Lately, this one growing trend has caught my attention: plantation weddings. I read the news about and saw the photos of Blake Lively’s and Ryan Reynolds’ wedding at a plantation. Do people not realize what plantations were? We learn in our history class that plantations operated extensively on slave labor. Numerous plantation venues also openly state that hundreds of African Americans were enslaved, and yet describe the plantations as nothing but a resort. This reflects how these businesses and many people overlook the atrocities committed against slaves, but treat the racist history of plantations as a mere happening that took place in the past that has “nothing” to do with them. These photos we see of happy, smiling white people getting married only reveal the ignorance and insensitive, immoral nature of privileged white people. (I would like to apologize for the generalization and the grouping of white people as a whole. I did so for the convenience and purpose of this article.)
The romanticization and sentimentalization of the poignant history of plantations baffled, and, furthermore, disturbed me. This romanticization sheds light on only one, and a very small part of the greater history behind plantations – the glamorous life enjoyed by white slave owners. The ignored part of this history is that millions of slaves were abused, raped, beaten, and killed at the very plantation venues where the weddings are held. Plantations represented a structure, a system that was designed to destroy hope, discriminate, subjugate and dehumanize African Americans, all based on the complexion of one. Held against one’s own will, African Americans were stripped of freedom and dignity. They were nothing more than a property of real estate.
To me, this trend seems like a German couple holding their wedding at the Holocaust Memorial because, apparently, the good old days were when they could slaughter Jews because they were the “superior” Aryan race. You cannot erase the history, and you shouldn’t even try to in the first place. You do not get to choose which history to remember, which to forget, which to mourn, and which to celebrate. The plantations are not for you to romanticize and glamorize. To you, the plantations may be the representation of the beautiful, glamorous old days. But to others, they represent the poignant suffering, humiliation and dehumanization they had to endure.
