There Are No Girls on the Internet - Don't Have a Wedding on a Plantation

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.180 Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches,

00:00:08.020 there's a lot of suspense.

00:00:09.440 Will they finally eat the veggies?

00:00:10.940 Will the pesto survive the first bite?

00:00:12.980 Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

00:00:17.020 And will you finish Episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

00:00:20.920 Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus

00:00:24.120 from $94 a month.

00:00:25.540 Price guaranteed for two years on Internet

00:00:27.440 with a two-year term and auto-pay credit.

00:00:29.380 Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

00:00:32.420 Bell. Connection is everything.

00:00:34.700 Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?

00:00:36.960 Think again.

00:00:37.600 More Americans listen to podcasts, then add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

00:00:41.760 And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

00:00:45.880 Learn how podcasting can help your business.

00:00:47.720 Call 844-844-iHeart.

00:00:50.080 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:53.240 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:58.760 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:01:02.380 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:01:09.920 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:01:13.740 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:21.360 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:01:27.100 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:01:35.740 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

00:01:44.000 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:01:45.760 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:51.160 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:02:03.700 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:02:08.820 As a woman of a certain age, I've gotten to my fair share of weddings over the years.

00:02:13.400 I'm also getting married myself, or at least I was until COVID, and now who even knows.

00:02:19.040 But that means I have seen no fewer than a dozen wedding websites listing outdated wedding cliches to avoid.

00:02:26.040 Things like serving drinks in mason jars, which I'm sorry to say I still think is kind of charming.

00:02:31.280 A survey of 5,000 married adults by The Wedding Inbox found that certain old-fashioned wedding traditions are now falling out of favor in our evolving world.

00:02:39.740 Take the expectation that a bride's dad will always pick up the tab.

00:02:43.680 Not only is this totally heteronormative,

00:02:46.160 but it's also a norm that a lot of people do not stick to anymore.

00:02:50.120 Today, more than 4 out of 10 couples share the cost of weddings between both families

00:02:54.060 and take throwing rice at the happy couple after the ceremony.

00:02:58.520 Even though Snopes found the whole birds eat rice and die thing as a myth,

00:03:02.760 rice can be annoying to clean up,

00:03:04.500 so now many couples have turned to alternatives like blowing bubbles.

00:03:08.100 So just like anything else, wedding traditions evolved over the years,

00:03:12.480 Which brings me to one wedding element that definitely needs to be left in the past,

00:03:18.000 and that is the plantation wedding.

00:03:20.640 I know what you might be thinking, who would actually want to have a wedding on a plantation,

00:03:25.180 a site of brutalization and torture of Black enslaved people?

00:03:28.820 But I'm from the South, and I can tell you, it happens.

00:03:32.680 A-list celebrities Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds had their 2012 wedding at Boone Plantation in South Carolina,

00:03:38.820 the filming location for the film The Notebook.

00:03:41.100 It was also the site where, according to one record, 85 enslaved Black people were brutalized while being forced to harvest cotton, pecans, and producing brick.

00:03:50.800 Here's an upbeat tour video from the website Southern Weekend.

00:03:54.720 It also has breathtaking grounds, which are a popular wedding venue, and it features a truly spectacular home built in the 1930s.

00:04:03.020 I mean, they could have at least put the music in a minor key, right?

00:04:06.320 Now, at the time, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds,

00:04:08.540 their wedding got so much positive press for being romantic and beautiful.

00:04:13.800 Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds married where The Notebook was filmed, Us Magazine gushed.

00:04:18.480 People Magazine's headline added that the couple tied the knot in a super romantic location.

00:04:23.860 But now, the couple regrets it.

00:04:26.580 They've since had another ceremony and donated money to the NAACP.

00:04:30.540 It's impossible to reconcile.

00:04:33.000 What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest.

00:04:35.900 What we saw after was a place built on devastating tragedy, Ryan Reynolds said in an interview.

00:04:41.180 It's no surprise the couple say they fell in love with the venue on Pinterest.

00:04:45.380 For most people, the first step in planning a wedding is searching websites like Pinterest, Zola, and WeddingWire.

00:04:50.620 And up until last year, these sites allowed plantations to be advertised on their platforms as charming and nostalgic landmarks of a genteel bygone era,

00:04:59.160 instead of somber reminders of the brutality of slavery.

00:05:02.800 That is, until the civil rights organization Color of Change stepped in.

00:05:06.420 They worked with popular wedding platforms like Pinterest, The Knot, and WeddingWire

00:05:10.880 to develop new guidelines to stop the promotion of wedding content that romanticizes former slave plantations.

00:05:17.020 And this fits squarely within Color of Change's understanding that part of making change

00:05:21.020 involves sparking cultural shifts in people's minds.

00:05:23.600 In this case, getting them to stop thinking about slavery from a white-centered lens.

00:05:28.920 It's work that Jade has spent her entire young adult life getting ready for.

00:05:33.100 My name is Jade Magnus Ogunaki.

00:05:35.320 I'm the senior director of the media, culture, and economic justice team at Color of Change.

00:05:40.140 So how does one get a job that involves getting wedding websites to rethink plantations?

00:05:44.440 First, I went to Howard University, which is, you know, sort of like hotbed for discussions around political activism and Black identity.

00:05:55.480 I went to Howard.

00:05:56.340 um and you know i was at howard during what i call like the black youth movement of the 2010s

00:06:02.340 you know this is when trayvon martin was killed it was such a big turning point for so many of us

00:06:06.640 um and this is when you have organizations like byp 100 and dream defenders um uh coming to the

00:06:15.460 forefront um and so i was a founding member of byp 100 um i think i did when i was a junior

00:06:21.520 in college or maybe the summer between my junior and senior year. And immediately after, I wanted

00:06:28.640 to get an organizing job. And, you know, quite a few people that I respected had worked in the

00:06:34.280 labor movement. And so I went to go work in labor organizing low-wage workers for two years,

00:06:40.600 which was, you know, the best sort of education that you can get in the strongest organizing

00:06:48.080 training possible. And, you know, I was getting married at the end of those two years. And with

00:06:53.580 labor, you're required to do such a lot of travel. And so I was looking for a job that didn't require

00:06:59.520 as much travel. I had a friend who worked at Color of Change. They happened to be sort of

00:07:06.220 interviewing at the same time I was looking for a job. And it fell into place. I started an entry

00:07:11.060 local at Color of Change four years ago as a campaign manager. And I've been here ever since.

00:07:17.380 So you mentioned getting married earlier. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you. I happen to know from social media that you had a big, beautiful wedding not that long ago. Congratulations. Did you use wedding planning websites like Zola and Pinterest? And what was that experience like for you planning your wedding?

00:07:33.080 I got engaged and married actually quite young for the current modern era that we're in now

00:07:41.900 and so yeah I was totally overwhelmed you know first of all it was quite you know I didn't have

00:07:47.360 a lot of money when I was planning my wedding and so you know you're looking at all of these

00:07:50.700 wedding websites buying all the magazines listening to all the podcasts you know about

00:07:56.460 how to plan a wedding. And, you know, actually during this sort of wedding planning was the

00:08:03.580 first time I'd ever heard of a plantation wedding. I'm from Los Angeles. We don't have relics to

00:08:09.740 American slavery in the same way that you may have in like the South or the East. And I went

00:08:16.420 to college in DC. So, you know, there are not a ton of plantations in DC, although there are some

00:08:21.340 in, you know, the sort of broader DMV area.

00:08:25.000 Yeah, that was sort of the first time

00:08:26.320 I had ever kind of seen the plantation weddings thing.

00:08:28.720 And I thought it was just, you know,

00:08:30.300 above all, super duper weird.

00:08:32.400 But I know now that it's sort of like a,

00:08:34.780 it's a cultural touchstone

00:08:35.960 for a lot of people in the South, so.

00:08:39.440 Yeah, I grew up in the South.

00:08:40.940 I'm from Virginia

00:08:41.620 and I've never attended a wedding on a plantation,

00:08:44.880 but I've definitely been invited to them.

00:08:47.320 I do think there's this sort of unstated norm

00:08:50.380 that if you're from the South, it's a thing that happens.

00:08:54.660 I think that people don't really question it that much.

00:08:57.640 It just kind of becomes part of Southern culture,

00:09:01.260 and it becomes one of those things that people don't kind of make themselves

00:09:05.240 ask any kind of critical questions about or be critical of

00:09:07.840 because it's just part of being raised in the South.

00:09:11.200 It shouldn't be terribly surprising that when some people think of plantations,

00:09:15.000 they think of romantic tree-lined paths, elegant porches,

00:09:17.840 and hey, this would be a great place for a wedding.

00:09:21.020 We've removed these sites so far from their actual histories

00:09:24.320 and the legacies of the enslaved people who lived and died there.

00:09:27.900 And a lot of people in the South grow up not really thinking critically

00:09:31.060 about the legacy of slavery and the way it's built into the landscape in the South.

00:09:35.340 Visiting my parents in Virginia involves a drive down a highway

00:09:38.240 still named after Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy.

00:09:42.460 And to get to my high school, I drove down Monument Avenue every single day,

00:09:46.420 lined with statues of Confederate soldiers like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

00:09:50.380 And I never even really stopped to think about it until I was an adult.

00:09:53.660 I learned about a sanitized, friendly version of slavery and the Civil War.

00:09:57.560 And I'm not kidding. 0.75

00:09:58.780 Our elementary school even had Civil War Day every year,

00:10:02.080 where all the kids would either dress up as Confederate or Union soldiers

00:10:05.280 and recreate a march on the schoolyard.

00:10:08.740 Now, Jade grew up across the country in California,

00:10:10.920 and she grew up learning about the missions,

00:10:13.760 outposts built by Spain and California in the late 1700s,

00:10:16.900 where Indigenous people were forcibly relocated from their traditional homes

00:10:20.500 in the name of colonialism and Christianity.

00:10:23.460 In California, we have missions, which were essentially torture sites 0.80

00:10:27.940 for Native American Indigenous people, right?

00:10:30.080 And in school, you go and visit the missions.

00:10:33.020 In third grade, in Los Angeles Unified School District, you build a mission, right?

00:10:36.760 So there are all of these sorts of ways that human atrocities,

00:10:42.440 like slavery, are sort of built into our culture, built into our psyche.

00:10:46.420 And, you know, they're so normalized that it's, you know, you don't think about it all because it's just something you've grown up with.

00:10:53.880 Yeah, it's really, really interesting.

00:10:57.060 So tell me more about how the idea to get wedding websites to stop romanticizing plantations became a reality.

00:11:02.680 Yeah. So I had just come back. I had a baby in what year is that? 2019.

00:11:08.400 And so I had just come back from maternity leave and was talking to some colleagues.

00:11:14.440 one of our researchers Isha Raminajan you know was talking about had shared an article I think

00:11:21.700 about plantation weddings and so she was you know she was like you know what if we targeted you know

00:11:28.840 obviously this is something that's not right you know what if we targeted wedding planners

00:11:33.540 and so you know thinking about like sort of the strategy or you know for like how we can like

00:11:42.280 really affect change right is like we could target wedding planners um but there's not necessarily

00:11:47.840 like a wedding planners association you know that's like mandatory for wedding planners to

00:11:53.280 you know be a part of in order to plan weddings from my own experience planning a wedding I knew

00:11:59.120 that sort of like the big engines in wedding wedding planning um were these like um platforms

00:12:06.080 A lot of them started as magazines, print publications, and then transitioned to, to online digital publications. And so I sort of, I knew already, you know, the big ones. I knew The Knot, I knew Wedding Wire, I knew Zola, who had, you know, begun doing this, like, quite visible publicity campaign on the New York subways at the exact same time as this is happening about how they're sort of like a non-traditional modern wedding.

00:12:36.080 platform um martha stewart's weddings brides and so i was like i love the idea around plantation

00:12:42.560 weddings especially because this is something that you know we talk about in black community

00:12:47.220 all the time i'm sure if you search plantation weddings you know on twitter for the past 10

00:12:50.980 years there's been sort of like cyclical conversations about them like how crazy is

00:12:55.700 this why is this allowed etc um and so i was like i brought together isha and i brought together our

00:13:00.860 campaign manager at the time, Amani Brown, and was like, let's sit down and let's target these

00:13:06.220 wedding website platforms. They are the ones to go after because they are the ones, you know,

00:13:10.780 curating this vision and this aesthetic around what a wedding should be. Implantations are largely

00:13:17.120 a really, really big part of that aesthetic. And, you know, the more we sort of went into the

00:13:22.280 research, you know, the darker it kind of became. So, yeah, that's sort of how it got started. We,

00:13:28.460 you know what we we sent out letters to all of the platforms i just named uh two of them got

00:13:35.800 back to us uh the knot and wedding wire and pinterest and so you know i think the first

00:13:41.900 meeting we had was with pinterest with ifoma zoma who is an incredible she used to be at pinterest

00:13:47.080 and you know they treated her and other black employees really poorly and you know she left

00:13:51.940 quite publicly this year um um and if fomo you know was just such a champion of this cause you

00:13:58.980 know she was like as a black woman i you know it's not just about my job it's about like what

00:14:06.100 is important for my reputation and ethics and i this is not okay it's not okay that we push this

00:14:11.300 sort of plantation aesthetic on the platform and so what they did was they removed keywords um you

00:14:17.420 you were unable to search a list of plantation uh related keywords and then we met with the

00:14:22.480 knot and wedding wire and you know that was a longer set of conversations um uh but you know

00:14:29.280 we also came to sort of a an agreement which we developed some guidelines um around what was able

00:14:36.940 to be put on the website so you know they agreed to no longer feature um you know they'll do like

00:14:43.420 listicles or features of weddings they would no longer do original content featuring plantation

00:14:48.200 weddings which i thought was you know a big deal and the second piece that they did which i thought

00:14:53.160 was really really um important was they went they had a team who went through the directory

00:14:58.420 and sort of called descriptions you know they they removed words like antebellum they removed words

00:15:05.760 um that sort of played on the history of slavery you know they're probably the most disturbing part

00:15:12.280 of this whole thing is that what we found was that it's not only that slavery was a part of

00:15:21.040 this sort of project, right? It's like, in some of the cabins, they would advertise

00:15:26.000 slave cabins that had been there since the 1700s. And to me, I'm just like, so why on earth would

00:15:32.220 you want to get married? You know, next to places where people were beaten and abused and tortured

00:15:37.100 are enslaved and sexually assaulted. Jade's team found that wedding websites use terms like

00:15:42.760 romantic, charming, and elegant to describe plantations. But obviously, any romantization

00:15:49.280 of plantation life is just artifice to make it seem more charming and less like a torture site.

00:15:55.320 And even weirder, like a copy of something that never really existed in the first place,

00:15:59.800 some wedding venues in the South were built well after slavery ended, but were designed to look

00:16:05.100 like plantations and call themselves plantations, even though they were never actually working

00:16:09.720 plantations. What do you gain from calling your wedding venue that never housed enslaved people

00:16:15.560 a plantation? And what exactly are you trying to capitalize on by using that word to sell your

00:16:21.720 venue to prospective couples? Bobby Asaro owns Southern Oaks Plantation in New Orleans East.

00:16:27.280 It has never been a real plantation built only in the 60s to look like one. The lighting, the

00:16:34.060 pillows, the sofas. We did all of that to give it a more updated look. It just goes to show how

00:16:40.220 deeply the marketing around the fantasy of plantations and slavery as symbols of nostalgia

00:16:45.000 and elegance is intertwined with the American South. What we found was there were quite a few

00:16:50.500 venues who actually had never taken part. There had never been, you know, enslaved people on the

00:16:57.340 grounds, but they were also marketing this plantation fantasy, which, you know, I hadn't

00:17:02.880 realized was such a big part of so many American psyche. And it's this idea that, you know, in the

00:17:09.800 antebellum South for the Civil War, when Black people were enslaved, this was a great time of

00:17:15.000 gentility and grace, right? And so that is the aesthetic that these wedding website platforms

00:17:20.360 were playing on and that, you know, so many people plan weddings around. For me, when I hear about,

00:17:26.620 you know pre-civil war I think of pain I think of rape I think of abuse I think of torture

00:17:32.980 but for a lot of people that's not what they think of they think of a better time and so that part

00:17:40.380 and that piece was you know it was quite jarring to realize that you know a lot of what these

00:17:45.120 plantations were doing was they were marketing slavery as sort of a draw for a romantic place

00:17:50.120 to get married. Um, immediately after, you know, we had a exclusive with Buzzfeed that came out

00:17:57.020 about, uh, uh, the knot and wedding wire and Pinterest, you know, making these big changes.

00:18:02.280 What had been so interesting was that, you know, we sent, when we initially sent a letter to Zola,

00:18:06.600 for example, we had sent a list of examples. Um, and so I had just happened to be checking up on

00:18:13.680 the website, you know, just one evening and went to Zola's website and they had pulled all of the

00:18:18.440 mentions of plantations on the website, but they hadn't replied to us at all. And, you know,

00:18:23.860 that was a problem for a couple of reasons. The number one being is that we're actually not

00:18:28.060 interested at color, at color of change and people sort of just like pulling things and,

00:18:33.120 you know, doing like quick fixes. We want people to make commitments and change policies and rules

00:18:37.280 moving forward. So yeah, it's great that you couldn't search plantation at the time that I

00:18:41.600 was on Zola's website. But the problem actually is, is that, you know, there's no policy around

00:18:47.660 moving forward so if someone puts if a plantation venue put something up the next day it could be

00:18:52.420 featured um and as i said earlier i i was taking the subway to work every day and noticing that

00:18:58.240 zola had these all these ads about how they were so progressive and modern in a you know a wedding

00:19:03.480 platform for a new sort of partners and yet they were totally you know they were totally unwilling

00:19:09.500 to make you know they were unwilling to respond to us um and make these sort of policy changes

00:19:14.980 which is just, you know, a way that things are, you know, companies are so incongruent in marketing

00:19:19.140 and natural policies that they enact. And so when the BuzzFeed article came out, Zola said, yes,

00:19:24.900 we're not taking anything down, you know, we're not making any policies. You know, we agree that

00:19:28.840 this is, you know, we agree that people should be able to put up whatever they want. A couple

00:19:33.020 hours later, the New York Times did an article around it. And in that few hours, Zola made a

00:19:38.380 commitment in the New York Times article to no longer feature them. So, you know, that was sort

00:19:42.920 of a full circle moment. Brides and Martha Stewart's weddings also made these commitments as well

00:19:48.180 to, you know, when the articles came out to no longer feature plantation weddings content. So

00:19:53.080 that was a big deal. You know, it was a really meaningful moment. It's interesting to see that

00:19:57.440 it took that kind of high profile public pressure that originally they were sort of not responsive,

00:20:02.380 but when the New York Times writes about it, they seem to have changed their tune pretty quickly.

00:20:06.860 you know it just shows you know what we've seen i think even since the george floyd protest is that

00:20:14.260 outward communications are one thing what a corporation puts out to the world is one thing

00:20:18.920 and what they do behind the scenes with their own employees with the content that they push out is a

00:20:23.080 totally different thing you know we saw so many corporations you know color of change also has

00:20:27.380 this sort of camp called beyond the statement which is about how we've seen so many corporations

00:20:31.720 say oh black lives matter right but you know when you look at their companies they're paying their

00:20:36.520 low-wage workers who are disproportionately black you know ten dollars an hour it just doesn't add

00:20:40.900 up you know and so for you know the plantation weddings content um as well as just beyond the 0.95

00:20:45.980 statement stuff it's important that black people matter in life um as much as they matter in death

00:20:52.140 you know it's important that um our ancestors um the pain and the torture that they went through

00:20:59.060 is respected you know and that was a big piece of this plantation weddings campaign is that

00:21:03.540 these are sacred sites. These are sites where human atrocities took place. Planting more trees

00:21:11.100 and, you know, pointing to the beautiful architecture does not change the fact that

00:21:15.800 these are places, it's not like slavery just happened there. The plantations were built to

00:21:21.700 house slavery. You know, it's very intentional what was happening. Let's take a quick break.

00:21:26.620 We'll be right back.

00:21:56.620 bell.za for details and to check availability bell connection is everything run a business

00:22:02.180 and not thinking about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts than ad supported

00:22:07.540 streaming music from spotify and pandora and as the number one podcaster iheart's twice as large

00:22:12.660 as the next two combined so whatever your customers listen to they'll hear your message

00:22:16.780 plus only iheart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio think podcasting

00:22:21.960 can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get

00:22:28.760 started. That's 844-844-iHeart. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for

00:22:36.460 nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should

00:22:42.440 have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember

00:22:48.540 this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with

00:22:57.400 survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt

00:23:04.680 i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they

00:23:12.660 are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's

00:23:18.420 taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor

00:23:24.660 files with elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

00:23:31.320 if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality

00:23:35.720 welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club,

00:23:42.560 part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks

00:23:46.500 Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo,

00:23:51.300 and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations

00:23:55.500 everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.

00:24:00.660 From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

00:24:05.720 nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:24:12.040 characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,

00:24:17.060 smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,

00:24:22.420 you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,

00:24:27.040 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

00:24:35.720 and we're back. Wedding websites not romanticizing plantations may seem like a small change,

00:24:41.600 but sometimes a small concrete action can lead to a wider, more meaningful cultural shift

00:24:46.040 in individual people's attitudes. And even if you've never really thought about why having a

00:24:51.180 wedding on a plantation isn't a great idea, platforms like Pinterest not romanticizing

00:24:55.680 plantation weddings can create a larger shift in how everyone thinks about slavery and the way it

00:25:00.100 shows up in our culture. This is not new work for Color of Change. In addition to more traditional

00:25:05.040 activism around social change. They also work to create change using popular culture. In the wake

00:25:10.520 of protests around police killings, for instance, they work to have television shows that glorify

00:25:15.340 policing as an entertainment device, like cops and live PD, taken off the air. You mentioned some of

00:25:21.580 the other work that Color of Change is involved in, and I like that in addition to sort of some

00:25:26.560 of the more traditional things that we think of in terms of demanding accountability, Color of Change

00:25:30.780 also tries to create change through leading on these cultural things. So, you know, like the

00:25:36.300 plantation weddings, I guess, why is that so important in conjunction with some of the more

00:25:41.480 traditional ways that you might think of as getting justice? Also pushing forward these

00:25:46.660 cultural changes and getting people to sort of rethink their own attitudes around how they

00:25:51.420 understand and, you know, deal with Black folks. Yeah, you know, culture is a really, really big

00:26:00.260 piece of of color of changes work it always has been you know from us sort of like getting glenn

00:26:06.100 beck um getting glenn beck show advertisers to pull out years ago to you know our work this year

00:26:12.500 to get cops and live pd off the air um the culture work is is really important and you know black

00:26:19.520 people uh we are you know the culture creators in this country right um and i you know i really view

00:26:26.820 our culture work as like not only uplifting and centering and claiming black culture, which we do

00:26:31.380 through a lot in our like Hollywood work and our storytelling work, but it's also about 0.69

00:26:36.540 supplanting like the white centered cultural symbols that really harm us. You know, I'm sure 0.55

00:26:43.100 so many of, you know, this like plantation weddings thing leads into like such a larger problem,

00:26:47.420 right? Which is the way that slavery is taught in schools and the ways that people think about it.

00:26:53.380 I mean, we had a few years ago, um, a textbook company, you know, put out a textbook that

00:26:58.660 said slavery is, was essentially like compared it to being an intern.

00:27:02.360 Right.

00:27:02.960 And so because, um, the true story of slavery has been neutralized in so many ways, um,

00:27:09.260 I, you know, I think if people were really new in detail, the sort of things that happened

00:27:13.960 on plantations outside of like, you know, maybe viewing 12 years a slave, you know,

00:27:19.240 We're seeing glory. I think they would really think twice about revering these sorts of symbols.

00:27:26.540 You know. Yeah, it's the cultural work is incredibly important because culture shapes policy.

00:27:34.960 Right. And, you know, we see the movement of the past 10 years, you know, as I said, the black youth movement.

00:27:39.960 um um we see how over time you know uh black organizers and black groups shifted the culture

00:27:48.720 where you know you're on it's it it is no longer controversial to say black lives matter right

00:27:53.940 you couldn't say that though in 2013 it was a quite a controversial thing to say um and so we

00:28:00.560 see that culture like you know primes the environment um for you know the policies and

00:28:07.020 changes that need to happen. And, you know, culture work is also, it's important and, you know,

00:28:12.760 the work that affects the material conditions also matters a whole lot too. And what I love

00:28:18.240 about COC is it's not one or the other. We're definitely concerned with both and moving

00:28:22.340 campaigns on both, on both, in both areas. Definitely. Do you feel that the work that

00:28:28.540 you did getting these wedding websites to change the way they talk about slavery was a successful,

00:28:34.080 a successful example of that kind of cultural shift that you're describing?

00:28:38.660 Yeah. And, you know, I think it's also what's so important about having, you know,

00:28:44.320 Black leaders, you know, at a powerful organization, you know, Black organizations really matter.

00:28:50.540 And this is something that we took up because we knew how important it was. We, you know,

00:28:54.820 so many of us maybe have been invited to a wedding or, you know, or been on a plantation tour

00:29:01.960 as a child, you know, in school and sort of felt deeply uncomfortable about the ways that

00:29:06.760 our ancestors were disrespected and the pain and the torture that they went through was not

00:29:10.820 respected. And so, yeah, I think it was an incredibly meaningful moment.

00:29:16.900 Did the websites who changed their policies around plantations face any kind of criticism

00:29:20.360 or blowback? One of the most interesting things, honestly, that I found was that,

00:29:24.860 you know, there was quite a bit, you know, I think a lot of people love to play the devil's

00:29:28.160 advocate and sort of comments on articles and things but when we were talking to the not in

00:29:32.620 wedding wire um uh the following january this all happened in november so talking to them the

00:29:37.880 following january i asked have you have you all received any like blowback or criticism they said

00:29:43.860 none at all right so this none no one has said anything wrong we haven't had our inbox you know

00:29:50.120 no one's anything in our inbox it has been a decision that people like totally agree make

00:29:54.700 sense um and so for me that was such like a validating moment um you know for a lot of

00:30:01.220 corporations don't you know they make or don't make decisions um based on perceived what people

00:30:07.780 what will people say right and you know they have this idea in their mind sort of the same way that

00:30:13.440 you know uh candidates for office have this idea in their mind of like the standard american right

00:30:18.840 which is, you know, an extremely white conservative person, when the truth of the matter is that, you know, people have diversity of thought.

00:30:27.540 The past 10 years has shifted the way that people think around issues of justice in such a large way that, you know,

00:30:35.540 this was sort of a needed next step more than, you know, an earth shaking, you know, Brown versus Board of Education decision.

00:30:43.540 So I read a lot of angry comments saying that you all were trying to have plantations destroyed or burned down or closed.

00:30:50.220 And there's really no truth in that.

00:30:52.160 Literally, we never said that, you know, like that to me was the most shocking thing.

00:30:56.380 I'm like, oh, my gosh, like we we literally didn't say anything to plantations at all.

00:31:01.460 We're not trying to, you know, what we have found through talking to quite a few black historians and curators who actually work on these plantations is what we really need is for federal and state governments to invest money.

00:31:13.160 um in these plantations and and keep them as like museums right they need to be designated as

00:31:19.640 designated as um historical places and places of note and so they can get funding so that they can

00:31:25.640 be kept open what we want is for people to hear the actual history of what happened what we don't

00:31:30.140 want is someone uh dancing a baby got back uh on the grave of the slavery you know that's what we

00:31:36.220 But, you know, we want these we want plantations to stay open as as memorials to the pain and suffering that that the American people and the American government put black Americans through.

00:31:49.860 That is what we want. More after a quick break. 1.00

00:31:58.120 Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense.

00:32:02.320 Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite?

00:32:05.620 Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

00:32:09.920 And will you finish Episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

00:32:13.820 Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month.

00:32:18.420 Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto-pay credit.

00:32:22.560 Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

00:32:25.260 Bell. Connection is everything.

00:32:27.500 Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?

00:32:30.300 Think again.

00:32:31.320 More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

00:32:36.000 And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

00:32:40.060 So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

00:32:43.440 Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.

00:32:47.740 Think podcasting can help your business?

00:32:49.680 Think iHeart.

00:32:50.740 Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

00:32:52.920 Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com.

00:32:55.500 That's iHeartAdvertising.com.

00:32:57.460 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:33:03.780 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,

00:33:10.220 pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:33:16.260 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:33:23.220 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.

00:33:26.520 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:33:32.920 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

00:33:40.820 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:33:49.980 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:33:55.900 See you between the pages.

00:33:57.940 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:34:03.860 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:34:10.240 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:34:13.780 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.99

00:34:19.380 Shut up. Don't say anything. 0.99

00:34:22.020 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:34:26.560 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:34:31.140 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:34:38.560 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:34:42.540 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:34:45.960 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:34:49.100 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:35:01.320 Let's get right back to it.

00:35:03.420 So how should we think about plantations still standing today?

00:35:07.300 Jade says part of the process involves reimagining our current understanding of how plantations are used and the role they should play in our culture going forward.

00:35:15.600 And some plantations are doing that kind of work already.

00:35:18.720 At Bell Mead Plantation in Nashville,

00:35:21.180 tour guide Bridget Jones realized the tour focused mostly on wineries

00:35:24.820 and the lavish weddings that took place there.

00:35:27.560 So she left her job, went to grad school to get a master's degree, 0.79

00:35:31.180 and became the plantation's first ever director of African American studies.

00:35:35.640 She now works to uncover never-before-seen histories of the plantation

00:35:38.860 and incorporates them into the plantation's tours.

00:35:41.300 I got 400 years by working here.

00:35:43.820 And once I got promoted, I was like, this is the moment for this narrative of slaves to really come to the forefront.

00:35:52.280 Now, in absence of the kind of government funding Jade was describing earlier, a few plantations still need to do weddings and events to make money to fund the kind of curation work that Bridget Jones does at Belle Mead.

00:36:03.980 There are a lot of black historians on plantations who are doing really, really incredible work.

00:36:08.760 um but what we like i said what we found from talking to them is that um in order to pay their

00:36:14.300 salaries a lot of the time they the plantations do have to be open for events right and so um i

00:36:20.940 will say that's in the minority right like not every plantation is is trying to do this like

00:36:25.540 you know incredible truth-telling history that's that's not the reality for most of them but there

00:36:31.100 are a few where black historians and curators are on the premises and they be you know in order to

00:36:37.240 to sort of keep the plantation open for, to tell this true history. 0.80

00:36:40.600 They do need to have, they need to have weddings in order to bring in income.

00:36:46.120 And this is why reimagining the role that plantations play in our culture is so important.

00:36:51.040 Right now, plantations sanitize, or at least compartmentalize,

00:36:55.120 the history of what actually happened on plantations

00:36:57.560 in order to appeal to couples looking for a romantic wedding venue.

00:37:01.320 And for a small number of those plantations, like Belle Meade, 0.83

00:37:04.320 that money goes into paying for curation that tells the truth about slavery.

00:37:08.380 But if we were able to designate and preserve plantations as historical landmarks,

00:37:12.520 they'd be funded as such,

00:37:13.920 which means they wouldn't need to rely on sanitizing the legacy of slavery

00:37:17.260 and the literal song of dance of the wedding industry to stay open.

00:37:20.960 We could have a real chance at using plantations to properly educate people about

00:37:25.440 and memorialize slavery.

00:37:28.180 The Whitney Plantation Museum in Louisiana is the only plantation in the state

00:37:32.740 with an exclusive focus on the lives of enslaved people.

00:37:36.120 Here's their current founder, John Cummings.

00:37:39.240 We can't rewrite history,

00:37:41.780 but we can correct some of the evils of history.

00:37:46.540 And the number one tool that we have is education.

00:37:51.920 They went viral this summer for a social media post

00:37:54.660 explaining why they would never hold a wedding,

00:37:56.900 writing,

00:37:57.740 Our tour has always focused on the brutal labor 0.78

00:38:00.080 and stolen freedom of those that created vast economic wealth for the enslaving families. 0.95

00:38:05.480 We do not glamorize the big house or the grounds.

00:38:08.720 In addition to our mission to educate visitors and the larger community about slavery and

00:38:12.380 its legacies, this is a site of memory and reverence.

00:38:16.040 So what if that was the popular understanding of the role of plantations in today's culture?

00:38:21.260 Not whitewashing them and selling them as romantic sites of a bygone era for happy couples,

00:38:25.800 but an actual place to memorialize and come to terms with the true legacy of slavery.

00:38:31.840 Until then, something we can all do right now is spend time reflecting critically about the ways the legacy of slavery shows up in our culture and our lives.

00:38:40.740 We saw a very famous couple, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.

00:38:44.720 They had a wedding on a plantation.

00:38:46.240 They later apologized for it and donated money to, I think, the NAACP and had a different, smaller ceremony later on.

00:38:53.000 what do you say to someone who maybe had a plantation wedding maybe they didn't think

00:38:57.680 about the implications of doing it what's what is your like how should they be thinking about

00:39:01.860 their wedding going forward or what would you tell them well first of all the thing that's so

00:39:06.560 strange about the Blakely of Ryan Reynolds thing is he's Canadian and she's from LA so really

00:39:11.900 confused about like why they want to have a wedding on a plantation it's not a cultural

00:39:16.240 touchstone for either of them um um that thing that piece has always really kind of disturbed me

00:39:22.760 like neither of them have ties you know to plantations so i thought that was really weird

00:39:28.340 um you know i you know i think reflecting on the experience and taking something away from it is

00:39:37.260 enough you know i don't think they need to renounce their wedding or burn the photo books right um but

00:39:43.860 think in general um transformative reflection reflection can be really really transformative

00:39:50.140 and i think undergoing that process is important i'm not going to say oh now make a donation a

00:39:55.380 color change because you had a wedding on a plantation i mean it would be nice but you know

00:40:01.080 that that's not what we're looking for we're looking you know we're looking for people to

00:40:04.640 really look deeply and look inward about the ways that they have you know perpetuated um the legacy

00:40:11.300 of slavery, you know, and that is one way, but there are plenty of other ways. You know, maybe

00:40:16.600 you go to, maybe your kid goes to a high school where they sing Dixie, you know, like these are

00:40:21.540 the things to be reflecting on and looking for other ways that the legacy of slavery shows up

00:40:26.180 in your life in ways that may not be respectful or reverential. When Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds

00:40:33.500 first spoke out about their wedding with regret, I have to admit I was a little skeptical. How could

00:40:38.960 they only now be realizing this wasn't a respectful thing to do, I wondered. But honestly, it's never

00:40:44.980 too late for anyone to start thinking critically about the role slavery plays in our culture

00:40:48.720 and history. Maybe as individuals, we can't turn every still-standing plantation into a site for

00:40:55.820 respectful education about slavery. But we can work to unpack our own roles in honoring the

00:41:02.000 legacy of enslaved people that our country was built on.

00:41:09.220 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

00:41:12.720 You can reach us at hello at tangody.com.

00:41:14.980 You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com.

00:41:18.420 There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

00:41:21.160 It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:41:23.880 Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

00:41:25.940 Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

00:41:28.560 Michael Amato is our contributing producer.

00:41:30.560 I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

00:41:32.000 If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

00:41:35.960 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:41:53.820 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:41:56.700 Guaranteed human.

There Are No Girls on the Internet - September 22, 2020

Don't Have a Wedding on a Plantation

Episode Stats

Transcript