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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: Verginius Rufus

“They can talk about slavery until the cows come home and it won’t do much to increase the number of black visitors.”

I’ve been to national and state parks, historical monuments and forts, and all sorts of museums of art and history all over this coumtry and it is a rare moment indeed to ever encounter black people except as staff and employees. Why is this the case? One could conclude that blacks just don’t seem to have any natural curiosity or intellectual interest in anything like most normal people. But that would be rayciss...


41 posted on 09/08/2019 4:22:39 PM PDT by DrPretorius
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To: Drew68; rightwingcrazy; Don W; indthkr; OttawaFreeper; Billthedrill; Redleg Duke; max americana; ...
So, IF the key to great wealth is uneducated, unskilled black laborers then we can assume The South Side of Chicago and black sections of Detroit are the wealthiest most advanced areas of our Country.

(Followed closely by Newark and Cumming's district in Baltimore...) Right?

42 posted on 09/08/2019 4:22:59 PM PDT by GOPJ (CNN's Lawrence O'Donnell rapes 5 year old boys and his Mom's a whore. IF true a bombshell story.)
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To: Don W

and the first slave owner was black.


43 posted on 09/08/2019 4:26:50 PM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: CincyRichieRich

Another annoying thing about white liberals is probably 99% of them I’ve never read Frederick Douglass is July 4th speech that he gave in Rochester New York. That is worthy of everybody reading. Douglas was an extreme constitutionalist and implored America to follow its Constitution. It also provides a very good perspective to we white people about what would make black people proud of this country versus not. For example I seriously doubt the Obamas had ever read Frederick douglass’s speech because some of the crap that came out of their mouth and when they refuse to look at the flag would never happen. People like Frederick Douglass Booker T Washington and other well-known blacks understood the pain misery and suffering that their forefathers went through so that they can stake a claim in this country. One thing that I don’t think a lot of blacks understand is that you can love this country and by loving this country you can honor the pain and suffering that your ancestors went through so you can have what you have in this country. Hating it is not going to accomplish that you can’t have both at the same time.


44 posted on 09/08/2019 4:49:53 PM 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: Drew68

My favorite plantation has always been Stagville in NC. The focus was always balanced between owners and slaves until the last few years when a shift occurred and less attention is paid to the white owners.

Case in point, at Christmas the theme has always been Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters, but last year there was little in the big house in terms of decorations and no music, while all the attention was on the quarters. Disappointing, as we had always enjoyed both stories.


45 posted on 09/08/2019 4:51:40 PM PDT by kalee
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To: Drew68

Renegade hens, clucking rebellion, sometimes tend to wander into the pastures of the mythical histories of our domestic enemies. George Washington was not mean to his slaves relative to African slave owners and others. He was far nicer to them.

They should be glad that their ancestors brought them here. Crossing the Atlantic back then was the way to the gravy jobs. Quichyerbichin, or we’ll “buyback” the 19th Amendment after this failed experiment runs its course.


46 posted on 09/08/2019 4:55:50 PM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: familyop

They should be glad that their ancestors brought them here. Crossing the Atlantic back then was the way to the gravy jobs. Quichyerbichin, or we’ll “buyback” the 19th Amendment after this failed experiment runs its course.
...
I would hope you are saying that in jest. I don’t really comprehend how you could say it otherwise unless you really don’t understand history. One can be thankful that they are here however also sorrowful for what their ancestors went through. I don’t think any of our ancestors did say that they endured what the black slaves did in this country. That said it’s not really my job to convince people it is left up to them to do accurate reading. White liberals piss me off just like black liberals do. The truth does not need to be defended truth just is. 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. I’m really fairly dumbstruck that I actually feel compelled to respond to this post.


47 posted on 09/08/2019 5:00:29 PM 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: DoodleDawg

Newsflash:

How long is it to be shoved down our throats in every aspect of American life till the aggrieved are sated

This crap has been going on since the mid 70s and has only gotten worse and the poor negro only angrier and less functional as a group at least family structure wise where what 80% of black babies are without active dads and homicide between blacks at all time highs and spilling over into the general population and all major black run cities cesspools of political and juridical corruption

Don’t you think a new approach is in order rather than lecturing white tourists to colonial historical sites?

How much guiltier must whites get for you to be contented?

And what about the destruction blacks have wrought..

It’s a helluva lot....city after city uninhabitable

A corrosive impact on popular culture today that’s just hideous and disgusting to be frank

When do blacks get a talking to publicly about how far they’ve fallen?

So far not a damn peep..let’s just harp on slavery from 160 years ago and ignore the 1200 pound turd in our cultural punch bowl

Maybe Dave Chapelle ....that’s about it


48 posted on 09/08/2019 5:02:59 PM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: DoodleDawg

In a similar vein

Same junk

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3777369/posts


49 posted on 09/08/2019 5:03:49 PM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: Demanwideplan

He was really ahead of his time, when you think about it.

He somehow managed to do it at least 127 years before there were any US white men.


50 posted on 09/08/2019 5:06:12 PM PDT by ExGeeEye (For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.)
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To: familyop

I am tired of hearing about slavery on tours of historical sites, most recently, Grants Farm near St Louis. It is a turn off, as would be pushing a religious view point on the tourists.


51 posted on 09/08/2019 5:07:06 PM PDT by Stevenfo
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To: livius

There were thousands of blacks who owned slaves. There were more than 3,000 black slave owners in New Orleans alone and thousands more black slave owners. Some were slave breeders. They sold their own children into slavery.

In Massachusetts - YES - they were slavers - there was a slave market right there by Fanueil Hall. Oh, you didn’t hear about that in your tour of Boston?

If you owned a slave in Massachusetts, you could not set that slave free unless you posted a bond of $500 !! to ensure the slave wouldn’t become a ward of the state. That meant you had to continue to provide room and board for a slave if you couldn’t afford the bond.

Life was different then.


52 posted on 09/08/2019 5:11:45 PM PDT by ladyjane
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To: Drew68

Video shows violent family fight at Disneyland as stunned parkgoers try to intervene
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3762585/posts

Nightmare in Toontown: Family fight in Disneyland ends in horror
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3763501/posts


53 posted on 09/08/2019 5:11:59 PM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: Intolerant in NJ

True, but over Jefferson’s life time he owned over 600 slaves. He freed 10 of them. Five while alive and five in his will after his death. An aside. eight of the freed slaves were blood related to Sally Hemming. Without those slaves, could Jefferson have been Jefferson.


54 posted on 09/08/2019 5:13:04 PM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: caww

I think it’s more than that. The whole push by the Left is to talk, talk, talk about racism, islamophobia, homophobia, etc. It’s a form of mobbing in my opinion. At a time of least racism in American society, why should the Left be pushing this “narrative”? It’s their way of getting in peoples faces and pushing their agenda.


55 posted on 09/08/2019 5:15:48 PM PDT by Amberdawn (Want To Honor Our Troops? Then Be A Citizen Worth Fighting For.)
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To: CincyRichieRich

Thanks for sharing your interesting experiences. I didn’t read anything I found offensive.


56 posted on 09/08/2019 5:18:47 PM PDT by MacNaughton
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To: CincyRichieRich; Pelham

Have you been to Africa

I have quite a bit

War and horrors and poverty beyond your imagination and especially in west Africa where nearly all North American slaves came from

So they are indeed lucky their ancestors was brought over in bondage because they are now here

I have yet to see one return since it’s so bad here

This historical emphasis on white misdeeds is political power being forced on folks nothing more

If blacks are offended then don’t go on the tour

I watched Southern Charm New Orleans last season and this second one

The cast is 90% New Orleans black which means somewhat mixed some more than others

Justin is a tort lawyer and very funny

His daddy is a famous judge and lawyer and his mom too I think

Light skinned New Orleans aristocrats

On the show they did a weekend tour B and B at an old plantation up river on the West Bank I think

Anyhow it was eerie and oaks and moss and moonlight and ghosts

One house slave girl had in a fit poisoned the plantation owners children

The other slaves helped catch her and lynched her in a fit of anger given these were known as decent slave owning family

Her ghost is of course said to roam the property now

Well justin is deathly afraid of ghosts even more than snakes...
Per his own admission

South Louisiana has plenty of both

He flees from the seance and while sitting totally spooked in his room he muses about why he a descendent of slaves is vacationing at a plantation house with slave cabins and lynchings And ghosts
He does it in a comical way

The gorgeous slinky mulatto lady quickly points out for him to go look in the mirror and careful for any ghosts might jump out but you should notice you are as much a part of the slave masters blood as you are the slave

It’s a classic moment and he’s like dayum you’re right....but I still hate ghosts...lol


57 posted on 09/08/2019 5:19:06 PM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: max americana

“plus UBER refunded me the ride because it made me “uncomfortable”.”

How uncomfortable did it make you?


58 posted on 09/08/2019 5:19:10 PM PDT by one4perl
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To: livius

- it could not have been built without Jefferson...”
or the 600 some odd slave he owned in his lifetime.


59 posted on 09/08/2019 5:25:38 PM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: Drew68

This mean it will take how long, more or less, to speak honestly about the democrats’ public housing projects?


60 posted on 09/08/2019 5:26:05 PM PDT by reasonisfaith (What are the implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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