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Sharing a video of the building while still aflame, Brad Gordon wrote: "If you don't understand why Black Americans are celebrating the symbolic dismantling of this monument to bondage and generational oppression — well, today, we simply don't care."
This is one story where I can definitely understand the mixed feelings.
It is rightly satisfying watching a house of horrors go up in flames, particularly so when you're descended from the people who were tortured and brutalized there.
At the same time, it's easier to teach history to people when they can interact with it using their own senses, and absent that, it's much much easier to forget it ever happened in the first place.
While your sentiment is a good one, from experience of living around such historical sites, most I have seen are operated by people like United Daughters of the Confederacy. The street really goes both ways with historical sites and while they can be used as grand gestures to show a horrible past in physical form to some who may see it, it can also be used as a propaganda tool of "lost glory" as the dsughters put it.
There is a town not too far from where I live that has a long history that has tons of white washed messages by the Daughters. Its frankly gross, but many people in that town don't bat an eye because those same historical buildings are used to re-enforce their view of the world not change their perspective.
I understand that.
I've already addressed your point in this thread.
Yeah I'm sure the racist assholes booking a weeding reception at that plantation were going there to reflect on its sad history
Things change over time.
There are many sites in the South that were once used for profit and are now used to teach. That can't happen now with this one, and it's a loss to history whether you care to acknowledge it or not.
Before you go defending places as lost chances at teaching history, maybe you should check into the place and see what kind of things it was used for. The website doesn't seem to suggest it was used to teach history, just a glorified white people wedding venue.
https://www.nottoway.com/
Please read the entire thread. Thank you.
I did, and while you give a meek might be used to teach history using a physical example at an arbitrary time in the future, you seem to miss my rebuttal that those are few and far between and it is just as easy for its use to swing the other way in the future. Stop trying to get people to care about a plantation burning down. Even with your more "altruistic" take it comes off very distastful. I'll leave with a quote from an article about it
"I wouldn't necessarily say that the history is lost. This artifact is lost, but the history is still there," Duggan said.
"If you're mourning the loss of Nottoway, I would encourage you to learn more about it. Learn more about other plantation houses. You can still learn from that history."
Link to article
It certainly can happen still with this. And the destruction removes a lot of the monetary incentive for use as an event venue for racists. There are many historical sites in ruins that are used for education
The slave quarters and other structures remain unburned, actually, so in fact the historical landmark/lesson is still there and the site is still usable for museum purposes :)