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As plantations talk more honestly about slavery, some visitors are pushing back
Washington Post ^ | September 8, 2019 | Hannah Knowles

Posted on 09/08/2019 3:22:20 PM PDT by Drew68

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A Monticello tour guide was explaining earlier this summer how enslaved people built, planted and tended a terrace of vegetables at Thomas Jefferson’s estate when a woman interrupted to share her annoyance.

“Why are you talking about that?” she demanded, according to Gary Sandling, vice president of Monticello’s visitor programs and services. “You should be talking about the plants."

At Monticello, George Washington’s Mount Vernon and other plantations across the South, an effort is underway to deal more honestly with the brutal institution that the Founding Fathers relied on to build their homes and their wealth: slavery.

Four hundred years after the first enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia, some sites are also connecting that ugly past to modern-day racism and inequality.

The changes have begun to draw people long alienated by the sites’ whitewashing of the past and to satisfy what staff call a hunger for real history, as plantations add slavery-focused tours, rebuild cabins and reconstruct the lives of the enslaved with help from their descendants. But some visitors, who remain overwhelmingly white, are pushing back, and the very mention of slavery and its impacts on the United States can bring accusations of playing politics.

“We’re at a very polarized, partisan political moment in our country, and not surprisingly, when we are in those moments, history becomes equally polarized,” Sandling said.

The backlash is reflected in some online reviews of plantations, including McLeod in Charleston, S.C., where one visitor complained earlier this summer that she “didn’t come to hear a lecture on how the white people treated slaves.”

The review sparked shock as it made rounds on the Internet. But stories of guests’ discomfort are familiar to many on the front lines at historical sites steeped in slavery...

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: endwhiteshaming; slavery; whiteness
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To: DrPretorius

LOL!

This tired old trope.

The jackass racist dude that bleats on about how he is delivering “difficult truths”.

“virtue signal”

And by all means tell me what virtue am I signalling.


101 posted on 09/08/2019 7:30:23 PM PDT by VanDeKoik ( In heap big peace pipe)
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To: jughandle
Almost like they’re trying to make our entire history and founding about ONE thing...

That is the world view that was promoted by our former president and his handlers, not for the purpose of increasing understanding and uplifting people, but for keeping both groups down so they would not notice the elites' hands on their wallets.

102 posted on 09/08/2019 7:33:41 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --Douglas MacArthur)
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To: CincyRichieRich
I don’t think any of our ancestors did say that they endured what the black slaves did in this country.

The white indentured from Ireland had a terrible time, and the women in particular. But the most egregious abuse of enslaved Irish people, aside from Australian penal colonies, was the sugar slaves of the West Indes, who dropped dead like flies from the climate and sunstroke —Ireland being farther north than much of Canada in terms of sun exposure—but not before being interbred with African slaves to make "a better class of slaves."

Irish Sugar Slaves of Barbados

Shamrock & Sugar The History of the Irish and the African in Caribbean

103 posted on 09/08/2019 7:52:35 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --Douglas MacArthur)
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To: Stanwood_Dave

Cutting and shipping blocks of ice south to store for the summer was a big business before refrigeration. An ice house was a valuable building and Monroe’s plantation would have had a large one. Maybe more than one.


104 posted on 09/08/2019 7:53:09 PM PDT by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: Drew68
This reminds me of our visit to LBJs home near Johnson City, Texas.

The tour guide must have made over one hundred positive statements about LBJ. Since I am a bit of a history buff I knew for a fact that _every_ _single_ _statement_ was a bald-face lie.

For anyone interested in the real story of LBJs life, Roger Stone has written the masterpiece on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Killed-Kennedy-Against/dp/1626363137
105 posted on 09/08/2019 7:58:51 PM PDT by cgbg (Democracy dies in darkness when Bezos bans books.)
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To: Meatspace

“Better known as buying, selling or trading of humans without their consent.”

Always a good idea to generate contempt for the politically incorrect Founding generation.

George Washington was perhaps the largest slave holder of his day. It’s time to quit celebrating his memory, get rid of his statues, rename the cities and State that have his name.


106 posted on 09/08/2019 7:59:19 PM PDT by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: CincyRichieRich
I’m sure my post here is going to make some people mad

Yeah, because no paragraphs!

107 posted on 09/08/2019 8:09:59 PM PDT by Jack Black ("If you believe in things that you don't understand then you suffer" - "Superstition",Stevie Wonder)
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To: Pelham

‘George Washington was perhaps the largest slave holder of his day. It’s time to quit celebrating his memory, get rid of his statues, rename the cities and State that have his name.’

Why would anyone advocate doing those things?


108 posted on 09/08/2019 8:24:59 PM PDT by Meatspace
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To: Drew68

Then they should definitely avoid Yad Vashem.


109 posted on 09/08/2019 9:37:27 PM PDT by Spok
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To: max americana

Huh. Sounds like you’re a snowflake yourself.


110 posted on 09/08/2019 10:26:26 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie
"Slavery might have been immoral but 'brutal'. I think not."

The slaves brought to North America were already enslaved when they were in Africa. They were lucky to escape from Africa, where slave life was far more brutal. In America, many of them lived as well as the whites. Free, comfortable housing. Free food. Guaranteed work. Still, slavery is an evil institution, and we are still paying the price.

111 posted on 09/09/2019 12:24:27 AM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (Trump is solving the worldÂ’s problems only to distract us from Russia.)
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To: CincyRichieRich
"One can be thankful that they are here"

I'll omit your petty insults and extraneous errors while enlightening you a little. One should be thankful for not being a slave today in the equatorial region of Africa (Congo) or anywhere else in the world (communist countries and all).

"however also sorrowful for what their ancestors went through."

It must have been hard for their ancestors to sell them to Portuguese, British, French, Spanish and Dutch merchants.

Atlantic slave trade
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
"The major Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empires. Several had established outposts on the African coast where they purchased slaves from local African leaders.[4]"

"I don’t think any of our ancestors did say that they endured what the black slaves did in this country."

That's beside the point without the proper addition of quantifiers. Many of them endured far worse by self-discipline and perseverance than what many of the slaves endured.

"Saying that this is where the gravy jobs were yes that is true. However riding chained up in the bottom of a slave ship was a little bit different than coming over on another ship. One was by choice and the other was not."

African slavery
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#African_slavery
"Slavery was prevalent in many parts of Africa[16] for many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade."

They can thank white men for the choices that they have now, just as all Americans can. George Washington, by his own choice against the opinions of many others, did more to end the old paradigm of slavery than anyone else. There were early American white men who not only freed their slaves but gave them land for jobs well done. Some slaves were treated better than most of today's employees.

And you all know good and well the color of the hundreds of thousands of the majority of men who lived hard, fought and died to end the foreign paradigm of slavery as it was. It's getting old, seeing the libels against those who gave the most to give this great nation a good beginning.

I know of children who were taught next to nothing in public schools about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, but they were stuffed with myths about Sacagawea and other tangential figures.

112 posted on 09/09/2019 1:20:57 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: CincyRichieRich

One reason that I have little tolerance for the recently increasing socialist feminazi revisionism and hatred against white men, is that I have swung pickaxes and lifted steel with Jamaicans, Hondurans and many others from third world holes along with enduring the hatred that is common in offices and academia. One thing that those men from horrid countries taught, was that people of any color can be tyrants. They also realized that the men who built the United States were, on average, not as likely to be tyrants.

People of every nation are descended from slaves who were treated brutally. It’s time to shed vanities, move on and to stop trying to ruin it. There won’t be any successful and enduring takeover of the United States by foreign entities. George Washington gave the people of the United States and many other nations a chance to live better than the people before him lived. As for black historical figures, it may be healthier to pay more attention to the words of men like Frederick Douglass than those of Susan B. Anthony.


113 posted on 09/09/2019 1:48:27 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: Drew68

Garbage Hussein Obama seeded the National Park Service with those types.


114 posted on 09/09/2019 1:53:59 AM PDT by ClarityGuy
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To: CincyRichieRich

George Washington endorsed the Fairfax Resolves against slavery. Read about that, and read the letter from George Washington to John F. Mercer.

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/t-03705.pdf


115 posted on 09/09/2019 1:57:19 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: familyop

I will shut up now, you have an answer for everything. You know you are right and that is all that matters.


116 posted on 09/09/2019 2:50:10 AM PDT by CincyRichieRich (Vote for President Trump in 2020 or end up equally miserable, no rights, and eating zoo animals)
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To: Spok
Then they should definitely avoid Yad Vashem.

Are we to equate Monticello and Mount Vernon with Auschwitz? If so, we should tear them down now.

117 posted on 09/09/2019 3:53:00 AM PDT by Drew68
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To: VanDeKoik

LOL!

Van De Cuck


118 posted on 09/09/2019 4:15:30 AM PDT by DrPretorius
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To: Spok
"Then they should definitely avoid Yad Vashem."

I doubt that the people there would have anything against George Washington.

From George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 18 August 1790
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135

From George Washington to the Savannah, Ga., Hebrew Congregation, 14 June 1790
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-05-02-0279

119 posted on 09/09/2019 4:19:40 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: CincyRichieRich

Sorry that I wasn’t more tactful.


120 posted on 09/09/2019 4:21:18 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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