#Mississippi official under fire for comments about slavery

A Mississippi county supervisor is facing calls to resign after he said slavery has made African Americans more “dependent.”

Harry Sanders, a Lowndes County supervisor, made the racist remarks to local newspaper the Commercial Dispatch after voting against relocating a Confederate monument on Monday.

Sanders said African Americans have had a more difficult time “assimilating” after slavery ended than other groups who have been oppressed.

“The only ones that are having the problems: Guess who? The African Americans,” Sanders said. “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,” he said.

“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,” he said.

His comments came after the county voted along racial lines against moving a the monument that has stood outside the county courthouse in Columbus since 1912.

“We haven’t had slavery in the United States for 150 years,” Sanders told the newspaper. “Why is it still an issue?”

Democratic State Rep. Kabir Karriem of Columbus, who is black, slammed Sanders’ remarks as “appalling” and urged him to resign.

“It’s really unforgivable how outlandish they were, knowing that he has black people in his district,” Karriem said. “His revisionist history is not accurate at all. Our ancestors didn’t want to be slaves.”

But Sanders on Tuesday doubled down.,

“I’m not going to stand and run from it; hell, it’s what I think,” he said, according to the Clarion Ledger.

Asked whether he understood why his comments sounded racist, he said: “I certainly do but, look, you can’t change history. Am I not supposed to talk about what happened 150 years ago?” the paper reported.

“It comes off (as racist) because of the way they put it in the newspaper. That’s not the way I said, it but that’s OK.”

With Post wires