Members of an employees union are demanding an apology from a Georgia legislator after they discovered white supremacist memorabilia on full display in his Washington, D.C., congressional office.
You’re probably thinking, “Here we go again. Some Civil War aficionado who sympathizes with the South’s ‘lost cause’ probably had a Confederate flag in his office. He’ll say it represents his Southern heritage, talk about history...yadda, yadda. I know it’s racist, but we have a white supremacist Russian spy for a president. Are we really doing this right now?”
Nah, bruh. This is worst than the “both sides” bullshit.
According to CNN, a delegation of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents 700,000 federal workers, went to meet Representative Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.) in his Capitol Hill office. The six union members were waiting to discuss TSA workers’ rights when Octavius Miller, one of the union members, noticed a display case with a book inside. Miller decided to take a closer look at the display and noticed it contained a vintage book: General Robert Edward Lee: Soldier, Citizen and Christian Patriot.
The book is a “sort of biography” of the Civil War general who is revered for getting his army’s ass kicked in the War to Save Slavery. The book is filled with Confederate ideology (pronounced “wīt suh-PRIM-uh-see”), biographical sketches, and anecdotes about Lee. But mostly white supremacy.
While it may seem shocking to find this in a congressman’s office, Miller was even more appalled when he read the page that was displayed from the open book:
In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a political and moral evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are strongly for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and, I hope, will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjection may last is known only by a wise and merciful Providence.
The. Book. Was. Inside. A. Glass. Case. Open. On. That. Page.
It must be noted that it disproves the prevailing notion that people from the past didn’t consider slavery to be as evil as we do now. No, they definitely knew slavery was wrong. They just didn’t care because white people were more important. This is the very definition of white supremacy.
And, although there are no pictures, based on his reaction, you can be sure that Octavius Miller is a black man.
“My first reaction was to flip this little case upside down, and I had to think about why I was there, what I do for a living,” Miller said. “But the disrespect and the inattention to everything that people who are colored like myself and the pigmentation of my skin had to deal with ... it enraged me.”
Even without the “pigmentation of my skin” remark, I’m 88.4 percent sure that only a black man would refer to a prized possession displaying racist memorabilia as a “little case.” And CNN probably transcribed it wrong. I bet he called it a “lil’ case.” And like a black man, Miller had to gather himself before he allowed his inner spades player to escape.
When another union member asked a staffer if they had seen the throwback racism manual on display, the staffer said no, but asked them if they’d like to see more cool stuff, like a lock of George Washington’s hair. (The union members didn’t note how they responded, but I’m sure they declined to check out a 200-year-old lock of white people’s hair. Probably smelled like a roll of old nickels.)
Ferguson never showed up at his office, but the Union members demanded an apology for the indecent book. Miller told CNN that the Georgia Republican later called to apologize and say that he had no idea how that racist book got in his office.
It was probably ghosts. Or maybe it was the staffers who already said they hadn’t even looked at the book. Every office has a story about how some low-level aide brought white supremacist office decorations to secretly place in their boss’s office without his knowledge and no one ever knows how it got there. You’d be surprised. It happens all the time.
But don’t dismiss the ghost theory.
“He said he wasn’t aware the book was there. He apologized maybe 15 times on the phone,” Miller said. “It seemed as if they just said what was necessary to try to mitigate the situation.”
In a statement to CNN, the union demanded a public apology from Ferguson.
“It is utterly despicable that Congressman Ferguson would dare display such a racist item so prominently in his office,” AFGE President J. David Cox Sr. said. “I am mortified for Mr. Miller and any other constituent who have had the misfortune of seeing this racist book while just trying to visit their member of Congress here in the nation’s capital.”
And while it is not shocking to know that a white Republican from Florida fantasizes about Robert E. Lee, the result of the story should warm the souls of anyone who believes in the restorative power of white people kidnapping African savages from another continent to save them, civilize them, and send them to white heaven like Jesus would have wanted.
Drew Ferguson removed the book display and placed it in a safe place from which it will never be removed:
His heart.