I also had a major gestalt experience, a real ah-ha moment, while touring at The Whitney Plantation.
http://whitneyplantation.com/
My daughter got the tickets ahead of time. It was her one place that was not optional during our visit to New Orleans. Having visited old colonial homes and plantation homes and famous people's homes and political people's homes, I was game. I love history--all history. It's my go-to elective for college credits.
We arrived just before time. It was an unassuming building by the parking lot. It was all by tour. There was no wandering, which had been true in several of my previous experiences. "NO TOUCHING THE ANTIQUES"!
The gift shop was full of books and a few fair trade items. The tour started with about 20 people in it, a multicultural group, but that is common in Louisiana. She gave a short history about the actual plantation, dates and names and then she reminded us that this plantation tour was from the perspective of the "enslaved people" that had lived here. My daughter had mentioned it wasn't about antiques.
Enslaved people...somehow at that moment, all the old "slave stories" and histories were flipped. It was something horrible that happened to people in our country. It was part of my history.
"By 1600 an estimated 275,000 Africans, both free and slave (see how the use of this word eliminates their humanity), were in Central and South America and the Caribbean area. Africans first arrived in the area that became the United States in 1619, when a handful of captives (captives, also distanced by its implications--not people, captives) were sold by the captain of a Dutch man-of-war to settlers at Jamestown."
https://www.bing.com/search?q=first+african+to+arrive+in+america&form=EDGEAR&qs=SC&cvid=175a9d1d380b4feaa42b00b8024a026b&cc=US&setlang=en-US
It was a long tour. The tour guide was passionate about the stories she told. She didn't let the questions about how comfortable and cared for the "slaves" were. And I quote, "you won't be hearing stories about happy, singing slaves" on this tour. She discussed names, records, the origin of life insurance--much like crop insurance or stock insurance, she discussed the lack of burial grounds--"dumped in the bayous" without ceremony.
One couple, an elderly white man and woman suddenly remembered a funeral they needed to leave for not long after the jail cell was opened to our group.
I learned a lot on the tour.
I found the simple yet earthy statues of real enslaved people so poignantly, tearfully touching. They were not romanticized or done as somehow more beautiful and heavenly than real people--a thing I have seen done to make things more dramatic and unreal. I found the very old and down-to-earth older plantation house (most of the huge, white plantation houses that are reminiscent of "Gone with the Wind", so much more reflective of what the use of enslaved people to do the work was about. Plantation were farms and ranches. They were a family business. A rich family's business. Their were black people working for free (those quarters out back made it obvious that they did not have their own little family units to live in) and poor white people working for a little money--but free to change jobs or leave the plantation's employment. Only the family house was actually nice---not palatial--but for the late 1700's, quite roomy and nicely constructed.
These days, calling the people that were enslaved before the 1860's, "slaves" makes it seem distant and meaningless to most people.
Calling them enslaved, points out so much more:
- They were people, either stolen from their life in Africa as a full member of a culture or as an enslaved person-which in those other cultures was more like an indentured servant--something you could get out of at least, or a victim of capture after a war, or, they were born to parents that were enslaved---what a bittersweet thing a birth must have been to those mother's.
- There are currently people in this country that are still enslaved. The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865.
- The for-profit prisons that are getting their profit not only from the taxes of our states but also from the forced labor of the descendants of those same enslaved people that were brought to this country from Africa hundreds of years ago.
- Before for-profit prisons, we did the same--license tags, chain-gangs, work farms. (those politicians knew what they were setting up in the 1860's)
- In addition to the slavery that was allowed to continue via the 13th Amendment, we have human trafficking (another interesting word, meant to dehumanize the victims, much like the word "slave" does. Human trafficking, while frequently involving sex trafficking of marginalized women, also includes factory-type employers that arrange groups of immigrants to come in, work long hours under dangerous conditions, don't allow them to leave, charge them exorbitant rates for their cots and sad meals and not allow them out of the work place or to go home. Two industries that are disturbingly popular with fashionable women and well-to-do men are where women from Asia have been brought over to do nails and give massages.
- Last but not least, are the children brought to this country to be fostered by the wealthy that end up being used as domestic servants and sex workers. We still have plenty of people willing to use those that are already in bad straits, victimizing them even more than the homeland they were trying to escape.
The Whitney Plantation Tour Guide chose her words wisely. She made an impact--not just on me. The people from that tour visited the gift shop in Thoughtful-mode. Books were purchased, hopefully to be read. Notes were written for their wall for that purpose.
And I was made aware that our word choice can make something seem either normal or horrifying, acceptable and distant or real and current and devastating.
If you use words for things that make them sound nicer than they are, regular, business as usual, ordinary. Stop it. Bad things, events, activities, behaviors should never be glossed over to make them sound acceptable. If we would be better as a species, we need to talk about those atrocities that make us worse, less, and bad. You can't stop something until it is recognized as a problem.
And if you are going to New Orleans, take the Whitney Plantation Tour.
It will make you a better person.
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