Black people ‘dependent’ since slavery, Mississippi official says after rejecting removal of Confederate monument

‘His revisionist history is not accurate at all,’ says Democratic congressman Kabir Karriem

A white Mississippi official claimed that African Americans have been “dependent” since slavery, following a meeting where a proposal to take down a Confederate statue was rejected.

Harry Sanders, who is a Lowndes County supervisor, made the offensive comments during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday.

The board were discussing the possible removal of a Confederate statue on the lawn of the county courthouse in Columbus, that has stood there since 1912.

According to the Associated Press, the monument is of a Confederate soldier, and includes a plaque that says the South fought for a “noble cause.”

During the discussion, Mr Sanders said that removing the statue would be erasing history.

“We need to be reminded of some atrocity that happened,” Mr Sanders told the meeting. “If we are not reminded about it, we are going to have a tendency to forget it and (the history) is going to repeat itself.”

The board voted against taking the statue down, after two black supervisors voted to relocate it, and three white supervisors voted for it to stay.

There has been increased focus on Confederate monuments and symbols in the US, following protests, across the country, in opposition to police brutality against African Americans.

Protests started, following the death of George Floyd, who died after his neck was knelt on by Derek Chauvin, who at the time was a Minneapolis police officer, but has since been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter.

Monuments to Confederate officials have been removed in numerous states in the US in the past couple of weeks, and House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has called for 11 monuments to be removed from the US Capitol.

After the meeting, Mr Sanders, who is a Republican, claimed that other groups of people that have been oppressed, managed to more easily “assimilate” to life in the US, according to the Commercial Dispatch.

He claimed that unlike, Japanese or Polish immigrants, African Americans have struggled in the US, because they became “dependent” during slavery, and have remained that way ever since.

“The only ones that are having the problems: Guess who? The African Americans,” Mr Sanders claimed. “You know why? In my opinion, they were slaves. And because of that, they didn’t have to go out and earn any money, they didn’t have to do anything.

“Whoever owned them took care of them, fed them, clothed them, worked them. They became dependent, and that dependency is still there. The Democrats right here who depend on the black vote to get elected, they make them dependent on them,” the official added.

Democratic congressman Kabir Karriem, who is from Columbus, condemned Mr Sanders’ comments, and told the AP that “It’s really unforgivable how outlandish they were, knowing that he has black people in his district.”

Mr Karriem added: “His revisionist history is not accurate at all. Our ancestors didn’t want to be slaves.”

Lowndes County’s population is 53 per cent white and 45 per cent black, and both white and black residents asked for the statue to be removed, according to the outlet.

Democrat Leroy Brooks, who was one of the two black supervisors to vote for the removal of the monument, said that residents were calling for the monument to be relocated, not destroyed.

“We are not saying tear it down,” Mr Brooks said. “We are saying relocate it, so when people come to the courthouse and they look at it from a certain angle, they don’t see something that looks like a Ku Klux Klan.”