Friday, January 18, 2013

Plantation Nation ~ The GOP Retreat to Discuss Minorities and Women at Williamsburg

Photobucket
Sketch of Burwell Plantation Life from
Colonial Williamsburg Website

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Luke Russert on NBC News
Friday’s panel, according to the published names, indicate it will include two Latino women, three white men and a Latino moderator. Yet the panel is not without an issue in optics; the room where the discussion will take place is called the “Burwell Plantation” room at the Kingsmill Resort.

In fact, the room is named after the Burwell Family, a wealthy family that owned many slaves in 18th century Southern Virginia. Records pertaining to the families owning of slaves is well-documented by the city of Williamsburg on their website.

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who heads Republicans’ campaign efforts, deflected a question regarding the irony of a panel trying to help the GOP woo minorities happening in a room named after a slave-owning family’s plantation.

“I don’t pick the rooms we meet in,” Walden said. “I know the Democrats have held their retreats here too and I assume you’ll go and figure out if they ever held meetings in that same room.”


The Burwells were among the “First Families” in the Colony of Virginia. They also happened to own several plantations — and slaves.
So naturally the GOP would host lawmakers eager to learn about “successful communication with minorities and women” in a room named for those plantations.
~ Kate McDonough on Salon

. . . what better place to talk about making inroads with oppressed groups than in a room named after a famous Williamsburg plantation, located in the tony Kingsmill Resort, which itself is on the site of another plantation? The GOP has heard your complaints, blacks and Latinos and women, and they're going to try to suss it out while sitting atop dead slave bones.
~ Gawker







I just can't see why the GOP isn't polling better.
~ Oblios_Cap on Wonkette

What, no back massages at Ye Olde Whypping Post?
~ EatsBabyDingos on Wonkette

Later the Republicans are going to demonstrate their burning desire for tolerance by lighting a giant lower-case t on fire.
~ SexySmurf on Wonkette

Sometimes it's really hard to make satire about the GOP. They beat you to all the punch-lines.
~ Comrade Snowball on Wonkette

When Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindel says that Republicans are the “stupid party,” this is exactly what he was talking about.
~ The Newsburner

Still, it is the South, so you can’t really throw a rock without hitting some site with a racist past, and what are Republicans supposed to do, find a resort in the Northeast, Northwest, Midwest, or Abortiofornia? Besides, it’s not like the place currently honors the site’s slave past, right?
~ Mediaite





On Kingsmill Resort:
Lots of pictures of white people golfing, playing tennis, spa-ing it up, eating, biking, jet skiing, at the marina, in the pool, on the dock. One black family having summer family fun on the dock. One black person on personal scooter. One black person serving white people. The photos I viewed showed predominantly white people enjoying the “resort”. (Please don’t send me angry emails about the one black person you know who loves Kingsmill.)
Think I’m imagining race where it’s not? You haven’t visited the many “Plantation” style resorts in the South. I have.
I have been subjected to the “glorification” of black people fanning whites on porches as “the good old days”. I’ve seen the flight of Northern whites to Southern “Plantation style” neighborhoods. I’ve seen the ads that show modern day black people waiting on white people, morphing into black and white photos from the good old days of slavery. This is called “nostalgia”.
~ Sarah Jones on PoliticusUSA


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