Being a black artist in country music hasn’t been easy for Darius Rucker. The 54-year-old suffered in silence for a while, as many made decisions about his music based on the color of his skin, but says he can no longer afford to stay silent about such an important issue.
“I’ve lived with racism my whole life,” Darius said on the Today Show. “It made me realize I can’t keep living my life like everything’s OK because everything is not OK.”
Darius spoke out after the tragic death of George Floyd, and vowed to do all he could to support the Black Lives Matter moment, and end racism across the country.
“Really, you get to a point where you go, ‘That’s just how it is,’ Darius reflected. “When I was going to radio stations and you got guys telling me, ‘We’re not gonna play you ’cause you’re a Black guy,’ that’s just the way it is. I can’t live like that anymore. I can’t just go, ‘It’s OK,’ and go on with my life and let somebody say something that I know they shouldn’t say.”
Darius already had a successful career as the lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish, but even his massive success is not a protection against racism.
“You become a rich black man and you think racism goes away,” the South Carolina native reflected. “It doesn’t. There are people that hate you more because you’re rich.”
Darius also knows people have disliked his current stance, and cites The Chicks, and their blacklisting in country music after criticizing then-President George Bush, as an example.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. You know, it wasn’t about their politics, it was about their music,” he said, adding, “I’m sure I’ve already lost fans.”
As part of the singer’s lengthy, and compelling, social media post in the days following the death of George Floyd, Darius encouraged others to unite to fight racism together.
“Over the course of my life, I guess I had just put it down to ‘that’s just the way it is,’” Darius said. “No, I know I had. It is no longer alright for me to perpetuate the myth that things are okay. I have kids whom I love and cherish, and to watch them go through this, to feel their anguish and anger trying to deal with this is heartbreaking for me. The question that keeps coming up is, ‘will it ever change?’ And my answer now has to be ‘YES.’
“We have to come together somehow, y’all,” he remarked. “The only way it will ever change is if we change people’s hearts. I don’t know how we are going to make that happen, but I’m ready to try everything we have to do, because we need to be better.”
Darius hopes to shed enough light on how racism is still prevalent in the United States, so finally change will occur.
“You’ve seen so many times when something so innocent as a traffic stop or something, and then all of a sudden someone gets shot. I don’t want that for my boy. I don’t want that for my daughters. I don’t want that for anybody … And the thing is it’s not gonna change until enough people say it’s wrong.”