Wow we literally saw a man with “white pride” tattooed on his arm this is why I would be SO scared to come here if we weren’t protected by being born with a certain skin color. God that just makes me feel so unsafe and I’m white! I can’t even imagine
It just makes me SO sad because Dolly’s whole thing is loving and accepting everyone and embracing differences and I know it would make her sad too

Lisle is just staring him down rn not saying anything and it feels so intense
I’m proud of him for using his privilege to find safe ways to stand up for what’s right but it makes me so nervous

I’ve never seen Lisle look at someone this angry and disgusted before it scares ME
And that makes another day at Dollywood cut short because we witnessed something that made us so angry and uncomfortable we couldn’t be here anymore.
I will be writing a very long letter to Dollywood and telling them that while we understand they can’t always control the types of guests visiting, we will not be returning. Maybe if they implement some SERIOUS changes to keep out things like blatant hate speech
But even then all of our fun and beautiful experiences have been spoiled by the things we’ve witnessed here. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s also been hard to visit.
I’m am just really proud of Lisle for making that racist uncomfortable from the moment he walked in to the moment he left. Racists have gotten WAY too comfortable publicly displaying their hate in this country and we’re not going to stand for it
I’m also proud of him because it’s something that if I saw on my own, I would have just walked away because I’m terrified of confrontation. But lisles the kind of man who just can’t stay silent when he sees something like that, especially with his family’s history
I could tell he was really holding himself back because I was there. If I wasn’t he definitely would have gotten confrontational and said something, if not something more aggressive.
There were so many things we still wanted to do, photos to get, and merchandise to buy. But we weren’t able to do any of that because Dollywood is in a place that racism lives very comfortably in
@Dollywood I will be writing you a letter but for now I’d appreciate it if you could just look at this thread. Dolly Parton is NOT okay with this kind of stuff and neither are we.
It’s heartbreaking. This is such a beautiful and fun place to visit but so many people just aren’t welcome here and it’s horrible. I honestly don’t know now if we’ll be back in this area often the way we wanted to earlier in the week.
It was scary for me because Lisle ended up yelling about it a little as we were walking out and I had to try to keep him calm and remind him it wasn’t safe in a place like this. Which was hard because I was really heated too. But I’m proud of us.
If we were to ever come here again, I think we’d just stay in our cabin and not go out anywhere. Which is sad because there’s some really cool attractions here. But the three times we’ve gone out we witnessed horrible things that made us angry and uncomfortable
@DollyParton I have no idea what you see on Twitter but I pray someone can pass this along to you. You have never struck me as the kind of person who’d be okay with people like that in your park
But we will be telling people not to visit Dollywood because of the things we saw. Which is sad. It’s a beautiful and fun place. But not everybody is welcome there.
Dollywood will not see a single cent from us unless they make some serious changes. Which is sad because there were some things in the park we really enjoyed. But we just cannot go back.
Sadly my hunch is the racist’s wallets are just bigger than ours and that’s why this stuff is allowed. Awful.
Also I want to make clear that while both are disgusting displays of racism, there’s a difference between “white pride” and a confederate flag. White pride is direct hate speech. There’s no pretending otherwise.
A confederate flag is a symbolic image that people use to stand for a lot of things, including racism and hatred. Both are wrong and shouldn’t be allowed. But there is a difference
Also I did not see the tattoo myself because I didn’t want to turn around when Lisle pointed it out to me. I just asked him how big it was and he said it took up the man’s whole arm. It was VERY blatant.