When a person must be reminded that the United States enslaved and terrorized millions of black people for hundreds of years, that person has probably said something ignorant. Offensive, even. When that person is chairman of the Prince William County board of supervisors and wants to be governor of Virginia, that ignorance is a bit more ... notable.
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart, a Republican, sent a tweet on Monday that most would consider, at the very least, ill-advised.
The tweet came right around the time of the New Orleans city council-approved removal of a monument that honored a 5,000-person-strong white militia for attacking the city's integrated police in 1874. The city also has plans to take down statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard.
"We will no longer allow the Confederacy to literally be put on a pedestal in the heart of our city," said New Orleans Mayor Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
Here's that tweet:
Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don't matter.
— Corey Stewart (@CoreyStewartVA) April 25, 2017
No, we don't know what "yankee" he's referring to and yes we've tried to contact the campaign to find out.
Stewart — who, by the way, is from the so-far-north-it's-nearly-Canada state of Minnesota — has a thing for the Confederacy. He recently attended a Confederate-themed ball and ... we'll just let Twitter take it from here, since lots of folks had ideas about what's worse than removing monuments to the Confederacy.
1. Slavery
2. Lynchings
3. Black women raped + their rapists set free
4. Jim Crow
5. Workplace discrimination
6. Housing discrimination https://t.co/aTgOxwXEqd— Yashar (@yashar) April 25, 2017
hi i'm a southerner, born and raised.
every monument to the confederacy should be melted down into butt plugs so some good comes of them https://t.co/lavhRDizSi— Asinus Pervicax (@Cato_of_Utica) April 25, 2017
The handwaving desperation for attention here, from a guy born in MINNESOTA, is amusing if nothing else. "PLEASE WRITE ABOUT ME, SALON!!" https://t.co/MhPcKvv4WP
— Jeff B/DDHQ (@EsotericCD) April 25, 2017
There are 250 days left in the godforsaken year we call 2017, by the way. But who's counting?