Singer Taylor Swift has no time for statues dedicated to commemorating dead racists in her home state of Tennessee.
The pop star on Friday joined the surging nationwide backlash against monuments honoring racist historical figures with a withering thread on Twitter, in which she declared “it makes me sick” that the statues are still standing and advocated for the state to stop preserving such tributes.
Swift described newspaperman and politician Edward Carmack, whose newspapers published racist rhetoric, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan — who both have statues in their honor — as “DESPICABLE figures in our state history” who “should be treated as such.”
The “Shake It Off” singer said plans to repair and replace the statue of Carmack, which was toppled in anti-racist protests last week, were “a waste of state funds and a waste of an opportunity to do the right thing.”
Swift, who remained relatively silent during the 2016 election but has since become increasingly political in the last two years, acknowledged that “taking down statues isn’t going to fix centuries of systemic oppression, violence and hatred that black people have had to endure.”
