson's comments criticizing homosexuality in an interview with GQ magazine.
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