"The Myth of Southern Charm" - PBS Documentary

 

 

(Though it just dropped on PBS a few days ago, this video is the full documentary. Not sure how long it will last on YouTube, but it's here for now.)

I highly recommend this documentary that I'm watching, I'm about three-quarters of the way through it.

It's about the mecca for white Boomers on river cruises - Natchez, Mississippi 😂

Now, though I have often wanted to take a riverboat like the Belle of Louisville - the oldest riverboat still in operation in America - the longer trips down the Ohio to the Mississippi always either stop at or end in Natchez, Mississippi and have plantation tours. 

Um ... no, thank you.

And it's NOT because I am at all afraid of being confronted with our country's actual dark history - it's because they ONLY focus on the beauty and pretend the darkness wasn't there, that it didn't happen.

I can't admire finery knowing it was all obtained via human trafficking and slavery - sorry. 

I can't sit there and have mint juleps and cookies on the veranda on the same spot where thousands of people's families were ripped apart, and where they were beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered.

It's beyond disrespectful, it's disgusting.

It's like having a tea party at Auschwitz and admiring the handiwork of the iron gates, just - NO.

So the film starts with just that, the beauty of the old antebellum homes and their eccentric owners, the decadent finery, often hosted by descendents of the original families - happy, funny, sunny people with juleps and tea and cookies and bustled skirts for home tours and carriages, white and black people laughing and talking together as if friends.

And yet not everything is what it seems. 

The longer you stick around, reality sets in, in a slow burn - and yet still you are jarred by it when it happens.

Not so much by the actual history, which we already know the horrors of, built on the backs of slaves - but the attitudes of people in the South still today, which of course you won't see at first and may never see unless you're family or inner social circle.

And that is because Southerners have turned sincere-sounding inauthenticity and duplicity into an art form.

And they know what they're saying is wrong and reveals their true nasty nature, or they'd say it in "polite company" as well!

And THAT is what is meant by the myth of Southern Charm.

So the first inkling we have is the famous Natchez Pilgrimage Garden Club Home Tour, which at first is fine.

Until a bunch of white people on the veranda sip their drinks and go on and on about forgetting their troubles and this country's troubles for awhile and escape to a happier time.

Happier time?

For whom?

And at what cost to human life?

Later, we see some members of the actual garden club, who have gathered at the home of the only just recently allowed in first black historical homeowner, Debbie Cosey, who bought the kitchen house and slave quarters still standing behind the main house (which isn't) and refurbished it to add to the tour of homes. 

These women say the dumbest shit I've ever heard, I swear. 

It's not expressly racist - it's just ignorant defense of their old "gentile" families.

Listening to them trying to justify their great-grandparents actions is just ... cringe.

Stuff like "I was told they were affectionate to their servants, but of course, that's no substitute for freedom."

???

That's like a backhanded compliment.

And servants?

Bitch, servants are paid - these were slaves - call them what you know your family did, and worse.

There WAS no such thing as a "benevolent master" in slavery, that's another fantasy myth.

Though some slaves were treated better than others (New Orleans) - never forget the entire practice of slavery is based on treating other human beings as inferior livestock property, and that the entire system was built on the worst character flaws humanity has to offer - power abuse and greed.

And this nonsense being spewed out of the same foaming mouths whilst "defending" THEIR freedoms and THEIR rights not being infringed upon, who become infuriated if you so much as tell them they need to wear a mask in public places during a pandemic! 😂

And stuff like "Well, in 1860, when Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation, they started paying them for their kitchen work."

????

What planet do you live on?

Debbie just puts her head down on the fireplace mantel. 

But you know what I'd say?

First, to Debbie ...

"Allow me to apologize on behalf of all white people that display their ignorance publicly and arrogantly. I got this bitch. Let me help educate her because she'll listen to it coming from another white woman first. Then you finish our education by filling in what I don't know, okay?" 

Then I'd say to Miss Sissy Prissy Butte, or whatever her stupid Southern Belle name is  ....

"Well, Miss ... Whatever ... you know what MY grandpappy used to say?"

"If you shut your mouth, you might learn something." 

"Because not a word of what you just said is true. That's just something we white people tell ourselves to feel better about our family and country's history, because we don't want to face or handle the truth."

"No - they were NOT paid for work after the Emancipation Proclamation, nor even after the Civil War in the South. They were supposed to be - including being given 40 acres of land and a mule as lame compensation -  but they didn't even receive that." 

That is because after Lincoln was shot, his VP-turned-President, Andrew Johnson, turned out to be a closet Confederate and slavery sympathizer and effed up reconstruction on purpose and there was no enforcement."

"And if they caught them trying to go North or otherwise off the plantation after the war ended,  they'd be thrown in jail for 'vagrancy.' 

"In fact, they were not paid by white people in the South until the next century, and even then, not enough to live on until the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which to this day, they still find ways around."   

  "So it was either keep on doing what you were doing for free, because you had no other choice to eat, or sharecropping/tenant farming - meaning you could live on the land and pay your rent in crops, which was essentially the same thing as slavery, and actually resulted in great debt if the crops failed."

"Not to mention, the violence actually became even worse en masse, with Jim Crow laws now in effect - this was actually when the Ku Klux Klan was in its heyday."

"The only way any people of color had anything was through providing services within their own community or through churches or by selling crafts to white people through a white dealer who paid in pennies but charged hundreds.

"Now - Debbie, please continue - preach, girl - educate us."

And the funny, charming "Southern Gentleman," David Paul Garner, you see at the beginning -- the colorful owner of Choctaw Hall, an openly gay man who holds gay galas and proclaims "Most of these old homes are owned by gay men like us now."

So you think to yourself, "Okay, Natchez got a littttttle progressiveness going on there," right?

Wrong! 

About an hour later, you hear some of the worst racist stuff come out of his mouth like you wouldn't believe, including use of the N-word, which he only does with a small group later, after he puts the Southern charm away when the full tour leaves. 

Yet another example of the myth of Southern Charm.

So you're thinking ...

"DUDE!?! Do you imagine that as a gay white male, you're viewed by conservatives as being better than blacks because you're white and have money?

"Well, let me ask you this - do you see any white religious nuts standing outside THEIR houses yelling they're going to hell, like we saw outside your lavish LGBTQ parties? 

"No, you do not. Because unlike me, these nuts believe you have a choice in your lifestyle as opposed to people of color who have no choice in having dark skin. You're dreaming if you don't realize they actually view you as worse than black people. "

But the worst so far?

Gene, a muffler dealer that lives across the street from Forks in the Road, where the second largest slave market once stood. 

He will not sell his portion of the land to the state or federal government, to add it to the small national park to preserve it and tell the stories of what went on there.

Now at first - as most Southern conservatives do - he makes it sound rational, like a reasonable business decision.

He says "I'm not trying to be racist, but ..."

Of course, any time anyone starts a sentence like that, be prepared for usually the very next thing out of their mouth to be incredibly racist. 😂

But in this case, it wasn't - at first.

(Paraphrasing) "It's just government won't offer me enough money for the land and people just don't want that kind of reminder of so much darkness, they come here for the beauty. It will hurt local business."

Okay, sounds like a pure business decision, right? 

I might argue that some of us WANT to know the FULL history, the good and bad, but I understand the business concern. 

But in case you weren't aware, there is also no such thing as a "Southern gentlemen," and anyone that tells you they are is actually the worst sort of men.

In fact, old Southern conservative men are the trickiest and the most skilled at faux Southern charm, you see.

They dance around issues with polite rhetoric that sounds so rational and plausible that for a second, you listen, thinking you're being fair, listening to the other side of things.

Then later, of course - when off camera, when polite company leaves -  or in this case, later, when he's been drinking -  THEN you hear the REAL racist story come out of his mouth.

And again, they KNOW it's horrible or they'd say it out loud in front of God and everybody from the get-go! 😂

So IMO, if you ever really want to know what people really think, get them drunk - because being drunk doesn't make you say things you don't really think - it just makes things you really think easier to say.

So Tracy or "Rev" (he's also a pastor) and local tour guide - who is black - brings his tour group of white people to the spot.

Now, Rev is very fair, he tells both the good and the bad history of Natchez.

For instance, he reports accurately that only 5% of white people in the South actually owned slaves. This was likely not based on morality, but based on finances - most white people would've owned them if they could afford the trade.

But then he also brings his all-white tourists to Forks in the Road and gives the not-so-pretty side of things.

Interestingly, his tour business is booming - and it's mostly white conservatives, actually - and he's very articulate, very entertaining, very funny, and very kind. Sometimes they try to start an argument, but he just lets them speak, then when they've wound down, asks if he can counter, very politely. 

They seem amazed that this black man is intelligent, articulate, and not wanting to fight them, proving they clearly don't know any black men in real life, only the ones that make the news 😂

At one point, he does say "Speak your mind, please, go ahead, talking it out is at the root of making things better. Plus it's probably the only time you'll engage with an articulate black man lol." 

Oooh, a well-executed polite Southern burn! 😂

So he's giving his tour speech and Gene, the Muffler Idiot, walks about halfway over across the street and Tracy goes "Hey, Gene!"

And drunk Gene goes "That black boy lies to you, don't listen to him!"

Pretty sure he's not lying - Gene just wishes he was. 

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the "myth" of Southern Charm.

There is one shining beam of hope in this documentary, though Tracey - the Southern Belle greeter in the thumbnail of the video?

Not Tracy the male tour guide, different Tracey.

She starts out all Trumpified, grew up poor, married well, happily patriotic - and then her husband divorces her and she signed a prenup - and is left with nothing.

She takes the tour offered by Rev, the tour guide - and is forever changed by it. After her own misfortune, she is more open to hearing the darker side of history - the history of the other side of things that Natchez doesn't like to tell, or at least doesn't want to focus on. 

So I'm turning it on again now, forcing myself to watch it - not because of white fragility of the reality of black experience in America, but the things that come out of ignorant people's mouths is just horrifying.

I think the Forks Park Ranger at the current small site at Forks in the Road says it best (paraphrasing): "I think with most, it's less about willful ignorance and intending to be racist and more about this being the only history they were taught, so it's like you're asking them to flip their whole belief system on its head, which is too threatening to the psyche, despite it being truth - about their country, their community, even they're own family. They need to believe - and keep on believing - that their family experience was the way it was for everybody. They need to stay in denial because the alternative is too scary."

Yeah - and I'm sure the Nazis did the same thing.

Sorry it's unpleasant - but this is reality.

And this country will not get better - it will never heal properly - until we make ourselves look at it - and I mean, really look at it - and deal with it appropriately instead of pretending it didn't happen or is "in the past." 

Nothing painful will ever truly heal until it's faced head on and dealt with.