The Burning of Nottoway Plantation House Isn't Tragic
And I shed a grand total of zero tears over it
The fire that consumed the house at Nottoway Plantation was angry. After the fire department thought they had it contained, the fire laughed and challenged them to another round. It was out for revenge. Fire is also a cleansing agent and burning down a building where horrible things happened and was currently still being used for despicable purposes, and so the fire decided to rid the landscape in White Castle, Louisiana, of it’s racism palace, as the meme above so aptly words it.
Watching the reactions on social media, there were several song lyrics and a movie quote that came to me. It seems that the minds of others went to just the same ones as me. The first was from the movie “The Lorax” where it seemed appropriate to sing “let it burn, let it burn, let it fucking burn,” or to take on “Let it Go.” For me there was also “Funhouse” by Pink that really seemed to have some lyrics that might do this event justice.
If it wasn’t clear before now, I’m a fan of the fire. It appeared to be on a mission and it did what it set out to do. I cannot pretend that I’m sad at the loss of a “valuable historic building,” because the wickedness of the place makes any of it’s supposed beauty irrelevant. There isn’t beauty in slavery and racism.
It’s not and never has been about it’s value as a history lesson for those who are sad it was destroyed, it was about no longer being able to profit off of the blood, sweat, and tears of those who built the house and were enslaved there. Thanks to the fire, people will no longer be able to get married at this place. Perfect! The fire has done society a favor.
It’s not about history, it’s about capitalism and white supremacy, and the only ones who pretend differently are the ones who will take any opportunity no matter how unethical, to profit off of someone else’s hell. A lot of people still seem to believe that there is a literal hell full of fire, so why are these people upset when hell comes to consume some of the evil that’s still on the earth?
It’s frustrating, but not at all surprising, to see how many people are playing the “tragic loss of a historical building” card. After all, Shiloh Hendrix threw an extremely racist temper tantrum that went viral and white supremacists gave that bitch over three quarters of a million dollars. The United States of America has a racism problem, and these sorts of things are the evidence of such. There’s no denying it.
The crocodile tears running down the faces of racists over the destruction of the plantation house do not move me one bit. I know what these people are about, I was raised in a white supremacist, Nazi household. I had it all ingrained in me, and to an extreme.
My “parents” and church taught me that black people were sub-human. When Australia began to recognize the traditional owners of the land and changed many of the place names back (such as Ayer’s Rock back to Uluru), my people refused to call them anything but the colonizer names. I have absolutely zero patience for white supremacist bullshit these days.
One of the things I do with the horrible things I was taught is to point out racism whenever I see it, because a lot of people don’t recognize that things are racist and if they do, they won’t acknowledge it. I challenge people to think in different ways and to acknowledge and embrace the truth. If people, specifically those whose ancestors were colonizers (white people, I’m talking to you), were to decide to be honest, think of the racial healing that might be possible.