What’s that we say around here? “It’s taking longer than we thought”?
very informative
i am reading it now
I think the author did a lot of projecting, they often describe what they assume the guest was thinking or what they assume the guest wanted to do(he looked like he wanted to slap me).
And some of the questions are at least valid, why were slaves living in less harsh conditions more likely to flee? Why starve a slave whose entire value lies in labor? etc.
I mean if you don’t want to educate people about slavery this seems a poor career choice.
I don’t know how to say this politely, but your criticism is that the author is making assumptions in their reporting of first hand events that happened multiple times. Your analysis that he read their body language or tone of voice incorrectly is a bit of assumptions and projections as well, is it not?
I’m not sure what a guy that wants to slap me looks like aside from angry, thats all.
That is a bit of a stretch right there.
Sure the article contains plenty of intentional stupidity and nastiness from guests.
But this is a museum and tour focusing on a slave plantation, honestly ignorant questions are pretty much a big part of the job. Seems like a good chance to educate.
Well my reading of his article is that he clearly separates the stupid but ignornat questions from those of malice or dismissal. And, yes, it is the job of a historical museum to educate but that doesn’t mean his job wasn’t frustrating. The author makes no attempt to name people by name so I really don’t see what the big objection is. Unless it is your claim that he is greatly exaggerating claims or that he has some huge militant bias not connected to reality. On the whole, do you take his claims at face value, or, do you not?
On poverty and slavery: Abraham Lincoln, when growing up in Kentucky, when he was younger he didnt think the slaves he knew really didnt have it that much worse than the poor whites he knew. Most were enslaved, not in plantations, but to individual familys and farmers and were treated practically like a member of the family. It was during a trip to New Orleans when he saw a slave auction and how families were ripped apart and sold like animals that he became disgusted with it.
If you read more on the issue after the war and liberation, many slaves were stuck in a hard situation. They didnt have anywhere else to go so they often went back to work for their former owners. A good example of this was George Washington Carver who’s white owners family raised him as their own son.
They ask about loyalty: Sweet Briar College LINK, was built on a former slave plantation and the owner after the war, his former slaves kept on and he made them employees. What’s interesting is that 1/4 the workers on that college today can trace their ancestry back to being slaves of the original owner.
Booker T. Washington, a former slave and later the head of the Tuskegee institute, said many former slaves had a high degree of skills in areas like blacksmithing and after the war, many of them had an easier time finding employment than many whites including former plantation owners who mostly never took the time to learn any basic skills like how to plow a field, shoe a horse, or even paint a fence. The women didnt know how to cook or take care of a house. His former owners ended up losing all their money and land and ended up destitute.
Now one thing I would like to ask if I was on that tour is after the war, did the original slave owners keep the plantation after they slaves were free? What I’ve read that most plantation owners quickly went bankrupt and ended up selling.
Much of the article is sensible. Some of it is less so.
That’s kind of a non sequitur. The questioner wasn’t asking about ethics, he was asking about practicalities. IOW he wasn’t failing to take racism into account. He was asking why the slave owners didn’t figure out they needed to treat their slaves at least as well as a horse. Yes, it is certainly racist to think that a person is worth no more than a horse. The questioner wanted to know why the racists thought a slave was worth less than a horse.
Regards,
Shodan
Is “pinchedly” a word? I don’t think it is.
Interesting article, though.
I thought it was an interesting read. I’m not surprised by any of those questions, but it is still amazing how people have rationalized slavery in their heads.
My brother-in-law (who’s a historian…and he’s white FWIW) once did a tour of an old plantation house down in MS. After the twentienth time the tour guide referred to the enslaved inhabitants of the plantation as “servants”, he raised his hand and asked if she meant “slaves”. She clutched her pearls as if personally offended and gave him the silent treatment for the rest of the outing.
So even the tour guides are stupid sometimes.
We took a similar tour at Oak Alley Plantation, near New Orleans (you’ve seen pictures of it!) Because it’s a privately owned business, and an expensive one to maintain, they need to focus on the plantation house and nicely manicured grounds to pull in visitors and wedding parties etc. But they didn’t ignore the slavery aspects; they have a very informative set of outbuildings with the slave story told in detail.
I think part of the problem is how the tour guides themselves are dressed: as a Southern belle who has a free afternoon showing off their beautiful house. Look at the lovely furniture and beautiful china! Notice the large windows for cross-ventilation! See how the overhead fans cooled the residents (and notice how they worked by human power). Enjoy the landscaping! And no, they didn’t give tours of the slave quarters, at least from what I could tell; those buildings didn’t have cross-ventilation.
It may put people in mind that it’s 1855 and this tour guide lives here, and would be expected to believe that slaves were treated kindly and gently, that there’s nothing wrong with having slaves, and these are the kinds of questions that would be asked by your Northern “cousins” visiting the plantation during that era.
If the tour guides were dressed in modern clothes, khakis and polo shirts, or something more “guide-like” and educational versus “resident-like”, perhaps the questions would change. But probably not.
There were, of course, differences in how slaveowners treated their slaves. Some were exceptionally cruel (just like some people were exceptionally cruel to their horses – one reason why the ASPCA was founded). Some were less so (but would have slaves whipped if they saw the need, even if they were reluctant to do it).
They were cognisant of the value of a slave, but they also were looking at the big picture. If one slave rebelled, then it served as an example to all the rest. You could starve a slave with the implied threat to the others that you’d do the same thing to them.
Same for whippings. Setting an example was more important that losing a slave. If the slave died, you could buy another (or wait for one of their children to grow up); if the slaves ran away (or, even worse, revolted), you were ruined.
I wonder if they ever have black tour guides dressed as slaves and doing a kind of “Mammy” thing?
I thought so too, but then immediately afterward the author goes on to explain that racist views on blacks held that they could take begin fed less and whipped more than a white person.
Yes, I saw that, but that is close to but not quite an answer to the question.
Why didn’t the slave owners notice that if they starved their workers that they weren’t as productive, even if being starved isn’t quite the same thing for a black person as for a white?
I have read economic analyses that say that slavery isn’t as efficient as paid workers, because it is so hard to motivate slaves even with threats of violence. I don’t know if that is true or not, but maybe that is a better answer.
And the other question - why did it seem that house slaves, who had a somewhat better existence than field workers, escaped at higher rates? I would agree with the author that this is not a sign of ingratitude on the slaves’ part. But the sort of “even house slaves yearned to be free” doesn’t really answer that question either. I would expect that house slaves had more opportunity to escape than a field hand would, as well as access to resources they could use in their escape. Plus a trained housemaid might be worth looking for, whereas any dummy could pick cotton and could be written off.
Certainly some of the questions are or seem racist in assumption. Others, like “how much worse did a house slave have it vs. a typical poor white of the same period”, much less so.
Some slaves were loyal to their masters, and some slaves did have it a bit better than some poor whites, and some slave owners treated their slaves with at least the minimal consideration they would give to any other valuable stock. Does that mean slavery was OK? Obviously not, but an answer that is a trifle more nuanced gives a better picture than assuming everyone in the Deep South was Simon Legree, even if many of them were.
Regards,
Shodan
I’d disagree with this. If you can be sold away from your home or your family member sold away from you, I don’t think you have it better than someone who doesn’t have the same threat. They may have the threat of starving, but they can also go somewhere else if they want to try and find something better (even if the odds aren’t good). Not to mention that the slave could have the threat of starving too, if they upset their master. Doesn’t matter how wonderful master is - they have the power of life and death over the slave, which is a negative that cannot be overstated.
I don’t know that every slave would agree that the threat of maybe getting sold down South outweighed every other consideration, including starvation.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan,
I am glad you are here to so calmly explain to us our misunderstanding about the true nature and practices of slavery in the deep south.
Regards,
Robert
I tried to read it until I got to this line:
While I can tell the guy’s got an axe to grind, the use of “potential slaveholder” is completely unfair. I didn’t see the need to read any further.
But I’ve noticed the same thing (the inappropriate and offensive use of “you”, “we”, and “us”).
Once I went on a tour down in south Florida. The tour guide said something like, “When we took the land from the Native Americans back in the colonial days…”
I looked around, wondering who was this “we” he was talking about. And why was he presuming that none of us were Native Americans?
People do this all the time when talking about history. They take whatever side their ancestors were on. It’s not a white thing, but it sure is annoying when white people do this in mxed company. Recently, I was in a breakroom conversation with two guys about the US civil war. One of the guys started using the royal “we” when talking about the Confederacy. I had to quickly get out of that conversation before he started talking about how “we” didn’t treat the slaves all that bad. To be fair, it was obvious that the other guy was also uncomfortable.