If you missed Mardi Gras, no worries. New Orleans is always a good idea (like Paris).
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Touring the Whitney Plantation, America's First Slavery Museum
Unlike most plantations, the Whitney functions as a museum about slavery, the only one. It opened in December 2014. The Big House (above) is said to be "one of the finest surviving examples of Spanish Creole architecture and one of the earliest raised Creole cottages in Louisiana".
My first stop of the plantation was the visitor's center. I had a few minuets before my tour began so I poked around the exhibits. Here are a couple things I find interesting:
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Members of the Krewe of Zulu parade down St. Charles Avenue on a cold, wet, Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans. JONATHAN BACHMAN / Reuters, courtesy of NBC News
Race, Racism and Stereotyping Black Boys as Threatening Men
I just finished reading Kirsten West Savali’s excellent article on The Root about the grand jury failing to indict the officers who gunned down 12-year old Tamir Rice in Cleaveland. ""Given this perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police," prosecutor Tim McGinty said on Monday.
In her piece, Savali quotes an officer who radioed in Rice’s slaying describing the boy as “black male, maybe 20.” Savali accurately points out, “in a country that overwhelmingly distorts black childhood to fit its vile and violent racial prejudice, Tamir never stood a chance.”
It made me think of something my “Aunt”, (really a cousin, but the age difference makes me think of her differently) said when I visited my family in New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 2012.
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