[R]ep. Peter Welch is apologizing after finding himself in the midst of a Twitter fiasco for posting a statement that appeared to overlook the history of slavery in the United States.
The Vermont Democrat’s tweet, which included a link to a Tuesday VTDigger story, read: “Never in the history of this country has it been legal to make people work for free but that’s what’s happening to federal employees. This can never happen again.”
Many who commented on the tweet, however, were quick to point out that slavery was legal under the U.S. Constitution until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.
One said, “I feel like this tweet is only 3/5ths correct,” referring to a compromise in the Constitution that set the census value of an enslaved African-American as 60 percent of the value of a free person.
Another respondent said it was “interesting the outrage when white people have to work for free (with back pay) for less than a month but want us to just forget about the hundreds of years of slavery and abuse.”
Never in the history of this country has it been legal to make people work for free but that’s what’s happening to federal employees. This can never happen again.https://t.co/mqTLNh6lhY
— Rep. Peter Welch (@PeterWelch) January 22, 2019
The VTDigger story included with his tweet outlined a bill Welch had unveiled Tuesday morning that would prevent federal employees from being required to work without pay during any current or future government shutdowns.
Two hours after the tweet was published, Welch issued an apology, saying there was “nothing worse in the history of our country than the brutal inhumanity of the horrible, relentless, and savage infliction of involuntary servitude-slavery- on millions of people whose freedom was denied.”
Sincere apologies.
Nothing worse in the history of our country than the brutal inhumanity of the horrible, relentless, and savage infliction of involuntary servitude-slavery- on millions of people whose freedom was denied.
Nothing.
— Rep. Peter Welch (@PeterWelch) January 22, 2019
In an interview Wednesday with VTDigger, Welch said that although he did not sign off on the tweet and does not manage his Twitter account he “owns” the mistake.
“I was expressing my outrage about making government workers work for free,” Welch said, “My outrage got ahead of me because obviously the worse stain on the history of this country is slavery and that was sanctioned by our government. So I overstated that, but there is no comparison to the brutal and unjust treatment of African Americans in this country.”
At the time of this story was being prepared, the original tweet had more than 11,000 “likes” and almost 4,000 comments. The apology had drawn more than 5,000 “likes” and more than 700 comments. The post has not been deleted, and Welch said the decision to keep the tweet on his account was part of his taking responsibility for it.
The national media also took notice of the tweets, with the Washington Post publishing a story Tuesday night about Welch’s social media activity.
Instances of racial insensitivity have been in the news recently in Vermont.
Former Rep. Kiah Morris, D-Bennington, made national news when she decided to resign last year in part because of harassment her family had faced.
Last week Attorney General TJ Donovan announced he would not prosecute individuals accused of harassing the Morris family, citing First Amendment protections.
In November, it was reported that hate crime incidents reached a 23-year high in Vermont and a VPR-Vermont PBS poll found that while 40 percent of respondents said more needs to be done to address racist attitudes in Vermont, 13 percent responded that “too much” was being done to bring attention to racial issues and 16 percent said racism was not a problem at all in Vermont.
