I am reminded today, June 19th --Juneteenth, Freedom Day -- of the visit that Jen and I made to the Whitney Plantation when we went to New Orleans. It is a trip I would recommend anyone visiting New Orleans should make. In fact, I'd recommend it as the focus of a trip that every American should make.
It isn't a trip to be made lightly. National Geographic compares it to making a trip to Auschwitz . I would imagine that the contemplation of any human being treated as less than human is going to evoke similar emotions in anyone with a shred of empathy. For as much reading and learning of slavery we have had in schools, it doesn't prepare you for the gut punch of seeing a price list of people.
There is, I think, this myth that we white Americans like to hold onto that slave owners actually treated their slaves relatively humanely, and that it was really only some particularly cruel owners that treated them badly. After all, a dead slave was no good to the owner, right? The truth that one learns at Whitney is that in almost every case, slave owners simply treated slaves as a commodity, cogs in a wheel of a machine that, in Louisiana, was used to turn sugar cane into sugar, a grueling and particularly dangerous process. Yes, while plantation owners did not want their machinery to wear out early, they were horribly practical in the life-expectancy of those cogs. People did not live long while working the cane fields, a handful of years maybe, ten to twelve at most. The phrase "being sold down the river" came from the slave experience of being sold down into the cane fields of Louisiana from cotton plantations further north.
I compared the entire explanation of slave ownership by our guide at Whitney to my experience owning a car: I don't want to treat my car poorly. I'm really pretty fond of my 2012 Ford Fusion. It was a pretty dear investment. At eight years old, though, I know it's getting to the end of its lifespan. I know I'll move on and get something else in a couple years. To think, even now, that this is how plantation owners felt about people, and that I could conjure up such a comparison now, quite literally nauseates me.
I was very impressed with our guide at Whitney. A young black man, he gave us what I believe was really the unvarnished truth and a horrible sense of what it was like to live at Whitney. There was no need to embellish the awful facts. They were laid out before you like the price list I mentioned or the tiny slave quarters or the "hot box" chamber mentioned in the National Geographic article. Stands of the sugar cane with its razor-like leaves were right there, and the treeline past the fields that led away into the swamps that would beckon slaves to freedom or death, either way escape from their condition, still stands out there.
This is the story of my slave benefactor at Whitney, Chris Franklin. I say benefactor because Mr. Franklin paid a very costly price in order to provide me a single afternoon of education. I am very grateful. Reading that story, one might say, "It wasn't all THAT bad. They even got extra potatoes and egg nog at Christmas." Then you compare that to Mr. Franklin's impression of how well he felt the master kept his hounds. Slaves were treated no better than dogs. The master was fine to marry off a couple because he knew it meant additional litters of slaves for him.
None of us are free until all of us are free. That is a great sentiment to carry forth today. In a literal sense I'm sure we are all appalled at the idea of a man, woman, or child being manacled in an iron box on a hundred degree day. We have a ways to go to stamp out ignorance and injustice still, however. The focus, of late, has been on the police profession. The police do have the ability to use force that is immediately apparent. However, discrimination still pervades every industry in America. It is still apparent in the retail industry, for example. For, as progressive a company as Nordstrom is, I am still reminded that only two years ago black teens looking to buy clothes for prom were racially profiled by Rack employees. Even so, I believe that the discrimination in the legal, medical, and especially the media is as damaging, if not more so, than by police.
So we need to look at ourselves and our own sense of humanity. My religion is built on empathy and loving-kindness. In just writing that I am reminded also that I am a sinner. I need to practice.
