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.
Our black brothers and sisters did have it bad but so did a lot of others the world over. My father in law planted a small corn patch and we would pick it for him. The chiggers I got out of that corn patch were horrible, I had scars. LOL!
Little brother started a business in high school chopping cotton. Did pretty good too.
I guess it didn't hurt me.
Who you callin' a chigga?
(lol)
Good thing the tour guide was black!
WE picked cotton in the late 60s’.Yes,we’re white.
There is a cotton field next to my shooting lease. The lady I was with is educated, upper middle class and one of the smartest people I know. She asked if I had ever picked cotton before. I reminded her that I had grown up in Chicago and had never stepped into a cotton field before. The next thing I know, she’s crossing into the farmer’s muddy field and teaching me all about how she and her family picked cotton.
After the lesson, I reminder her that this city boy lived on a large enough piece of property that us poor people raised rabbits, chickens and our own vegetables.
And he does his best to keep the pain, bitterness and insecurity from fading away. Been 144 years since the end of the Civil War and slavery and race will probably be a problem in 2153 or 288 years after the War Between the States if the USA is still here.
My mother, father and most of my uncles, cousins and other relatives picked cotton back in the day in Arkansas. Blacks aren’t the only ones who ever picked cotton. Cotton didn’t die out after slavery ended and even before that many whites picked cotton.
Wonder if they have any mirrors.
I don’t know...your fingers and hands could get mighty sore from being stuck and cut by the dried bristles on the cotton plants; and, I don’t know if it would be harder to reach overhead all day, or stay stooped over dragging a cotton sack. Two of a whatness, as it was said, I’d think! : )
I'm astonished at the idiocy of some people.
Did they first get permission from the Cotton Pickers Union .
Slavery is an awful institution.
Some people have been dealt very bad hands in this cruel old world. In Juvenal’s Satires, he tells that a Roman master was considered very kind if he didn’t emasculate his very young slave boys to better serves as sex toys.
Slavery is an awful institution.
And we wonder why they still have a slave mentality. It’s taught to them by their own race.
” its really getting boring that these “upper middle class” blacks bitch and moan how bad they have it, sorry how bad they had it.”
I know I’m going to offend, but it seems to me the majority of our social problems can be traced to upper middle class idiots having way too much time on their hands.
Where I live, Oprah starts at four pm and ends at five. If women worked 9-5 jobs, they would come home as Oprah ends. Not a bad thing.
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