15 Times the Duggar Family Was Accused of Being Racist

In October 2020, Jana shared a video of her brother, James, using a weed trimmer to spell the word "Trump" in the grass in front of the Duggars' family home — leaving no doubt in anyone's minds which candidate the family supports in the presidential election. This was enough to lose Jana some followers, but she didn't seem to mind.

Not long after a violent white supremacist rally took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the Duggars shared this post of their boys learning how to shoot a bow and arrow, along with guns and other weapons, and it immediately became controversial. Considering that everything that had just happened had been so violent, it was the wrong timing for the Duggars to share this kind of post — especially since they didn't denounce racism, or the supremacists' actions in the process.

Over the summer, the Duggar family as a whole stayed pretty quiet about the protests that were going on all over the country, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement. And when a fan asked Amy about her family's views on racism, she didn't hold back, saying that she and her husband, Dillon King, are not racist — pointedly neglecting to mention the more famous side of her family at the same time.

As Cheat Sheet pointed out, in January, Jinger seemed to be mocking Asian people while pulling her eyes back as she, Jeremy, and Felicity ate in an Asian restaurant. She may have been imitating her husband's expression, but the optics here aren't good. Multiple fans pointed out that they should have thought twice before posting this photo.

In 2018, Derick Dillard posted a photo of his and Jill Duggar's son playing with blocks, writing in his caption, "Israel helping Trump build 'The Wall' LOL." This immediately earned them some backlash, considering that many people consider the wall on the border with Mexico to be a racist tool. There's no word on whether Derick or Jill have changed their minds about it since.

When Jessa Duggar visited the Holocaust Museum in 2014, she shared a post about how it affected her … and then compared it to abortion before blaming the Holocaust on the theory of evolution. It was a lot to take in, but to regard the Holocaust as rooted in anything other than racism — when so many people died because of it — obviously meant that Jessa got called out on her post big time.

Though many of Derick's tweets have been controversial, this one from 2017 was particularly upsetting. In it, he claimed that the US is "one of the least racist countries in the world," but as a white man, was he really qualified to declare that? It's understandable that people were immediately angry that he would pretend that racism doesn't exist rather than attempt to tackle it head on.

After Colin Kaepernick famously took a knee instead of standing for the national anthem before NFL games in protest of police brutality against Black people — a problem the US is still facing today — Derick took to Twitter to call these kinds of protests "un-American," despite the fact that protesting is an American right.

After fans near Springdale, Arkansas, took photos of what the Duggar home looks like before the 2020 presidential election, some people aren't impressed. As of this month, the Duggars featured several flags on their property — including multiple Trump flags, and a Tea Party flag, which has symbolized racism in the past.

Jedediah Duggar is currently running for office in the state of Arkansas, and over the summer, he shared this snapshot from where he was working from home. There's one problem, though: the Arkansas state flag, which hangs in this photo, has long been considered racist because it incorporates the state's history with the confederacy, and historians have been trying to change it.

Speaking of Jed's run for office, his super conservative platform is no surprise, considering how open his family has been about their beliefs over the years. But the fact that he didn't condemn racism as part of his platform — or even acknowledge its existence at all — while extending his support to law enforcement, hasn't been sitting right with a lot of fans.

As a fan on Reddit has pointed out, Jeremy Vuolo signed a document — along with other pastors and evangelical Christians — condemning the social justice and anti-racist movements. The document says, "While we are to weep with those who weep, we deny that a person's feelings of offense or oppression necessarily prove that someone else is guilty of sinful behaviors, oppression, or prejudice."

Although this post goes all the way back to 2014, Jessa was still called out for sharing this picture of Indigenous people and pilgrims in honor of Thanksgiving, celebrating colonizers finding the "New Land" without acknowledging the racist and harmful roots of the holiday. It earned her plenty of critical comments, but she never truly addressed it.

Over the years on 19 Kids & Counting and Counting On, the Duggars have visited other countries and immersed themselves in the cultures … but it hasn't always been respectful. As fans on Reddit have claimed, Jinger once turned her nose up at the food in Japan and didn't want to get a makeover as a geisha — and that's just one example.

After the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, Jeremy shared a video about the situation. Rather than amplifying a Black voice in regards to the situation, Ben Seewald chose to repost his brother-in-law's video instead. Sure, Ben wanted to call for justice for Floyd, but many people on Reddit believed that sharing another white man's voice wasn't what needed to be done.