Now, we
all know that New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz and many other
musical art forms. This is due to the many cultures that are
represented there. You have the French and Spanish influence, the
African influence (most important, I'd say), and the Caribbean
influence, just to name a few. This is a colonial town but we also must
remember that it was Louisiana before it was part of the United States. The French, who went back and forth in power in this area with the Spanish,
did not want the territory to become part of the U.S. and to this day,
it is not unusual for anyone born in the area to consider themselves Creole
instead of American. Above, you can see a typical colonial house; it
has been transformed from the original Caribbean structure that was the
norm in the area when the French colonists came. They were influenced
by the architecture in Haiti/Dominican Republic and when they came up
North, most of what was built was Caribbean in influence. According to
one Old River Road
guide, the architecture in the French Quarter is actually quite Spanish
and one can see many of the former Spanish names of the streets along
with the current French names. The plantation home above is called
Evergreen and what is unique about this place is that the very wealthy
lady who owns it has also preserved the 22 slave quarters that are also
on the property. You can see one of them below. The cabin is meant to
house two families and you can see the size of one of the sides of the
cabin; not much space, at all. These cabins are entirely original - the
cypress wood is very strong - and sharecroppers still lived in them in
the 1940s. I was totally humbled when I stepped inside.
Matilda Gray Stream
is the woman who has made sure that this only collection of slave
quarters of its kind has been preserved. In the main house, she also
has a collection of dolls that a local African American artist
fashioned after the actual slaves who worked on the plantation. She
used the names and work information found in business documents. Many
of the records are well-kept. We can see exactly who lived on the
plantation, what work he/she did and what his/her monetary value was.
Laborers were worth what they could do (a blacksmith was worth more
than an elderly field hand, for example); house slaves were considered
"private property," which meant that if the owner went bankrupt, they
could not be taken as collateral. When one of the previous owners of
Evergreen did die, his "private property" had stayed with him but had
decreased in value because of aging.
There is a reason I am
bringing up New Orleans and the idea of slave quarters and private
property today. First of all, what I've been given the chance to learn
in New Orleans is that the real issue about the Katrina tragedy is not
that the levees broke or that funding for repairs has not come through
yet - that is a tragedy, of course, but the real tragedy is that
African American folks were given subpar living conditions to begin
with. There is no difference between the Lower 9th Ward or the 7th Ward
and the slave quarters you see on this page. The residents who lived in
the 7th and 9th Ward shacks lived dangerously close to factories and,
of course, to the water. Just like the slaves living close to the
master's mansion, the folks who lived in these wards lived close to where their work was.
What has changed is that the mansion is now safely away from the
hazardous living conditions of where the "slaves" live. That is, the
people who profited from the work of the honorable people who lived in
the Lower 9th Ward, for example, did not live in the risky area. I had
the awesome opportunity to go on a tour of the Katrina damage. The
activists and leaders at the Ashe' Cultural Arts Center gave
me and others at the National Performance Network Conference the tour
and showed us how the land in the Lower 9th Ward is not fit to build on
because it is too low and there are laws that prohibit this.
Nonetheless, the city has not raised the land to regulations and there
are still folks living on it (even though most of the area is overgrown
grass, despite Brad Pitt's efforts).New Orleans, in general, is having a difficult time finding and maintaining homes for low income residents. This trend in the greater United States has been well documented for the past decade and a half and the articles on it continue today. Add this to the healthcare crisis and our poor public education and what it all adds up to for people of color (Blacks, Latinos, Asians and all imaginable impoverished races and combinations of said races) is one thing: APARTHEID. Yes, I believe that this is what we are living under and what is happening in the U.S. today (what has been happening, yo!). My old Webster's College Dictionary defines apartheid as something uniquely South African, but Dictionary.com expands it to include all forms of segregation. And we are definitely segregated in terms of healthcare, education and housing, but more importantly we are segregated in terms of JUSTICE and INFORMATION.
How else can we explain a New York judge finding it perfectly permissible to shoot an unarmed Black man 50 times? I read somewhere that Sean Bell was supposedly unruly; couldn't they just beat him up, then? If you're going to be unjust, can't you temper it with a little sanity and sanctity for life? This is one kind of justice for one kind of citizen and a totally different kind of justice for another kind of citizen. An unruly Black man gets murdered and an unruly White murderer gets acquitted. Note that the link to SeeingBlack.com above also announces the Bill Moyers interview with Rev. Dr. Jeremiah White which airs tonight on PBS at 9 p.m. (not sure what time zone that is, so check your local listings). Here is another perfect example of how Rev. Dr. White, Senator Obama, and now my former professor, Dr. Bill Ayers, have been used to discredit the work African American men have accomplished. Senator Hillary Clinton, no less, is the one to have tried to discredit Obama by associating him with Ayers. Who discredits the information provided by White and/or rich/powerful people who manipulate the media? No one. If someone tries to point how how the White House hires military men to conduct supposedly unbiased investigations of how the war in Iraq is being conducted or if abuses are occurring in Guantanamo, that person is a conspiracy theorist at best (a terrorist sympathizer, at worst).
If the information comes from a person of color, it is discredited. If the information comes from the good ol' boys club, it is applauded, even if it is wrong. If the unruly person is a person of color, we can kill the guy. If the unruly person works for the good ol' boys, get some good lead out, sharp-shooter! If the housing or education is for the poor or the public, good luck finding something of value. If the housing is for the rich, sleep easy, you don't have to worry about floods or poisoning from the local factory a few yards away. If that doesn't sound like apartheid to you, I don't know what it will take to convince you.
What is interesting to me is that while I was getting a really educational tour of New Orleans by Ashe' and by the wonderful tour guide at Evergreen (This lovely White Creole woman literally said, "Look, the slaves here were treated somewhat better than the slaves that were owned by the English, but they were slaves and in the end, that is despicable. I work here and I show these cabins and I have to live with seeing the cabins every day. I have to remember." I think it makes a big difference if someone can own up to that.), at Oak Valley, the other plantation tour I took, the tone was VERY different. At Oak Valley, the tour guide wears a crinoline hoop skirt, offers tour-goers mint juleps and paints a lovely picture of plantation life, along with the imagined slaves fanning you on the porch, okay? How absolutely sick is that? Well, how is that any different from what is going on in the U.S. right now? Some of us want to face the past, honor what happened and move forward honestly, while others would like to build upon the lies and keep things just as they have always been - very segregated, an apartheid.
You wouldn't believe all the middle-aged White people who loved the tour at Oak Valley, an estate that has been featured in "The Long Hot Summer" with Cybill Shepard and in "Interview with the Vampire," with Brad Pitt (he keeps popping up). One woman told me on the bus that she had always fantasized about sitting on the wrap-around porch, relaxing to the breeze, looking over the estate. I wanted to ask her, "And were the slaves part of that fantasy?" Our memory in the U.S. is quite convenient.
If you're interested in seeing all the New Orleans pictures that I took, click on the link to gpwriters (on the right) and join the group. There is a link to the pics on the main page of the group. The pictures include shots of documents that list the value of the slaves on the plantations. Note that a skilled slave could be valued at over $1,000 and this is back in the 17 and 1800s, so imagine what the work of that person is worth today. Probably a lot more than the average person of color gets paid. I would say it is worth better housing, better education and definitely having one's life intact on the eve of one's marriage.
Reprint Courtesy of the Author - Grisel Y. Acosta Blacktino.net
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