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 ...
Yeah, ok.
Great reply. I’m sure they threw a parade for you at 4Chan for using 2016’s sick burn.
Good for you.
I can’t argue with that.
Sorry to burst your "white people always cruel" narrative, but I was referring to the special privileges available to the highly skilled enslaved persons, and not to the institution as a whole. These skilled workers were very valuable and most such workers recognized, given the times, that they were unlikely to live as well trying to make it outside the plantation as they were inside. They had leverage to be treated civilly due to their skills. As well, they were resented by the field workers, and to this day, the term "house n-word" is a perjorative by the lower class against the higher class within their descendents' present communities.
When I free-lanced for a large corporation, I, too, was "loaned" to another organization because of my skill set on several occasions as a favor between the two companies. It was an honor, even though there was comparatively little extra money or job security for me, even though the companies profited significantly because of my contributions. I had enough leverage to be treated well, but not to force a much greater payout, in no small part because I am a woman and was in a field where women didn't ordinarily work. Yet to refuse the extra stress involved in traveling to the other company would have jeopardized my ongoing relationship with the primary firm.
They call it "work" for a reason; it is often a shark tank even if you are a free person.
Life is hard. Everyone has to make the best of it in the circumstances in which they find themselves.
My take on it is this, the entire existence of black people in the US is a paradox. A paradox is defined as a seemingly absurd and/or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.
It is true that the US’s greatest original sin was slavery. The suffering and yearning for freedom that my slave ancestors endured was immeasurable. Despite this, I would not be alive were it not for the “Peculiar Institution’s” existence. I am grateful to be a natural born citizen of the US, with it’s attendant liberties, opportunities, and privliges. I have had three genetic tests done on myself. They are all in substantial agreement with each other, and they show that my geneology has a significant Caucosoid admixture from Western Euirope and Spain. I suspect that much of the origin of it stems from slavers and others involved in the slave trade. Whether I like it ot not, every single one of those people were required to be extant in my gene pool to enable my life, physiognomy, and existence.
I make no apology for people that I cannot apologize for. I simply acknowledge the reality of my being intertwined with them at a genetic level. I am grateful to be alive and to live in the US. I have had an extraordinary life, and for the most part, despite some brutal brushes with violent racists, have enjoyed it immensely. I am grateful to have served this country as a combat veteran in three wars. I believe that this imperfect nation is the greatest one in all of human history.
By all means, let’s have an accurate historical recounting of the sins of US slavery. This is essential to a proper and contextual understanding of history. Notwithstanding that, I will not expropriate the suffering and travails of my black slave ancestors in a misguided attempt to enable my assumption of the badge of present day victim, and to hector and bully my fellow citizens with it.
I can not imagine many things more unseemly and inapproriate.
My take on it is this, the entire existence of black people in the US is a paradox. A paradox is defined as a seemingly absurd and/or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.
It is true that the US’s greatest original sin was slavery. The suffering and yearning for freedom that my slave ancestors endured was immeasurable. Despite this, I would not be alive were it not for the “Peculiar Institution’s” existence. I am grateful to be a natural born citizen of the US, with it’s attendant liberties, opportunities, and privliges. I have had three genetic tests done on myself. They are all in substantial agreement with each other, and they show that my geneology has a significant Caucosoid admixture from Western Euirope and Spain. I suspect that much of the origin of it stems from slavers and others involved in the slave trade. Whether I like it ot not, every single one of those people were required to be extant in my gene pool to enable my life, physiognomy, and existence.
I make no apology for people that I cannot apologize for. I simply acknowledge the reality of my being intertwined with them at a genetic level. I am grateful to be alive and to live in the US. I have had an extraordinary life, and for the most part, despite some brutal brushes with violent racists, have enjoyed it immensely. I am grateful to have served this country as a combat veteran in three wars. I believe that this imperfect nation is the greatest one in all of human history.
By all means, let’s have an accurate historical recounting of the sins of US slavery. This is essential to a proper and contextual understanding of history. Notwithstanding that, I will not expropriate the suffering and travails of my black slave ancestors in a misguided attempt to enable my assumption of the badge of present day victim, and to hector and bully my fellow citizens with it.
I can not imagine many things more unseemly and inapproriate.
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DMZFrank...wow...Thank you. If you are ever in Cincinnati, contact me private reply...we’ll have a beer...we have a few to choose from in this town.
The WaPo is on the front line of white washing America’s history. May be the WaPo owners descendents, owned slaves and they are trying to protect themselves by condemning others. Those sneaky leftist.
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That is a fantastic point!
Even though you are allergic to paragraphs, I read your whole post and agree. Your family gives you a different perspective. As does mine. Slavery is abhorrent. Treating people like expensive farm animals is so ghastly and so morally wrong. Yet it’s better than when his government attempted to murder my dad at age 7. When your family barely escaped Hitler’s holocaust, slavery seems like just one of many unspeakable things that can befall a group of people on this earth.
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Thank you for your kind words...sometimes I am lazy and voicetext...
Your voice text is super accurate. Thus it can’t be Siri!
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