Anonymous wrote:It’s simply a period of American history, nothing more and nothing less. Unless people want to rewrite history books there is nothing inherently wrong with it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who romanticize that time period (myself included) do it because we enjoy the ambiance and aesthetics of it. The fate of slaves is usually the last thing on my mind. Actually, it’s not on my mind at all.
I just wish i was born back then into a wealthy family.

And this is what makes this attitude racist, ignorant and callous.

You are glamorizing the ambiance and aesthetics of a period of time that included great cruelty and horrific abuse. You are appreciating the style and culture of those who inflicted great injustice and abuses on a large population and you callously ignore the effect that your reverence has on those around you. You realize that dressing up in antebellum clothes makes those who are descended from slaves feel horrible and yet you don't even care. When pointed out, you are not apologetic, you just keep reiterating how indifferent you are to how your actions and romanticizing the period incense and aggravate others.

That's racist. The fact that you don't care about the effect on others and how you don't think at all about the slaves and how wearing those clothes affects those around you, is racist. And you perfectly echo the people you are dressing up as. They also didn't care about the slaves. In fact, they didn't even consider them people, they considered them property, and were as indifferent to their feelings as they were to the feelings of cows or sheep.

If the slaves were white, would it still be racist or just ignorant?

If white people had been the slaves of people of color in this country, you might feel very differently about people celebrating an era of enslavement for your family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who romanticize that time period (myself included) do it because we enjoy the ambiance and aesthetics of it. The fate of slaves is usually the last thing on my mind. Actually, it’s not on my mind at all.
I just wish i was born back then into a wealthy family.

And this is what makes this attitude racist, ignorant and callous.

You are glamorizing the ambiance and aesthetics of a period of time that included great cruelty and horrific abuse. You are appreciating the style and culture of those who inflicted great injustice and abuses on a large population and you callously ignore the effect that your reverence has on those around you. You realize that dressing up in antebellum clothes makes those who are descended from slaves feel horrible and yet you don't even care. When pointed out, you are not apologetic, you just keep reiterating how indifferent you are to how your actions and romanticizing the period incense and aggravate others.

That's racist. The fact that you don't care about the effect on others and how you don't think at all about the slaves and how wearing those clothes affects those around you, is racist. And you perfectly echo the people you are dressing up as. They also didn't care about the slaves. In fact, they didn't even consider them people, they considered them property, and were as indifferent to their feelings as they were to the feelings of cows or sheep.

If the slaves were white, would it still be racist or just ignorant?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who romanticize that time period (myself included) do it because we enjoy the ambiance and aesthetics of it. The fate of slaves is usually the last thing on my mind. Actually, it’s not on my mind at all.
I just wish i was born back then into a wealthy family.

And this is what makes this attitude racist, ignorant and callous.

You are glamorizing the ambiance and aesthetics of a period of time that included great cruelty and horrific abuse. You are appreciating the style and culture of those who inflicted great injustice and abuses on a large population and you callously ignore the effect that your reverence has on those around you. You realize that dressing up in antebellum clothes makes those who are descended from slaves feel horrible and yet you don't even care. When pointed out, you are not apologetic, you just keep reiterating how indifferent you are to how your actions and romanticizing the period incense and aggravate others.

That's racist. The fact that you don't care about the effect on others and how you don't think at all about the slaves and how wearing those clothes affects those around you, is racist. And you perfectly echo the people you are dressing up as. They also didn't care about the slaves. In fact, they didn't even consider them people, they considered them property, and were as indifferent to their feelings as they were to the feelings of cows or sheep.

If the slaves were white, would it still be racist or just ignorant?

Deplorable. But at least the descendants of former slaves can't be visually identified in order to humiliate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who romanticize that time period (myself included) do it because we enjoy the ambiance and aesthetics of it. The fate of slaves is usually the last thing on my mind. Actually, it’s not on my mind at all.
I just wish i was born back then into a wealthy family.

And this is what makes this attitude racist, ignorant and callous.

You are glamorizing the ambiance and aesthetics of a period of time that included great cruelty and horrific abuse. You are appreciating the style and culture of those who inflicted great injustice and abuses on a large population and you callously ignore the effect that your reverence has on those around you. You realize that dressing up in antebellum clothes makes those who are descended from slaves feel horrible and yet you don't even care. When pointed out, you are not apologetic, you just keep reiterating how indifferent you are to how your actions and romanticizing the period incense and aggravate others.

That's racist. The fact that you don't care about the effect on others and how you don't think at all about the slaves and how wearing those clothes affects those around you, is racist. And you perfectly echo the people you are dressing up as. They also didn't care about the slaves. In fact, they didn't even consider them people, they considered them property, and were as indifferent to their feelings as they were to the feelings of cows or sheep.

If the slaves were white, would it still be racist or just ignorant?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who romanticize that time period (myself included) do it because we enjoy the ambiance and aesthetics of it. The fate of slaves is usually the last thing on my mind. Actually, it’s not on my mind at all.
I just wish i was born back then into a wealthy family.

And this is what makes this attitude racist, ignorant and callous.

You are glamorizing the ambiance and aesthetics of a period of time that included great cruelty and horrific abuse. You are appreciating the style and culture of those who inflicted great injustice and abuses on a large population and you callously ignore the effect that your reverence has on those around you. You realize that dressing up in antebellum clothes makes those who are descended from slaves feel horrible and yet you don't even care. When pointed out, you are not apologetic, you just keep reiterating how indifferent you are to how your actions and romanticizing the period incense and aggravate others.

That's racist. The fact that you don't care about the effect on others and how you don't think at all about the slaves and how wearing those clothes affects those around you, is racist. And you perfectly echo the people you are dressing up as. They also didn't care about the slaves. In fact, they didn't even consider them people, they considered them property, and were as indifferent to their feelings as they were to the feelings of cows or sheep.

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the people on here that are offended by the word antebellum only refer to it in the context of parties and plantations. Fine. These are “bad”.

But I’m still going to refer to my parents house as antebellum because it predates the civil war, and refer to certain pieces of art and literature as antebellum. Sorry the word itself is NOT offensive. It simply means pre-war. If you see that word to mean 1860s crinoline dresses and plantation culture you are either woefully uneducated or willfully ignorant. Or both.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Because we (Americans) are still living with the fallout from that era. Your neighbors, your kids friends’ parents, your coworker you have coffee with - all these people’s lives (and yours) have been shaped by the “ideals” of that time. You cannot separate the pretty dresses and the parties from what the plantation was all about. It is not just a historical artifact. It affects the wounds in our country today.

If you wanted to romanticize medieval Europe or the Japanese empire or the Scottish-English wars, have at. Those periods shaped history (like all periods do) but not as viscerally for your fellow countrymen and women as the antebellum south does. To fetishize that period is to say that you ignore or don’t care about it’s effects on people around you today. Which makes you seem clueless and racist.

But the fallout is so profound because the slaves were of different color. If they came from a different continent, we wouldn’t have all the racial tensions that exist today, right? So maybe you are ascribing slavery a much bigger impact and the reality is that people of different ethnicities don’t really want to live next to each other and would much rather live in homogeneous communities?

Anonymous wrote:
But the fallout is so profound because the slaves were of different color. If they came from a different continent, we wouldn’t have all the racial tensions that exist today, right? So maybe you are ascribing slavery a much bigger impact and the reality is that people of different ethnicities don’t really want to live next to each other and would much rather live in homogeneous communities?