Why is ante bellum racist?

[Anonymous]

I understand that asking this question invites all kinds of criticism. I am asking sincerely. Help me understand why wearing pretty dresses to a party is racist?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

As a descendant of poor white mountain trash subsistence farmers from southwestern Virginia who were forced to fight and die on behalf of rich southern plantation owners, I see absolutely nothing romantic or whimsical about dressing up like Scarlet O’Hara and sipping mint juleps under a magnolia tree.

My great great grandfathers and uncles bled and died because wealthy 1% southern elites wanted to continue to own other human beings. And my kin were drafted and marched off to die for them in places like Chancellorsville, Bull Run and Antietam.

So as a southerner, nah, I have no fondness for Antebellum culture LARPing.

[Anonymous]

Try this, OP

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article136803208.html

[Anonymous]

My ancestors came to the US as paid fighters for the Confederacy. Lincoln freed slaves shortly thereafter so they never really fought and were given land in the Midwest (as was the promised deal) and now here we are. They were Swedish. Pretty sure they had no opinion one way or the other, but apparently life was better here than in Sweden so they stayed. I guess for them the dresses were aspirational?

[Anonymous]

I guess it is not the dress, it is the lifestyle. To keep an antebellum home and lifestyle, you need slaves to create enough wealth, maintain the house, wash your dress, cook your food, decorate and clean up after your party...

[Anonymous]

Antebellum is about celebrating the slave era. It's not about hoop skirts.

[Anonymous]

The dresses and parties were paid for by money earned via free human labor which happened because of white supremacy.
It’s not about “pretty dresses.” You know that. You can find other pretty dresses not from that era. It’s about celebrating a historical moment that embraced slavery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess it is not the dress, it is the lifestyle. To keep an antebellum home and lifestyle, you need slaves to create enough wealth, maintain the house, wash your dress, cook your food, decorate and clean up after your party...

It’s this, OP. To focus on the pretty dresses and ignore what made those pretty dresses possible (slavery) is to deny that slavery was a problem. “Oh, I just want to have a party and look pretty!” Host a black tie party, in that case, because to celebrate the South when it still had slavery is kind of like hosting a 1936 Germany ball “for the glamour.”

[Anonymous]

I see the PPs points but it’s a good reference term for architecture, commerce, etc.... I guess throwing an antebellum party = bad, saying the antebellum house = ok?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see the PPs points but it’s a good reference term for architecture, commerce, etc.... I guess throwing an antebellum party = bad, saying the antebellum house = ok?

No, a lot of descendants of slaves have spoken out pretty forcefully against using those big beautiful plantation houses as wedding venues, pointing out that this is where their ancestors were tortured, raped and basically had their lives stolen from them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see the PPs points but it’s a good reference term for architecture, commerce, etc.... I guess throwing an antebellum party = bad, saying the antebellum house = ok?

Preservation of history is OK. Celebrating treason/slavery is not OK. So go tour a plantation some time and learn about the history. If you're reading a plaque, you're doing it right. But if you find yourself drunkenly dancing the Macarena with a hundred of your "best friends", pretty sure you're doing it wrong.

[Anonymous]

You really think those dresses are pretty? Women binded to the point that they were deformed and it affected their ability to give birth? That whole society, every inch of it, was sick. slavery. deforming women. delusions that they were superior. why on earth would you want that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try this, OP

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article136803208.html

That was such a good article. It's also what the book White Trash by Nancy Eisenberg is about. It was a con job on poor white people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I understand that asking this question invites all kinds of criticism. I am asking sincerely. Help me understand why wearing pretty dresses to a party is racist?

Thank you.

Antebellum means the period before war; Antebellum South means the American south pre-Civil War that was dominated by slavery, socially and economically. It's embarrassing to 'party' in this way. It's like having a Holocaust party with Nazi or Hitler Youth uniforms and asking why it's racist or anti-semitic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that asking this question invites all kinds of criticism. I am asking sincerely. Help me understand why wearing pretty dresses to a party is racist?

Thank you.

Antebellum means the period before war; Antebellum South means the American south pre-Civil War that was dominated by slavery, socially and economically. It's embarrassing to 'party' in this way. It's like having a Holocaust party with Nazi or Hitler Youth uniforms and asking why it's racist or anti-semitic.

Not the same thing at all. There was much in the antebellum South that was not dominated by slavery. And, FWIW, hoop skirts were also worn in the North.