FRANCE: Bob Dylan Investigated For Inciting Racial Hatred In Interview

Paris prosecutors are considering charging Bob Dylan with inciting racial hatred for comments he made in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone.

In the interview, published in the magazine's September 27, 2012 edition, the singer said racism was holding America back. "If you got a slave master or (Ku Klux) Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that," he was quoted as saying. "That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood." The formal investigation followed a legal complaint from the organization, CRICCF, which is based in France, alleging that the comments as carried in the French version of the magazine violated French racial hatred laws. In France, racism complaints automatically trigger formal investigations, irrespective of the merits of the case.

Rolling Stone and Dylan have declined to comment.