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 ...
“But some visitors, who remain overwhelmingly white”
...not that there’s anything wrong with that...
The first slaves in the Americas were NOT black folk.
Look up “Indentured Servitude”. Additionally, look up the person that owned the first black slave in North America, you’ll be quite surprised...
Social Justice Warriors running historical sites - bump for later....
I really did not see anything of this when I went to see both Mount Vernon and Monticello. At Monticello, you could do a tour that gives more of an in depth discussion about slavery, but I elected to do the garden tour (conducted by a lovely and knowledgeable lady, this one was basically all adults and the other one was filled with noisy schoolkids).
At James Madison’s Montpelier, there was mention and discussion of slavery at the place during Madison’s day, but it was also done in the appropriate manner and context.
Went to a park, got a guilt trip, didn’t come back. Get woke, go broke.
“she “didn’t come to hear a lecture on how the white people treated slaves.”
****
Exactly. God knows how many times I told leftards to STFU about their politics and stick to their actual job. The most recent one was this stupid Uber driver 3 weeks ago whose sole goal is STFU and drive me to a nearby studio and not talk about Trump for one effing second. Complained to Uber and gave this asshole 1 star, plus UBER refunded me the ride because it made me “uncomfortable”.
These places should respect you enough not to lecture you about something you had absolutely no power over.
Nobody needs that drum beat today......these are just people who can’t let go of the past.
My last tour of Monticello about a year ago was led by an excellent historian who happened to be black.
He taught us the history of Monticello and spoke little of the slaves. He did mention a couple specific slaves who help positions of high authority.
They dont need a moral lecture.
But you go on a history tour, are these people expecting them to not mention it at all at some point?
Okay.
Don’t say, “White people.”
Say instead, “Democrats.”
Should have asked the slavery-flogging guide “What do you have to say about the slave markets active in Africa TODAY?”
People are attempting to erase our history.
“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.
No we aren’t, you ignorant moron. That was settled in 1865.
That’s good. The important thing was not that Jefferson or anybody else owned slaves...and at that time even free blacks in some English speaking areas and in Spanish Florida owned slaves themselves...but what is important is everything else he did, thought and wrote, which has benefitted all Americans of any color.
But I guess that doesn’t matter anymore. Once the left puts you on their “racist” list, it’s all over.
Jefferson was a brilliant man, and even if you don’t agree with him on some things, he was crucial to the US. And that’s what people want to hear about.
Newsflash: Sometimes history isn't pleasant.
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