Jim Carrey has a suggestion where to put Robert E. Lee’s statue: at the bottom of the ocean.
In a new illustration published on Friday in honor of Juneteenth, the comedian and actor depicted the statue of the Confederate soldier that is currently in Charlottesville, Virginia, covered in barnacles and an object of derision for a passing eel and side-eyeing fish.
“Happy Juneteenth everyone! Here’s to finding a more appropriate place for Robert E. Lee. ;^P,” Carrey tweeted alongside his drawing.
Lee was one of the most well-known commanders who fought for the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. He owned slaves and subjected them to physical punishment; he also argued that slavery was good for Black people and, through his army, kidnapped free Black people and brought them back to the South to be enslaved again. Despite this, Lee has remained a cultural icon in the South and still has numerous monuments to him around the country.
Amid the ongoing protests against police violence and racism in America, numerous monuments to Confederate soldiers have been taken down, including in Virginia, Kentucky, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.
Earlier this month, Taylor Swift also condemned monuments to “racist historical figures” and urged her home state of Tennessee not to replace a statue of Edward Carmack, whom she described as a “white supremacist newspaper editor who published pro-lynching editorials and incited the arson of the office of Ida B. Wells,” which had been taken down by protesters.
“Taking down statues isn’t going to fix centuries of systemic oppression, violence and hatred that black people have had to endure but it might bring us one small step closer to making ALL Tennesseans and visitors to our state feel safe — not just the white ones,” she wrote on Twitter.
Happy Juneteenth everyone! Here’s to finding a more appropriate place for Robert E. Lee. ;^P pic.twitter.com/RnSMwhOcrb
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) June 20, 2020