In 2013, Lisa Jackson, a former employee of Paula Deen, sued her and her brother, Earl Hiers, for racial and sexual discrimination. Jackson accused Deen of using racial slurs in the workplace, a claim Deen acknowledged, even admitting to past use of the N-word, notably during a robbery incident. “But that’s just not a word that we use as time has gone on,” she explained in a deposition, as reported by CNN. “Things have changed since the ’60s in the South. And my children and my brother object to that word being used in any cruel or mean behavior.”
While the racial discrimination claims in the lawsuit had been dismissed that same year, with The New York Times reporting that a judge concluded that Jackson was only “an accidental victim of the alleged racial discrimination,” the controversy set forth a decline in Deen’s commercial partnerships. In addition to losing her shows on the Food Network, a dozen other companies ended their affiliations with her, including Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Caesars Entertainment, J.C. Penney, Sears, and Walgreens. Random House’s Ballantine Books, the publisher that contracted her to write a series of cookbooks, also decided against releasing her forthcoming titles.
Deen, for her part, issued a public apology for the use of offensive language, but it did little to help her reputation. “I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I’ve done. I want to learn and grow from this,” she said at the time. “Inappropriate, hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable … Please forgive me for the mistakes that I’ve made.”
