Charleston, and a Surprising, Unsurprising Lesson on Race

This post was supposed to be about the food.

I had booked a trip to Charleston for Michael’s birthday, and, buoyed by the city’s gastronomic reputation, we had quickly amassed a recommendation list so formidable that we had prepared ourselves for a weekend of gluttony.

And indeed, the food was incredible: buttery scallop carpaccio at FIG; sweet, fresh oysters at 167 Raw; crispy, perfectly battered fried chicken at Martha Lou’s; and artery-arresting pulled pork nachos at Hometown BBQ. As we strolled up and down Meeting Street and King Street, marveling at the stately Colonial homes, pausing under the leafy oaks, we wondered to each other how the food here was so consistently delicious, so much better than the restaurant scene in D.C.

But that’s not what I will remember about Charleston.

I preface this by saying that writing about race (at least for me) is terrifying. I've likely botched some of this, or stepped on some mines that I didn't even realize existed. For that, I apologize. But, I don't think fear of offending, or sounding stupid, should be an excuse for us not to have these conversations. Anyway, here it goes.

It started subtly. We had taken one of those cheesy horse-drawn carriage rides through the old quarter, listening as a college-age Southern Boy cheerfully explained the city’s history. He pointed out civil war landmarks, described the old town’s layout, and told stories about early inhabitants. The neighborhood we were riding through was clearly well to do: historical plaques graced the front doors, workers tended lush gardens, and BMWs basked in the driveways.

Everyone getting out of the sedans, walking into the manors, was white.

As we turned a corner, we came across an incongruous-looking row of uniform, cinder block apartments. Section 8 housing, the guide explained. A handful of teens hung out on the front steps of one of the apartments; a mother walked into the complex with her child, closing the fenced door behind her. All of the residents were black.

Then, as if on cue, our guide said: “You know, Charleston has really come together as a city to overcome racial and socio-economic disparity, and to achieve real unity.”

I looked over at Mike, confused. Was Southern Boy providing a cynical commentary on the Home of the Confederacy? But I looked back at the guide, and his expression was cheerful, blank, unaware. Was he reading a script he had been taught at carriage school, his timing particularly awful this time around?

We chalked it up to a WTF moment, made a few cracks about the oblivious kid, and let the moment pass.

But from that point forward, I started noticing something: the Whiteness. By that, I don’t just mean the lack of black faces, but also that there were no Latin, no East Asian, no Indian faces. As we meandered through the tourist district, the downtown, into the nice restaurants, the shops, all we saw were Caucasian faces.

And to be clear, for a White person to notice that there is too much Whiteness going on…. there needs to be a lot of Whiteness happening.

“Let’s not tell anyone we’re Jewish,” I half-joked to Michael.

The next day, we had planned to rent a car and visit Magnolia, a large plantation outside of Charleston. Magnolia had been a working rice plantation for several hundred years, and now housed a collection of ponds and gardens. The thought of ‘visiting a plantation’ carries an ick factor, and at first I was loathe to visit. But, I was told that it’s a ‘must’ to understand Southern culture, and so assumed that the visit would be centered around learning the plantation’s history, including the dark history of human bondage that made these plantations so profitable.

I was in for a surprise.

It was a gorgeous Sunday, and Magnolia’s parking lot was packed with cars. We parked in the overflow lot. We approached the ticket booth; $19 each to enter, and then another $8 each for a “From Slavery to Freedom” tour, one of four tours offered by the plantation (and the only one dealing with slavery). We purchased a ticket for a 4 p.m. tour, and wandered onto the grounds.

The plantation was huge, with lily ponds, Monet-worthy bridges, and freshly manicured gardens. That day, Magnolia was hosting an ‘international chocolate festival’ and so we followed a labyrinthine route, stopping at “France”, “Spain”, and “Italy” booths to collect truffles along the way.

Somehow, the fact that the plantation flourished was jarring. I’m not sure what I expected, but I thought it would be more somber. Something between visiting a museum, and a concentration camp; after all, this was the site of hundreds of years of human subjugation, an original sin on America’s historical fabric. Instead, chubby white ladies walked the grounds, munching on their chocolates and exclaiming ‘isn’t this nice?”

We made our way to the start of the tour; the sun was low in the sky, and visitors were already heading to their cars. In fact, we were the only people on the tour, save for a European gentleman who left after the first 10 minutes.

Our tour guide, a young woman from South Carolina who said she was a historian, took us to the edge of the plantation, where four wood cabins stood. Slave cabins, she explained. The ‘tour’ went something like this:

Minutes 1 – 5: ‘Yes, there were slaves on this plantation. The plantation began operations in 1606, and at its height there were 150+ number of slaves here. There were two systems of slave labor, the gang system and the more relaxed task system. This plantation used the more relaxed system. So, as long as you finished your work, you could do whatever you wanted with your afternoon. Slavery was terrible, but the owners here treated their slaves comparatively well. They taught some of them to read and write, and they Baptized them. The slaves lived in this cabin here.”

Minutes 6 – 40: “And here are the cabins that plantation workers lived in, once slavery was abolished in 1865. Many of our slaves actually came back to work for pay. For example, Johnnie, he lived in this cabin here, and he worked here until he died, at 93 years old. Four of his sons worked here too, and a couple of the grandsons still work here, as groundskeepers. Johnnie was a wonderful, wonderful man. Look how carefully he laid the wallpaper in this last cabin.”

Any Questions?

….

I had so many questions, starting with why this woman would gloss over 250 years of inconvenient history in the first 5 minutes and spend the bulk of the tour telling us about how post-slavery laborers lived here.

“Can you tell us a bit more about the first 250 years, before slavery was abolished?” I asked.

“Well, what do you want to know?” she countered.

“Um... I don’t know…” I stammered. She was the guide. “For example, do you know where in Africa the slaves were coming from? Did many/any successfully escape? What was their life like? I heard that Americans actually learned rice cultivation from West African slaves, is that true?”

She gave a few answers, thrust a book on task system of slavery (the ‘better’ system) in our arms, and dropped us off at our car.

Mike finally broke the silence on our drive back to Charleston. “Nineteen dollars each, plus eight dollars each. Fifty-four dollars. This plantation is like Disneyland, but instead of making money off Mickey Mouse, its making money off of its slave history. How much of that do you think goes back to the descendants of the slaves who worked here?”

I emailed the plantation to check. Here’s the exchange:

=

Dear Magnolia Plantation staff,

I recently visited Magnolia Plantation, and was just curious: where do proceeds from the entrance fees and the various tours (including the From Slavery to Freedom Tour) go? Do any of the proceeds go to the families of slaves who worked at the plantation?

Thanks in advance for any information on this topic!

==

Magnolia Plantation is privately owned by the original family. They keep the plantation open and running for the public to enjoy and learn. Besides the individual visitors we have out here each year, we also have adult and children groups which come in from all over to experience the history and the nature of this plantation. The family also has a foundation set up for charities that they chose to sponsor as well. Thank you for coming out and experiencing this special place.

==

So yeah, not a cent.

To be fair, Magnolia does appear to engage in programs that teach students about the history of slavery, and also sponsors a website that helps African Americans from the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida area track their genealogy. That, apparently, makes Magnolia “better than most plantations” – as we learned when we visited the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston. The museum is housed in what used to be an actual slave auction house; at one point during the slave trade, 40% of all slaves entered the United States through the Port of Charleston.

We posed our question to the docent of the museum: what’s the deal with plantations turning themselves into Disney Worlds, and glossing over the history of how they became profitable? If the plantation makes money off of ‘telling its history’ to tourists, why isn’t some of that money going to the people on whose broken black backs the plantation rose?

“At least Magnolia actually acknowledges their slave history,” is the answer we got back.

Huh? I didn’t realize that there were plantations out there that didn’t acknowledge that they had slaves.

Then: “You know, it’s actually quite hard to trace the descendants of the slaves on the plantation.”

Is it? You at least know Johnnie and his four sons. And, the one thing the “Slavery to Freedom” tour did teach us was that most of the slaves stayed local: “they couldn’t read or write, so many of them came back to work for us” was the exact verbiage, if I recall correctly.

So really, you can’t find them?

Not to knock the museum: the docent actually gave a really informative, interesting, and detailed account of the slave trade in Charleston. But, as he pointed out, only a minuscule percentage of those who visit Charleston, take the time to visit the slave museum. The majority go to the plantations, and they don’t want to hear about the dark history, they just want some pretty gardens to relax in.

Tripadvisor corroborates this: Magnolia Plantation (one of at least 5 touristy plantations around Charleston) has 4,189 reviews; the slavery museum (the only one in Charleston) has 801 reviews. Of the Magnolia reviews I read, only one critiques the white-washing.

One more anecdote to mention on this: after the docent gave his talk, I happened upon him having a conversation with a black couple that had also been part of the group. The woman was pointing to a sentence on one of the exhibitions: “not all slaves were treated poorly; some were treated more humanely than others.”

“Why do they have to write this?” the black woman was saying. “This is BS. If you are enslaved, nothing is humane about it, period.”

“Well, we don’t want to alienate our audience,” the docent was saying. “Some folks” - white folks - “would be disturbed if we put it out there too harshly.”

I moved in a little closer, feeling a voyeuristic guilt for witnessing a conversation that would have likely been markedly different – less honest - had I been involved.

“I mean, think about if we actually put an auction block in this museum,” the docent continued. “And then we took your child, and we put him on the auction block, and we simulated a slave auction, and then we put chains on your child and told him and you that you would never see him again and led him off. That would really be too much. It would disturb and alienate quite a few people.”

“I guess…” the black man said, unconvinced.

“But that IS what happened,” the black woman countered.

The docent shrugged. “You have to meet people where they’re at.”

The fact that this is ‘where we’re at’ – 150 years after the abolition of slavery – is fucked up. The fact that we can't talk about the atrocities committed only a few generations ago, because it would be too 'upsetting' or 'uninteresting'; that plantations enrich themselves off the white-washed history of black exploitation, while prisons replace plantations as the keepers of black bodies.

By the way, the North is not absolved of this: insurance companies like New York Life and AIG got their start by ensuring slaves, and even after slavery was abolished in the North, New England ships grew rich by carrying slaves to the American South. But here in Charleston, I encountered a tone deafness more brazen than anything I have seen in D.C. People were lovely – sweet as can be – but I wonder if I would have received the same welcome, had my skin been darker. I wonder if in D.C. a black docent would have shushed a black couple in the same way, for fear that their anger would scare off the nice white folk.

I know that none of this is new; everyone knows that racism is alive and well in the South. I guess I had just lulled myself into thinking that we would have a lovely time eating delicious shrimp and grits, and would not see that part of the story. Something that I, as a white person, have the unique privilege of assuming.

These are just my observations; what two first-time visitors saw and felt in a new place. I have no lofty conclusions to draw. My personal take-away is not particularly deep, and perhaps it is obvious: we need to talk about this more, and more openly. Yes, conversations about race can be awkward, even terrifying. I must have reworked this blog a dozen times, scared of voicing my opinion on a loaded topic.

But if we don't talk about it, we get Charleston.