Current Events > Plantation tourists don't like hearing about the enslaved people

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/08/plantations-are-talking-more-about-slavery-grappling-with-visitors-who-talk-back/?noredirect=on

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

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

At Monticello, George Washingtons 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.

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 didnt come to hear a lecture on how the white people treated slaves.
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Visitor reviews of Monticello on travel site TripAdvisor are overwhelmingly positive. But the negative comments are increasingly likely to blast the amount of time devoted to slavery, decrying political correctness and the bashing of a giant of American history. Two years ago, only a couple of the poor reviews mentioned slavery. This year, almost all of them do.

For someone like myself, going to Monticello is like an Elvis fan going to Graceland, one review from July reads. Then to have the tour guide essentially make constant reference to what a bad person he really was just ruined it for me.
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Some people may see an agenda in just the mention of slavery. One August visitor to Mount Vernon was happy to chat with a Washington Post reporter about his day at the estate until he learned he would be asked about the sites approach to the people Washington owned.

I dont want to politicize my experience here, the man said from a sunny bench in Washingtons flower gardens, declining to give his name.

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https://bit.ly/2m5b6IP

When The Washington Posts story on white visitors resistance to slave stories came out, several of Lauren Northups friends and acquaintances sent it along to her because they know Ive struggled with it for years.

Northup oversees the interpretation at Historic Charleston Foundations two house museums, including the Aiken Rhett House, which has the best preserved example of urban slave quarters of any publicly open site in the city. She is overseeing a project at the National Russell House to examine its kitchen house for clues about the daily lives of enslaved African Americans.

Ive been called horrific names to my face, she said. I have had people walk out my tours and tell me I should be ashamed of ourselves. Its pretty jarring for a subset of our visitors who assume the tour will be something it most certainly is not.

She has listened to Halifax, who travels regularly to share his experience and lessons from his interpretive work at McLeod. Northup said one of her main takeaways was to repeat back the visitors objection.

I had a woman say to me, I dont understand how you can condemn an entire generation and race of people for doing what they did. They were just doing what was legal at the time, Northup said. I said to her, So you have trouble condemning people for owning other people? Thats pretty effective, but they get mad. They get so mad.

Northup said she once followed a group of four visitors up Meeting Street after they left the Russell House and eavesdropped on their conversation.

The woman said, I dont understand why everywhere we go, we have to hear about slavery. I just wanted to hear about how they built the house and how they lived. Thats all Im interested in. The three people with her said, Oh yeah, thats such a bummer.

But all Northup could think was, They built the house with free labor that they purchased by selling other people.

Despite the tension and mixed feedback, the foundation plans to keep it up. She said she is grateful for leadership who have been supportive of how the interpretation has evolved and will continue to evolve as more about enslaved people who left behind far fewer documents and other historical records is discovered.

Theres no turning back, she said. The reality is were dealing in facts.

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Yikes
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Only read the first paragraph, but it makes sense for people to have that response. If I travel somewhere, I would be looking for a positive experience. Dark details like the slave involvement would only sour the experience.

This essentially boils down to reading the audience.
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AngryRedHatter posted...

Only read the first paragraph, but it makes sense for people to have that response. If I travel somewhere, I would be looking for a positive experience. Dark details like the slave involvement would only sour the experience.

This essentially boils down to reading the audience.

Its a tour. Generally when you go on a tour the tour guide is going to give you historical context about what youre seeing.

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I just want a nice vacation. I paid for a tour on a plantation and I wanna see how the slave mast- errrr the plantation owners lived. I don't want to hear about slaves or feel guilty. is this really so much to ask
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AngryRedHatter posted...

If I travel somewhere, I would be looking for a positive experience. Dark details like the slave involvement would only sour the experience.

Not surprising that a Trumper prefers an edited version of reality/a safe space from facts you don't like. When I travel, I want to learn about the area entirely, not just the "positive" bits. Context is important for growth.

Slavery was a major aspect of plantations. Don't like it? Too fucking bad.

Just proof that a lot of people are still uncomfortable with coming to terms our dark past. Its a shame that as a nation we still ignore our dark past instead of accept it as a key part in our history. The fact people are scared by it as a representation of our dark past as opposed to celebrating the fact we outlawed slavery and continue to embrace further changes to ensure all people are treated equal, just shows how far weve come.
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AngryRedHatter posted...

Only read the first paragraph, but it makes sense for people to have that response. If I travel somewhere, I would be looking for a positive experience. Dark details like the slave involvement would only sour the experience.

This essentially boils down to reading the audience.

So when people go the a place like Dachau memorial site, they should not talk about the bad stuff that happened there?
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>mfw people respond seriously to an incredibly obvious gimmick

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Tourist wants to visit plantation and learn its history, except for the part where black people were involved.
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