On Christmas morning, when millions upon millions of
Americans were opening their presents, my wife and I were taking a road trip
down Highway 95. It can be one of the most congested,
nightmarish freeways in America. But on
Christmas morning, it was practically a private drive. Good weather, good music, no other cars –
Christmas indeed.
Our destination on that day was Charleston, South
Carolina. I had once spent an entire
summer at the other Charleston – the capital of West Virginia – but had never
before visited the Carolina coast.
Neither had my wife. For years we’ve
heard about how beautiful it was.
Finally, we bit the bullet and saw it for ourselves. I was blown away – by the beauty, the
history, and the timeless lessons it can teach about the human condition. Sadly, however, I left the area feeling worse
about humankind rather than better.
Aesthetically, I adored Charleston and its
surrounding area. Ogling mansions has always
been a hobby of mine, and I’ve never seen such an impressive array of mansions
as I saw in Charleston. The care and artistry
that went into the building of those structures puts to shame any contemporary
home I’ve set eyes on. And though I’ve
certainly seen a number of beautiful old homes in my life (Versailles comes immediately
to mind), the sheer quantity of those structures in the historical district of
Charleston blows away anything I’ve seen before. Some would call these buildings gaudy, and surely
they were built with the goal of showing off wealth. But to me, they were gorgeous museum pieces –
I felt that we were walking in a living, breathing outdoor museum and every
mansion was just another work of priceless art.
I was in love.
Like any other visitor to Charleston, I had expected
a considerable amount of architectural beauty.
I had also expected to hear about Charleston’s checkered past – a past
grounded in slavery and Jim Crow laws.
The thing is though, what I wasn’t prepared for is the EXTENT of that architectural
beauty, or just how many profound lessons Charleston’s history has to teach us
about our contemporary world.
Consider, to begin, some basic facts. During the
latter part of the colonial period, Charleston was far and away the most
affluent city in the American colonies.
Not coincidentally, it was also the hub of those colonies’ slave
trade. Charleston was a city in which religion
flourished – it became known for the quantity of its churches. But as the contemporary visitor to Charleston
is reminded upon visiting some of these places of worship, all these religious
communities made their peace with slavery.
In fact, even among the religious groups now viewed as “progressive”
(like Reform Judaism and Unitarian-Universalism), the white Charlestonians were
as pro-slavery and as ruthless to their slaves as everyone else.
That’s not to say that all whites in anti-bellum
Charleston had slaves. But even those
who didn’t benefited dramatically from the institution of slavery; the
increased consumer demand generated by that institution enriched even those “humble”
merchants who couldn’t afford to buy slaves of their own. As for the less humble merchants, the
planters who traded not only in rice and indigo but also in black people from
Africa, they didn’t consider their African cargo to be “people.” That enabled these merchants to rationalize a
lifestyle in which they and their families could cultivate themselves with the
finest of art, music, dance, literature, philosophy, science, architecture,
religion, political theory, jurisprudence – ostensibly becoming our hemisphere’s
greatest Renaissance Men -- while at the same time capturing, whipping, and at
times even branding human beings as if they were beasts of burden.
In fact, Charleston was so rich that the “owners” of
the enslaved could develop the greatest rationalization tool of all: that they
treated their “property” better than their counterparts on the cotton
plantations further west. In South
Carolina, you see, it made economic sense to allow field hands to work limited portions
of the plantation each day, and then allow some free time after their job was
done. The planters commonly even
encouraged them to have families and pursue religion, both of which would
motivate them to maintain their current lifestyles. To be sure, by contemporary American standards,
the enslaved suffered lives of unspeakably horrid abuses; nevertheless, the
planters developed a system that was maximally designed to ensure obedience and
economic productivity, building not simply on fear but also on a sense of
appreciation that the enslaved had something to live for and something to look
forward to once they pass away.
After the war, life changed in Charleston for one
and all, yet not nearly as dramatically as many might think. Slavery soon gave way to Jim Crow -- and the
same families who used to whip and brand their “property” continued to exploit
these same individuals’ labor power through tenant farming. Add in the institution of segregated schools,
and you can see how the class system remained more or less intact, even though “freedom”
had supposedly become universal.
And now, here we are, in the 21st
Century. Most of the anti-bellum
plantations are gone. But the planters’
second homes in Charleston remain.
Indeed, they often continue to function as second homes for families who
spend the rest of the year earning millions or tens of millions of dollars in
cities that were never so dependent on the institution of slavery. I saw people of color come in and out of
these homes, yet once again, they were kept around to work, not to play. The residents, it seems, are as white today
as they were back in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, their property resides primarily in
stocks and bonds – rather than in arms and legs – but their extreme wealth is
as notable today as it ever was.
Those are the facts that are difficult to ignore by
any tourist. It is up to each tourist to
decide what to do with them. For me,
though, one set of lessons reign supreme.
They involve our capacity and inclination both to pursue great wealth
for ourselves and our families and to rationalize our entitlement to that
wealth if we are fortunate enough to satisfy our goals.
Today, we look down our noses at the slave-owners of
yesteryear who helped to build Charleston into the crown jewel of the
Confederacy. We decry their racism. We deny their love for liberty. But truly, how different is our society than
theirs? Are we not also growing by leaps
and bounds in economic inequality? Do we not have our own one percenters, whose
wealth rests on the toil of overworked people? If we compare the lives of the one percenters
to those of their janitors, field hands, and other subordinates, do we not view
the former as society’s “winners” and the latter as society’s “losers”? Do we not continue to see human dignity as
something that is enjoyed by some, but far from all, of our society?
Private planes, gated communities, prep schools,
trust funds, bi-annual trips overseas, you name it – the successors to the old
plantation owners continue to play in ways that their workers could only dream
of. And just as the plantation owners rationalized
their right to enjoy all their play toys, so do the one percenters of
today. They attribute their wealth to their
“intellectual property,” superior skills on the basketball court, or the
God-given right of their parents to decide what to do with hard earned money. Because the workers who clean their toilets
or water their gardens are purportedly now “free” to pursue their own dreams of
extreme wealth, rather than serving as someone else’s “property,” the one
percenters don’t see themselves as violating anyone’s rights. In fact, they believe that they are fully
entitled to seize whatever the market economy gives them and to oppose any tax
policies that are remotely seen as “leveling.”
To me, however, nobody has the right to the degree
of wealth enjoyed by the 18th century’s plantation owners or today’s
one percent. Such wealth is the product
of living in a society that fails to recognize human interdependence, the true
value of all human labor, and the universality of human dignity. Make no mistake -- I support capitalism, recognize
the value of private property, and appreciate why some degree of economic
inequality is crucial in order to incentivize human productivity. But when a society’s level of economic
inequality blows up too much, the results can be a horror show. Such a society makes a mockery of such
concepts as freedom, justice, and above all else, religion.
It has become a truism that underneath its breathtaking
beauty, anti-bellum Charleston was such a horror show. Unfortunately, when I went to visit the scene
of such a crime, I found everything to be way too familiar. Do we really think that our species has
learned the lessons from that episode of history? Or are we simply revealing yet again our
capacity for selfishness, greed and rationalization? And if our sense of beauty is totally
intertwined with our love for luxury goods and services, how are we ever going
to break out of this trap?
These are a few things I’ve been thinking about
since my vacation. Now perhaps you can
see why I generally prefer to spend my vacations reading and writing rather
than traveling. Traveling can be as sobering
to the soul as it is awe-inspiring to the eyes.
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