Southern Plantations Should be Slave Memorials—Not Storybook Theme Parks...

C

Cypress

Well-known member
Southern Plantations Should be Slave Memorials—Not Storybook Theme Parks, or Trump Businesses

Southern plantations teach a version of history that leaves out the very white supremacy that created them.

The Trump brothers, Eric and Donald Jr., have embarked on a new business venture to open luxury hotels in Mississippi as part of an effort to cash in on the state's blues music culture. These hotels will be far removed from commercial airports or interstate highways and will be in a majority black, economically depressed area "surrounded by cotton and soybean fields,"*according to*the Washington Post. To complete this outrageous picture, the hotels will*reportedly*be designed to resemble an "antebellum plantation."

Let's put aside the hubris and audacity of the Trump family to attempt to do business in a majority black area, especially post-Charlottesville. Instead let’s consider this key question: why are plantations still being conceptualized by white America as anything other than centers of black enslavement, torture, rape, murder, and intergenerational trauma? One answer: white supremacy.

Picture Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana. Its*website advertises it as a “tranquil retreat in the heart of Plantation Country,” offering guests the option to stay in cottages offering "all the creative comforts of your own home.” Many Southern plantations, including Oak Alley, also offer wedding packages for those interested in spending the happiest day of their lives drinking champagne over the graves of families forced into bondage to construct the lavish grounds.

In a promotional video titled “Plantation Parade”—a reference to the route tourists can take to visit*four adjacent plantations, including Oak Alley—the narrator begins with a tone of reverence:

“Once upon a time, on the banks of the Mississippi River, a storybook world unfolded. A world of romance and riches, of beauty and struggle. Through toil and dedication arose vast working farms and extravagant mansions that would become the most opulent plantations in North America.”

The video goes on to explore the architectural “majesty” of the four plantations, with a few vaguely negative adjectives like “tragedy” and one reference to “those who were enslaved here” thrown in.

It is appalling that in 2017, the mass human rights violations that created the Black underclass continue to be hidden away under the guise of ornate architecture and visions of fanciful white Southern belles in exquisite gossamer gowns drinking sweet tea in the parlor. But it’s also not surprising in a country where the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is at all controversial, where black people continue to be murdered by police with impunity, and where the KKK and neo-Nazis proudly march in the streets to terrorize communities under a president who declares there are some “good people” among them.

There has been much talk of refusing to continue glamorizing and celebrating the Confederacy with Confederate flags, statues and monuments, many of which were erected*post-Civil War in times of high racial tension to buttress white people's wounded egos. This same dialogue needs to reach the most intimate remaining corners of the Confederacy: the very homes that white enslavers lived in. These are the properties where white people meted out forced labor, torture,*sexual violence, and the ripping apart of black families daily.

America was literally built on the backs of enslaved Africans, indigenous tribes forced into death marches, the backbreaking labor of Chinese men who built the railroads, and the colonized people of*Hawai'i,Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. White Americans continue to ignore this history, and one of the ways we deny it is through perpetuating an idea of plantations taken from Gone With The Wind rather than the actual historical record.

full article https://www.alternet.org/southern-plantations-memorials
Click to expand...

Thread ban applies to unrepentant racists, socially-inept half wits who routinely call other posters "n*ggers" and/or "cunts", and fop doodles who otherwise comport themselves as resentful bigoted losers.
 
It is common for Old Plantation houses to be kept in repair by not only selling vacation packages but also interpreting the history of the time. Those Plantation houses that are open to the public usually have some number of slave quarters and do some amount of interpretation about slavery.
 
katzgar said:
It is common for Old Plantation houses to be kept in repair by not only selling vacation packages but also interpreting the history of the time. Those Plantation houses that are open to the public usually have some number of slave quarters and do some amount of interpretation about slavery.
Click to expand...

The point this highlights for me is that this country has never come to terms with its history of slavery. I don't think showing some slave quarters with some modest (and probably white washed) historical interpretation about the slaves lives on a plantation really suffices.

Even Germany has made large strides to come to terms with the holocaust. Being absolutely truthful and brutally honest about what happened, and establishing public memorials to the holocaust victims. I don't think anyone is thinking about making boutique hotels at Aushwitz.

America's original sin is slavery. An institution that enslaved, brutalized, and raped millions of human beings over four centuries. And as far as I know, this country does not have one single public museum or memorial dedicated in an honest way to the institution of slavery. I mean, we have more statutes and memorials to treasonous confederate generals, than we do for the victims of slavery.
 
Cypress said:
The point this highlights for me is that this country has never come to terms with its history of slavery. I don't think showing some slave quarters with some modest (and probably white washed) historical interpretation about the slaves lives on a plantation really suffices.

Even Germany has made large strides to come to terms with the holocaust. Being absolutely truthful and brutally honest about what happened, and establishing public memorials to the holocaust victims. I don't think anyone is thinking about making boutique hotels at Aushwitz.

America's original sin is slavery. An institution that enslaved, brutalized, and raped millions of human beings over four centuries. And as far as I know, this country does not have one single public museum or memorial dedicated in an honest way to the institution of slavery. I mean, we have more statutes and memorials to treasonous confederate generals, than we do for the victims of slavery.
Click to expand...


I know very few Plantation houses that are boutique hotels. Suggest you review the national African American Museum in Washington DC. The LSU history Museum in Baton Rouge has a great deal of information about slavery. I suggest you look at Whitney Plantation for slavery interpretation. There is much more of it around then you seem to think. You might go to the National Park Service and also look at the national civil rights Trail.
 
katzgar said:
I know very few Plantation houses that are boutique hotels. Suggest you review the national African American Museum in Washington DC. The LSU history Museum in Baton Rouge has a great deal of information about slavery. I suggest you look at Whitney Plantation for slavery interpretation. There is much more of it around then you seem to think. You might go to the National Park Service and also look at the national civil rights Trail.
Click to expand...

The article is about the Trumps turning plantations into story book resorts, perhaps you skipped reading the article.

That's exactly why I said Public museums devoted to slavery. aka, government-funded, government-recognized, public museums and memorials. I was not talking about smallish, private collections. As a nation, we have an obligation to publically acknowledge the truth about the institution of slavery. That means a public role. There are obviously well meaning people that run private collections. How many state governments in the south have established memorials and museums to slavery??

You seem to imply and think this nation has done a perfectly adequate job acknowledging the truth about our history with the institution of slavery.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. And I am surprised you would try to imply it.

The U.S. has 35,000 museums. Why is only one about slavery?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...nly-one-about-slavery/?utm_term=.d51f9ed6e566
Click to expand...

How many museums are devoted to slavery?
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2...-really-americas-first-slavery-museum/431448/
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
America's original sin was conquering/stealing land from the Native Americans. When will you return yours, Racist?
 
how about letting them decide what happens to the land they do have ?

like no tar sands oil pipes if they dont want them
 
The Socialist Democrats want to erase their very own sordid history of slavery and racism against Blacks. No surprise :palm:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top