The HHP board doesn’t think the word ‘plantation’ is offensive. Here’s why it is

In its recent email to the property owners of Hilton Head Plantation, the board of Hilton Head Plantation stated the following:

The Board realizes that many individuals are passionate about their feelings on both sides of this issue. Many comments were received from property owners; however, one property owner’s suggestion truly resonated with the Board. The property owner wrote in part, “We believe that the associated history is to be learned from — not to be deleted or rewritten….We also appreciate other peoples perceived sensitivities to the past unfairness or injustices.”

I read this statement from the Hilton Head Plantation board over and over to try to make sense of it.

History should not be “deleted or rewritten”?

“We also appreciate other peoples perceived sensitivities to the past unfairness or injustices”?

What?

Who are these “other peoples’”?

What is most disturbing is the term “perceived sensitivities.”

“Perceived?”

As if the horrors of slavery were just perceived and not real?!

For the Hilton Head Plantation board members to single this quote out as something that resonates with them just shows the obtuse insensitivity and complete lack of understanding they have regarding the issue of the word “plantation.”

The board needs to know that plantation slavery wasn’t a perceived injustice.

It was the darkest part of U.S. history — and it is one that is well documented, not imaginary.

A painful word

Let me clarify things by answering this question:

What is the significance of the term “plantation”?

A plantation is a large farm or estate dedicated to large-scale agricultural production.

But while plantations exist all over the world, they do so without the baggage that the term has in the American South.

In the American South — and that includes South Carolina and indeed Hilton Head itself — the term “plantation” is associated with slave plantations.

Slavery.

Far from calling for the past to be deleted or rewritten, those of us who are opposed to the word “plantation” recognize all too well its history and significance.

That is precisely why we don’t want to glorify this word.

That is precisely why we don’t want this word to be part of a housing development’s name.

The word’s cruel legacy

In a June article in The Island Packet, Hilton Head Plantation General Manager Peter Kristian was quoted as saying the name “Plantation” was intended to “denote a leisurely lifestyle and to recognize the history of the land.”

But in the American South, the term is inextricably linked to slavery.

In fact, to say that the word denotes a leisurely lifestyle is itself an attempt to delete and rewrite history — a history “perceived” of white slave master people sitting on the porch of a plantation house enjoying a cool breeze.

But in his description of a plantation as a place of leisure, Kristian ignored what actually took place on plantations:

▪ Forced labor coupled with violence.

▪ Beatings.

▪ Rape.

▪ The buying and selling of human beings.

Carolyn Randall Williams, a poet and college professor, described it well when she wrote that the South “is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.”

Offensive to all

It pains me to write this piece.

I can’t believe that in 2020 I have to explain that plantation slavery was horrible, and that holding on to the term “plantation” is an affront to all people who love freedom and justice.

You don’t have to be a descendant of slaves to be offended by the term as a label for your home.

Having the term as part of the name of a community is a way to glorify the term and, by extension, glorify slavery. That is precisely why other communities on the island have decided not to use “plantation” in their marketing.

Understanding history

I agree with the board that we need to understand history.

There are lots of books on the subject, and I would like to suggest these sources for starters:

▪ “Local Color: The Southern Plantation in Popular Culture” by Jessica Adams.

This article, which appears in the Spring 1999 edition of the publication Cultural Critique, describes the how the term “plantation” has been romanticized and distorted by popular culture such as the film “Gone With the Wind.”

▪ The book “Black Majority” by Peter Wood documents the Black majority in colonial South Carolina and the specific importance of buying skilled men and women from rice-growing regions of West Africa to work on Lowcountry rice-growing plantations.

▪ “Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community” is a book by Charles Joyner, a historian and anthropologist, that details life in a Lowcountry community and its links to the Gullah language.

▪ “South Carolina Slavery — Buying and Selling Human Beings” is a section on the state’s website that examines the history of slavery in South Carolina.

Visit https://www.sciway.net/afam/slavery/flesh.html to see the section.

▪ “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument” is a beautifully written New York Times Opinion piece by the aforementioned Carolyn Randall Williams about her family’s story and the implications of glorifying the symbols of the South.

William Patterson was a career diplomat with the U.S. Agency for International Development and has served in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. A South Carolina native, Patterson has a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He currently holds the John C. West Chair of American Government and International Politics at the Citadel. He is a resident of HHP.