Taylor Swift said the removal of statues in Tennessee won’t fix “centuries of systemic oppression,” but it might “bring us one step closer.”
“As a Tennessean, it makes me sick that there are monuments standing in our state that celebrate racist historical figures who did evil things,” the 30-year-old pop singer explained in an Instagram post on Friday. (RELATED: Minneapolis 3rd Police Precinct On Fire After Officers Evacuate Building Amid George Floyd Riots)
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“Edward Carmack and Nathan Bedford Forrest were DESPICABLE figures in our state history and should be treated as such,” she added. “Edward Carmack’s statue was sitting in the state capitol until it was torn down last week in the protests. The state of Tennessee has vowed to replace it.” (RELATED: Video Surfaces Of Police Officer With Knee On Man’s Throat, Man Later Died)
Swift continued, noting that Carmack was a “white supremacist newspaper editor who published pro-lynching editorials and incited arson of the office of Ida B. Wells.” Wells, Swift said, is the one who deserves a statue for her “pioneering” journalism.
The “Shake It Off” hitmaker then described Forrest as a “brutal slave trader and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,” who massacred “dozens of black soldiers” in Memphis during the Civil War.
“Taking down statues isn’t going to fix centuries of systemic oppression, violence and hatred that black people have had to endure but it might bring us one step closer to making ALL Tennesseans and visitors in our state feel safe-not just the white ones,” she added.
The “Me!” hitmaker concluded her post by stating that there was a need to change the “status of people who perpetuated hideous patterns of racism from ‘heroes’ to ‘villains.'” Because “villains don’t deserve statues.”