Posted on 11/13/2009 2:21:41 PM PST by Between the Lines
It seemed like a good idea -- take an elementary school class on a field trip to a historical plantation. But things turned awkward when the tour guide decided to choose black students to demonstrate how slaves were forced to pick cotton.
The incident happened last Wednesday in Charlotte, North Carolina on a visit to the historic Latta Plantation. When the subject turned to slavery, tour guide Ian Campbell, who is black, picked three black students out of the mostly white class to illustrate slaves picking cotton.
"I am very enthusiastic about getting kids to think about how people did things in 1860, 1861 -- even before that period," Campbell told WSOC-TV. "I was trying to be historically correct not politically correct."
But the president of the local chapter of the NAACP said Campbell should have put sensitivity first.
"There is a lingering pain, a lingering bitterness, a lingering insecurity and a lingering sense of inhumanity since slavery," said President Kojo Nantambu. "Because that's still there, you want to be more sensitive than politically correct or historically correct."
Parents are angry, and teachers at the Rea View Elementary said they are planning to write letters of protest to the plantation.
Kojo Nantambu?
Bad news. White people picked cotton too.
My mom and her sibs still were picking cotton into the 40s. I guess this “historically correct” effort needs some fixin.
At least the presentation was historically accurate; a black was having other blacks pick cotton. Whites weren’t the only slave owners.
I wonder if these folks realized that there were free Blacks who owned slaves. Certainly, the proportion was small, but it existed nevertheless.
When I was a kid, I picked cotton on my Uncle’s farm for 3 cents a pound. It was nice to be able to make some real money tho it was hard work. I remember the first trip to the gin, we got paid and I bought a monopoly set. Still have it.
I just remembered when I was only 5, I made 75 cents picking peanuts on a neighbors small patch. That was big money back in 1952.
I suspect it wasn’t the historical metaphor the students objected to.
It was the experience of performing real live (not a video game) work.
I never made my children do it. They did walk beans. Their grandfather made them do it.
My mother and her family were doing the same thing.
My family picked cotton in central Texas for over 100 years. We be white folks.
We lived on a farm when I was growing up. One year my dad’s brother decided for whatever reason to grow some cotton. Guess who picked it? Yep, my younger sister and I. That was enough of that but my mom did that for years. Of course, she was born in 1904 and died in 2007. She did a lot and saw a lot over her long life. Cotton picking it not any fun and was not something I wanted to do all of the time. I saw plenty of white cotton pickers over the years.
How about teaching them about modern day slavery. Take them on a field trip to a welfare office and a subsidized housing project.
(If I took the toughest jobs on the farm my father would let me off early so I could get in several hours of tennis every night - good days! :) )
Rea View? Seriously?
I have never picked cotton but past generations of my and my husbands family did. Picking cotton required bending over and I would rather stand up and reach for corn tassels if I had the option.
In 4592 we will still be grieving over these same issues, if some of our citizens don’t pull their head out of their ass, and lighten up.
This guy was providing an object lesson for everyone. He wasn’t stigmatizing people. That is Black heritage. It’s a important part of who they are today as anything else in their ancestry.
What are black supposed to do, not think about it? Hell, that’s all many of them do.
This is just mind numbing bull s—t of the highest order.
It doesn't matter which is worse. The point is they think they had it worse than anyone else and they didn't. It's time to get past it and move on.
My remembrance of working in a farm setting, was driving the tractor when I was five years old, so the grown-ups could toss the bails of hay on the wagon. I remember picking grapes, blackberries, and corn. I wasn’t all that happy about it either. LOL
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