Facebook is great for exposing white bigots floating about. In this week’s hot seat, Francis “Butch” Ghent, a volunteer fire chief in South Carolina, quit his job after receiving backlash for making a blatantly racist Facebook post that he swore up and down was the opposite.
Ghent resigned from his role as chief of the McDonald Green Volunteer Fire Department on May 1. He had been suspended since April 22 after posting on Facebook that cops should stop responding to Black neighborhoods and added, “they will eventually kill each other, and the fake news won’t have a story.”
Defending his post, he said he was no racist and that the post wasn’t racist. Instead, it was intended to target the news media.
OK…that definitely makes sense and does not sound like something a racist person would say. Moving right along.
Ghent also apologized in a statement to the fire department’s membership for the controversy caused by the Facebook post, according to WFAE.
“I realize this has placed the department in a poor light and continues to cause mistrust and controversy in the community we all serve,” the statement said.
Well…at least you KNOW you’re racist now.
South Carolina County leaders, including the Lancaster County Council, issued a statement condemning the post as offensive but could go no further to discipline Ghent. McDonald Green is an all-volunteer department, according to Lancaster County officials. Firefighters there are not county employees, and county officials said they have no authority to enforce discipline.
According to Channel 9, when asked why he made the post, Ghent said, “Sometimes you just do stupid stuff, and I did a stupid thing.”
He continued, “I just want to apologize to the Black community of Lancaster and all the areas that might have read this thing. I didn’t mean it as an attack on them, but I was after the news media more than anything else,” he said.
Oh, ok.
