Republican Complains Black People Don't Thank White People for Civil War

A Republican caller from Texas used his time on C-SPAN's Juneteenth program to suggest that Black Americans should thank white people for the end of slavery.

"I haven't heard any Black person say thank you to the over 300,000 white men who died to free those Black slaves," a man who called himself Dave said during Monday's call-in program.

More than 592,000 people died in the American Civil War, including 334,680 Union soldiers, who fought for the abolition of slavery, according to the National Park Service. The Union Army included over 2.4 million white soldiers and more than 178,000 African American soldiers.

Dave said he had "not heard one white Democrat apologize for slavery" and that his ancestors, who were from Scotland and Ireland, "never owned slaves."

June 19 marks Juneteenth, a day commemorating when news of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans reached the deepest parts of the former Confederacy in Galveston, Texas.

While long-celebrated by Black Americans as the nation's "second Independence Day," Juneteenth was not declared a federal holiday until President Joe Biden signed legislation into law in 2021 following renewed interest after the George Floyd protests the prior summer.

After Dave made his comments, the C-SPAN host moved on, going back to a question from a previous caller about the feud between former President Barack Obama and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.

Viewers online criticized Dave's statements, commenting on a YouTube video of the program, "Either he is drunk or unemployed for being drunk as hell" and "I'm astonished by this caller and his utter cluelessness."

On Twitter, one user wrote of Dave, "Texas was part of the slavery supporting Confederacy! Just shows how stupidly ignorant some #Republicans are."

The C-SPAN caller was not the only one to stir up debate over Juneteenth. Earlier on Monday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley faced scrutiny for tweeting, "Today is a good day to remember: Christianity is the faith and America is the place slavery came to die."

Many were quick to point out that the United States was decades behind other countries when it comes to abolishing slavery, and that Christian slaveholders used passages in the Bible to justify slavery.

"Christianity was used to keep slaves in line, you dumb yutz," one Twitter user responded to Hawley. "You make them believe that if you suffer on earth, you'll be rewarded in heaven for eternity, and you're gonna get a lot of adherents among the suffering."

"White-washing the history of Christianity and its relationship with chattel slavery in the Americas, and I mean white-washing quite literally, does no one any favors," another person wrote. "Slavers enslaved *because* of their Christian faith, drawing on the Bible for support."

On Monday, Tennessee state Representative Justin Jones, a Democrat, called out Tennessee House Republicans for tweeting "May no one suffer from slavery ever again #Juneteenth," two months after GOP legislators voted to oust him and another Black lawmaker from the state legislature while saving a white legislator from expulsion after the three protested the state gun laws on the House floor.

Tweeting a photo of an NBC headline that read "Tennessee GOP expels 2 Black Democratic lawmakers for anti-gun violence protests. A white legislator survived her vote," Jones asked his Republican colleagues, "Interesting, wasn't this y'all two months ago @tnhousegop??"