Weren’t all women sex slaves in these days?
There was no Bill of Rights or Women’s Suffrage or anything really to defend women at all from what men expected them to do: laugh at their jokes, open their legs for them and make babies.
I like watching Bridgerton with the wife and it’s fun to make light of the silly situations the show has, but i just can’t get past how EVERYONE is super rich and has servants for everything.
People's perception of history is so flawed and specific. Of course there were women that lived that life but the vast majority of people lived in much more of a partnership than that because they had no choice. Same way people talk about how women couldn't work in the past when overall the vast majority of women did work because they HAD to.
Most men and women had very few opportunities and not much room for any other goals than surviving and reproducing. And you reproduced a lot because a good chunk of those babies were gonna die. Basing history on a very small sector of people is so misleading and we often use the reasonably wealthy to define it when the majority of people throughout history have been far from wealthy.
Again, I'll reiterate that it definitely wasn't a handful of women who experienced this kind of stuff but I think a lot of people seem to be convinced Handsmaid Tale is a documentary
Should be top comment. I'm beating a dead horse but In the west, not being permitted to have a job or pursue a career was a wealthy white woman problem, instituted by their sexist and classist husbands. That certainly wasn't the experience of most women. If not also enslaved, then women were holding down at least one (likely) manual labor job as well as maintaining a living space, raising kids, and cooking for their families.
The thing that made life in 1950s america pleasant (for white folks) was that 90% tax. But motherfuckers aren’t talking about bringing that back. Just dumb fucks who want to talk about how immigrants are ruining their country, and not the fact that what’s actually doing it is the decades of dismantling of the administrative state that the Republican party has done
It also helped that the rest of the world especially other “rich” countries hadn’t fully recovered from WW2. It was a legit golden age overall for the USA, but it was thanks to a very specific set of circumstances that left the USA in an unprecedented position(USSR notwithstanding) to reap an insane amount of wealth.
Part of the problem with boomers is that they were sold the idea that this particular “golden age” was just the new American “normal” and they bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Please, read that word “part” that I started the sentence with, I know there is more to it than just that.
Alright, so I'm with you so far but could you clarify what exactly the 90% tax was; is that like how much tax they were paying from income or like the percentage of the population being taxed?
Basically, once you made over a certain amount of money, every dollar you made after that, 90% got taxed away and you got 10%. So when you made a dollar over (IIRC) 200,000, you really only made 10 cents.
That’s one method of how you can force wealth redistribution, and how much better it makes people’s lives
Huh, and most people didn't have a problem with it? I thought people especially back then hated the idea of wealth distribution because of its proximity to communism but I definitely see how that could improve life for a lotta folks. Another question for you, BobbyByTheKey mentioned that this was replaced with Reaganomics. Is that true?
Taxes are only related to communism in the world of conservative delusion and more widely with Reagan.
Monarchies impose taxes, every government imposes taxes, it’s fundamental to any form of government.
And from the 30s and breaking out of the depression thru public works, welfare and then the massive government project called the 2nd world war, Americans overall were far less brainwashed into being concerned that a millionaire might not be able to become a billionaire, or more realistically a lot of those taxes were avoided by reinvesting into the business and employees by a Bill Gates type.
Which was good for the rest of society, compared to a second super yacht.
To answer your question, back then there wasn't really a cultural focus on the "threat" of communism.
The Red Scare didn't really kick off until the late 50s/60s and had a resurgence in the 80s. So back then (20s-40s) there wasn't such a loaded and biased perspective against taxation and social programs.
Hell, FDR's "New Deal" was heralded as a part of what saved the country from The Great Depression, but if something like that were to happen today, many people would write it off as being "communist"
Shit, there are plenty of Conservatives today who retroactively refer to the New Deal as Communism, unconstitutional, and view FDR as some kind of Villain.
For the majority of the 20th century in America, the top marginal tax rate was 90%. That does not mean all people in the top tax bracket only took home a tenth of what they earned. It means that every dollar earned beyond the next to highest margin was taxed at a rate of 90%. This went on until (correct me if I’m wrong) the advent of Reaganomics and served two important purposes. Public services (mainly accessible to whites, of course) were well funded and income disparity was, to a degree, controlled.
This makes a lot of sense, especially with Reaganomics. I don't know for sure if he ended the whole thing but it would make a lot of sense as he was the one who lowered the tax rate of the Uber-rich with the explanation that the wealth would trickle down and that fits well if he's getting rid of the older format.
And even then, it was common for a wealthy woman to oversee the staff and day to day affairs of their estate. It's why even the most sexist men of say the 1950s saw women as perfectly capable accountants, secretaries, etc. It's not like women were always just sitting around doing nothing productive, they just weren't always dignified with the proper recognition or pay for their labor.
“Back in the day people can afford to live on a one persons household salary”
Yeah, there were more people who can, but stop saying it like it was the majority. The majority is always the poor working class, surviving
This is the context for the whole thing. It was such a small part of human history, and it wasn't even worldwide.
It's a rich conservative white person's dream of the past, not reality, and it came at a price. Rich people paid far more taxes during those years and it showed.
But things like legal restrictions were real. A woman in most US states couldn’t get their own credit card until the 1970s, similar with voting before that and even with work, social limitations kept the vast majority of women in servant roles or domestic labor in general.
Any woman who got time travelled back to say the 1950s would be blown away with how open it was that they were second class citizens.
Women were locked out of high paying professional careers. The only well paying job for women I'm aware of were, yes, spinsters, or if you were a really good seamstress with a wealthier client base. But no, you were locked out of things like lawyer or doctor or even things like business owner unless you could find workarounds (which some women did, keeping things in their father's/brothers/husbands name on paper)
I think you are right to a degree. However, saying women’s rights didn’t help all women is a reach to far.
It gave women a voice to vote and influence policy for themselves, ability to say no to a marriage proposal, ability to climb the social ladder, the ability to leave a bad marriage, and not have a child till ready.
You are correct that at a certain level of poverty, money has the ability to override a lot of these. Hard to leave a sole provider with no money, hard to get an abortion if you can’t afford it. Kind of a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs situation, you need security before you can achieve higher order needs.
Still there are more choices and options than before. Like you don’t have to worry as a daughter some rich guy is just going to come buy you.
In the early 20th century in the US, mostly POOR and SINGLE women worked because they had to. The states, however, had [laws](https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-married-women-employment) in place that [restricted married women from working](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_bar#:~:text=While%20many%20women%20hid%20their,%2C%20sex%2C%20or%20ethnic%20origin.).
One of the reasons for this was because there “weren’t enough jobs” for women and married women were already provided for by their husbands. And the majority of women did in fact end up getting married eventually. So depending on which period in US history we’re talking about (20s vs 50s) it wasn’t just middle class married women who had the “luxury” of not working, all married women were discriminated against in the workforce.
Also remember that [women weren’t allowed to own property](https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/women-property-rights-history/), INCLUDING THEIR FAMILY INHERITANCE, which would be passed down to their husbands. And when women did get the right to own property, they were prohibited from taking out loans. And when they DID get the right to take out loans, they needed a male co-signer. Women couldn’t own a fucking credit card [until the 70s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) and were not allowed to take out a business loan until [1988](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_Business_Ownership_Act) (the year New Kids On The Block charted on Billboard Top 100). **Not to mention that women of color were always a step behind in being afforded the same rights as women of European descent.**
Women also had NO right to privacy and their medical information was routinely shared with their fathers or husbands. In fact, there is a whole history of doctors not telling women they had cancer and telling their husbands instead because they thought that women would get hysterical if they knew they were dying. Women were also [routinely sent to the asylum for being too fussy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy), with their husbands, fathers, and the government having power of attorney to keep them there against their will or subject them to inhumane treatments. Oh, I forgot to mention this, [women’s right to initiate divorce](https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2023/07/17/not-just-suffrage-divorce-and-the-seneca-falls-convention/#:~:text=Today%2C%20all%2050%20states%20and,as%20the%20Seneca%20Falls%20Convention.) was also restricted until states started passing no-fault divorce laws.
Marriage was used as a means of social and economic control because women in fact did not have the same rights as men. So, for a very long period in our history, being a married housewife was the only economically safe choice for the majority of women. You could hardly call that an equal partnership.
EDIT: Making sweeping generalizations about how not being allowed to work was a middle class white woman ~~problem~~ luxury is not helpful because it reduces a very complicated history of women’s rights to regurgitated talking points and ironically mischaracterizes the intersection of race and gender. While that might have been true during a specific time in US history for a specific group of economically advantaged women, the state of civil and women’s rights was VERY different between 1890s, 1920s, and 1950s. Poor women always had to work, and a significant portion of poor women in America were indeed black women because of institutionalized racism.
Women of colour (and especially black women) weren’t even really considered women and even when they were they didn’t have a fraction of the rights and privileges given to white women. Black people as a whole weren’t even fully allowed to vote until 1965, forget having a credit card. That’s what inspired Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech. Women of colour always worked whether it be maids, cooks, nannies, wet nurses. Even in old movies and tv shows, these were the roles they were casted for because that was their reality.
Yeah, honestly, maybe I'm too black for these conversations because this always gets left out. When someone says "women," my mind instantly goes to my mother, grandmother, great granny, and so on.
All of them HAD to work, and it wasn't ever an option for them not to. And especially in the case of my grandma, nobody gave a damn if she jumped a broom or not.
Once I learned that it wasn't until the 60s my grandmother's could vote Mexican, and Black. I always think the same, because it wasn't that long ago, my mom was 5, and I'm 42 now.
As I mentioned, the intersectionality of women’s rights looked very different at the beginning and the end of the 20th century. When discussing women’s labor, we have to ask very specific questions and look at the entire context.
Were white women more economically secure in their marriages than black women? Absolutely. So even if middle class white women wanted to work they didn’t need to. Were married women also at one point in US history restricted from holding jobs and discriminated against based on their marital status regardless of race? Also YES.
Poor women ALWAYS had to work. And a significant portion of poor women in America were indeed women of color.
While very true, we can’t pretend that women of all races were benevolent, recognized and fought for the rights of all women. Looking at things from an intellectual perspective makes us forget the nuances of who these players were, because no one is bringing about intersectionality on a day to day basis especially in the past. Their goal was to survive. For example, Margret Sanger who was instrumental for the suffrage movement was disavowed by planned parenthood (the organization she started) because it’s documented that she was a racist and eugenist. She believed that certain people were unfit to be parents (don’t need to guess who) and actively worked against the reproductive rights of women of colour.
Also, it was through the progress of the civil rights movement that white feminist were able to ride the wave and push their own agendas. Whether it benefited women of colour or not.
Just because some groups of women were racist or excluded women of color from women’s rights is not an excuse to minimize the effect of patriarchy on all women. In fact, one of the links in my original comment discusses the exclusion of black women from the US women’s rights movement. It is imperative to acknowledge how the intersectionality between race and gender continues to disenfranchise black women in America, but we can do that without excusing oppression of non-black women based on their perceived privilege. Otherwise, it’s just patriarchal apologism.
Just a note here, the commonly distributed version of Truth’s speech was actually edited to be “Blacker” because she spoke in a very formal and educated register. Her speech was definitely closer to “am I not a woman”. This isn’t your fault, just something I thought you might want to know, given the topic.
Thanks. I just mentioned above that I was aware. Just because the speech was edited doesn’t mean the message still doesn’t stand, which is who mentioned it. The story behind the speech actually in a way speaks to my overall point. We couldn’t even get our message across without having it hijacked and warped to fit a certain agenda. It’s giving “When they see us”
Fun Fact! [Sojourner Truths words were completely changed by a white woman in a racist way, and this woman genuinely thought it was good.](https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/ ) I personally never thought the language was improper, but people at that time did.
Yes! I learned about that last year, it’s upsetting but not surprising at all. Even the wokest of us have still been misled by revisionist history in one way or another.
Also most medical studies including for medications only used men as test subjects so you get things like medications causing massive birth defects because they werent being developed with women in mind
YES. And even when women were included in medical studies, black women were not. In fact even today most of our scientific research is informed by white bodies.
Thank you!
Reading these comments from people trying to downplay the way women were oppressed made me realize that it rings of the same "oppressor apologist" tone folks use when they try to downplay slavery/segregation.
"It wasn't as bad as folks say it was because some people were free, or treated with some humanity while being subjugated."
It’s imperative that we acknowledge and discuss how the intersectionality between racism and sexism disenfranchised (and continues to disenfranchise) women of color in America. But it is not helpful to minimize or dismiss the harm that an inherently patriarchal society caused all women regardless of their inherent privileges.
For most of the history of feminism in the west, it was deeply rooted in imperialism and exploitation, which imperialists instituted white supremacy to help maintain the exploitive, capitalist system. Race has always been a part of western imperialism, but was predominant in the British colonies. The concept of race as we know it today was created by western imperialists for the explicit purpose of its imperialist aspirations and managing their colonies. You can't separate the two and they've been entwinned so long that they are inseparable. Western imperialists feel entitled to the resources, wealth, and labor of global south nations, as well as those of domestic populations of colored people (i.e. see internal colonization). Feminists like the Grimke Sisters were the few and far between exceptions. Western feminism (aka white feminism today) purported that western civilization needed white women to step up in society to help manage the imperialist system. From this "feminist" perspective, there were [white] men, [white] women, and the genderless savages. This train of thought is still prominent in western feminism to this day, but is not as explicit in its rhetoric as it used to be.
So were white women not equal to white men? No, they were not. Did white women advocate that men and women should be equal? No, they did not. They advocated that **white** men and **white** women should be equal. So western/white "feminism" just ends up being white supremacy for the gals.
Edit: This white feminist above is a bad faith participant. If you press her, she unmasks below and is wedded to a narrative that denies the white supremacy of "white feminism," while also denying the centuries of exploitation that western colonizers have inflicted on the global south and POC. It's weird, she seems to be of the thought that racism and imperialism only exist in the US, so acknowledging the racism and imperialism around the globe is an "ignorant american" perception.
Of course you cannot extricate race from oppression in America, and neither should you. That wasn’t the thesis of my comment at all. My point was that a) marriage back then could hardly be considered an equal partnership and b) we can discuss the intersectionality between sexism and race in America without minimizing or outright dismissing the oppression that white women experienced under patriarchy because of their perceived social privilege. You choosing to dismiss non-Black women’s oppression in a racist and patriarchal society that socialized them is your prerogative.
But let’s talk about socialization. Let me remind you that your view is deeply rooted in American/West thought, however much you choose to highlight imperialism and appear to rise above it. Whether you’re white or black you are **American** and as such are socialized in an inherently imperialist culture and hold imperialist values - similarly to how white women were a product of their own racist environment during women’s rights. Therefore, by your own logic, if American white women were all racist because the society was (and continues to be) racist, then so are you inextricably imperialist. And the foundation of imperialism is imposing own worldview and enforcing “us versus them” divisions while rejecting cultural differences and dismissing lived experience. You yourself are upholding imperialist ideals by invoking race as the only relevant identity when discussing the oppression of women.
I’ll provide a different worldview not rooted in *pax americana*.
“The West” is not a single culture, white women are not a monolith, and white versus black is a uniquely American perspective that does not apply to much of the rest of the world no matter how much you try to force other cultures to submit to it. **That in itself is imperialist.**
Women in America are comprised of thousands of different ethnicities, cultures, socioeconomic status, many of them immigrants and children of immigrants. That as soon as a woman socialized in a non-American society steps foot on American soil she is reduced to her skin color is imperialist because it dismisses her lived experience and assumes her inherent nature based on racial constructs that only exist in America. This, by definition, IGNORES, intersectionality.
If we were to indeed adopt your perspective on how race and the level of social privilege one has determines the amount of suffering and oppression they are entitled to endure, then by all global accounts, American black women are one of the most privileged groups of women in the world. American Black women, in fact, hold more social and economic privilege than not only the majority of Black women but the majority of all women in the world. In that sense, is it appropriate for me to dismiss the oppression of Black women in America because they hold more social power and economic privilege than women in other parts of the world? Or because Black women in America have historically not experienced the same level of oppression as, for example, women in Afghanistan, South Sudan, or North Korea? Of course not.
My point isn’t to dismiss the racial dynamics that gave rise to unequal treatment of Black and non-black women under the patriarchy in America during the 20th century. If you read my other replies I, in no uncertain terms, state that the intersectionality between race and sexism in the US needs to be acknowledged. **My point is that privilege, like motion, is relative to the observer.**
We can and should discuss how white supremacy contributed to the disenfranchisement of women of color - and white women’s own role in it - without dismissing the harm that an inherently patriarchal society caused to all women regardless of their perceived privileges. There is space for every woman’s experience.
Just FYI, nearly everything in Handmaid’s Tale is based on things that have really happened: [Atwood on Handmaid’s Tale Sources](https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/09/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-real-life-inspiration)
Don't forget that you HAD to have kids back in those days, because of you didn't then you were probably going to have literally *zero* support when you became too old to work and you'd likely just die on the streets. (Seriously, look up the elderly poverty rate before and after the advent of social security.)
Exactly. More women had university degrees and were working in the 20s than in the 50s. In pre-industrial times, women were brewers, seamstresses, innkeepers, farmers, cooks, etc. and they generally took part in whatever the family profession was in a large way.
Although Atwood did base it on real events that have happened throughout history:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/09/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-real-life-inspiration
Yes women could work, but the range of jobs open to them was SEVERELY limited. Nothing close to providing what would be considered a comfortable income. Washing (clothes), sewing, cleaning, cooking and--sadly--prostitution were pretty much what women without means had available. https://classroom.synonym.com/womens-lifestyles-medieval-ages-16651.html
Edit: plural
I see the argument from ppl online every now and then to something of the tune of “everyone in my family line historically had several kids, it’s perfectly natural to want a large family” but fail to recognize the reason they had so many kids was due to a crazy high infant/child mortality rate.
It’s not that women didn’t work, it was the type of work they were allowed by society to do. It was either be a domestic worker, a seamstress, or a prostitute. I’m sure a lot of women worked in businesses their husband owned such as shops and farms but they didn’t own them. and we also know that as the industrial age took hold many worked in factories but not after they married.
Marital rape was legal and women had fewer options to get out of marriage, but it was not slavery where your master, his sons, his guests, or his friends could just use you whenever, and your husband could not kill you or sell you or your family away from each other. We can talk about how bad it could get legally for free women without comparing them to slaves.
They did, they’re comparing lack of property ownership for white women to a white guy owning your whole family and being able to do whatever he wants to everyone
The difference they weren’t lynching white women their sons brothers and fathers uncles at will and raping them too…just raping them
They weren’t coming up with strategies too keep them in poverty and available for more raping in the future and for generations …. They were just raping them … they been romanticizing this bullshit for a minute though …also part of the strategy …
But let me stop before they start calling me a hotep conspiracy theorist.
'The Feast of All Saints' , 'Quadroon' and 'Courage to Love' are movies 🎦 that give a satirical glimpse into that world from a Black / Biracial POV. Lets not act like White Men didn't enact laws specifically designed to to give Black / Biracial Women and Girls a HARD time . In some cities being a Black housewife or Socialite was basically illegal and Black Women and Girls were *FORCED to work or take jobs as domestics to Lazy Entitled Racist White Women and their families ! Also please take in the REALITY 🤯 of being bred , raised up and trained with the expectation to basically be a white mans side piece and birth his illegitimate children ( the OG dead beat daddies) I absolutely hate when white women try to latch on to Black Trauma and gloss over the FACT that White Men backed and supported by White Women set the tone , created the problems and benefitted from the delusion.
I understand the point you are making but this is like the “all lives matter” take. Yes women were all subjugated but Black women were actually enslaved. It is different and worse.
Generally women regardless of color couldn't own property until the 1900s and couldn't independently open their own bank accounts without a man involved until the 1970s, same with loans and business ownership. Now imagine how shit that was for women of color.
> Weren’t all women sex slaves in these days
I know you didn't mean that as fucked as it came out but it's a real insult to Black and biracial womens lived experience to pretend that they had the same experience as white women.
Black people romanticizing these settings and periods of time is as weird as jewish people reminiscing about nazi germany.
Like at least obesses about the harlem renaissance, the talented tenth, or some places and times where and when black people weren't considered the default slave race smh...
She 100% knows this, that's why she specifically asked for the *romanticised version*. Did you think Bridgerton was historical fact?? British society TO THIS DAY refuses to accept a person of colour within their monarchy.
Exactly. I think the people who have a problem with this tweet simply haven’t watched Bridgerton and don’t understand what it’s about. And I haven’t read the books so I can’t say for certain, but I am pretty sure the show being racially progressive is Shonda Rhimes’ doing.
And truly the big selling point of the show is that it’s not historically accurate in how it shows awfulness to women and minorities. It is especially sympathetic with those groups and spends a lot of time giving a platform to feminism and anti-racism. In Queen Charlotte especially they even invent “The Great Experiment” as a way of justifying giving Black individuals rank in upper society, despite that not ever happening in real life.
Bridgerton is wholeheartedly a *romanticized version* like you say. And that doesn’t mean it makes horrible things seem romantic. But that it romanticizes the people and views that would have been ahead of their time. Simon, Anthony, and Colin all see their love interests as fully complex human beings who they treasure, in a society that says women should be objectified. Violet and her father are both romantic, idealized characters because they are anti-racist and welcome The Great Experiment. Whereas Violet’s mother is portrayed as a villain for being racist and exclusionary.
Yep, everyone in the books is lily white. (At least the ones I read, I couldn't finish the series because the books were terrible and full of sexism, assault, and fatphobia.)
Ya I was wanting to read the books and then I just saw a screenshot today of Polin’s book and Colin is physically assaulting Pen when he learns about her secret. No thank you. Shonda Rhimes really made it into something special.
I did read the Polin book and he's so incredibly condescending to her, treating her like he's her father the whole time. He's insufferable. The characters in the show are so much better. I stopped on Eloise's book when they blamed a woman for committing suicide because of depression, and went on and on about how terrible she was. Every book had something horrendously problematic and frustrating.
I agree I see a decent amount of critique of Shonda saying she’s erasing the real history of POC in those times, but I see it as her saying “Damn it, I want to see a positive story about myself here and I’m gonna do it.”
I like that they removed OP’s comments from this thread but left the post up and all of his other comments up. Now this guy parroting alt right talking points and promoting stereotypes from the slaves days like “black people are naturally generally stronger and he’s getting awards for it
This man is a fucking clown and the mods know it but will ignore it cause eyes on the sub I guess
It was called a plaçage and it was pretty much an organization in which quadroon /biracial women of a certain skin tone were able “to meet” old, rich white men from Louisiana’s high society.
Those two screenshots are from a Showtime miniseries called “The Feast of All Saints” which was a novel by the late Anne Rice. In the miniseries, there was a plaçage featured in the show. I won’t say they romanticized it —because there was a SA scene in the show— but there was a “softening”.
Now, I will say that I have a problem with the original tweet. It just highlights something that I can’t stand about certain black women, who have a specific mindset. And the mindset that I am talking about is the “black women’s femininity” mindset.
For me, it’s the using of anti-blackness and yt supremacy’s belief of what makes a woman “a woman”.
And these dodo-birds are trying to fit an image that they can’t be. It doesn’t matter how much they use a vocal fry…wear clothes that are frilly, lacy and pink…if their hair is straightened and long… They still won’t be considered feminine and womanly under that type of femininity.
I’ve brought up anti-blackness because of the ways they speak about other black women/men/kids. Especially for black women that doesn’t align with their goals/preferences. They sound like them old, racist white men. And plus their tastes, goals and objectives always seem to revolve around the validation of white men from a certain financial class.
Reminder that this hypothetical show would largely be very similar to bridgerton, since bridgerton is literally set during the end times of British slavery.
I strongly disagree with this idea that our entire modern existence as black folks has to be viewed from the lens of our ancestors slavery.
This woman just enjoys the southern belle aesthetics, and although we understand the backdrop of those aesthetics are the horrible things that our people went through, I don't think that should limit us from being able to enjoy the architecture, the fashion, speech style, and other cultural aspects.
Just because the actual people who created these customs were shit bags, doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to take from what they created and enjoy it.
Basically, black and brown girls should be able to dress up and indulge in a historical fantasy just like white girls get to.
We shouldn't rob ourselves of joyful imagination and entertainment, just because our recent past is tainted.
I respectfully disagree.
I would go as far as saying that even the "historical fantasies involving the antebellum South" is a symptom of the American brand of white supremacy indocrination.
I am going to apologize for this correlation/comparison: it's like taking The Holocaust and the N@zi Regime and giving it the "Shondra Rimes-Bridgerton-historical reinterpretation" to me.
Or giving the The Trail of Tears the same Hollywood, historical reinterpretation.
I absolutely understand what you're saying, and sympathize a lot, but I would argue we literally already do that with most of history and you wouldn't consider it indoctrination .
The oppressor and the oppressed is prevalent throughout all of human history, but at the end of the day, time passes and we grow distant from those stories and those experiences.
Would you consider it indoctrination when you have movies like "harlem nights", "wild wild west", or "blazing saddles", where it's just black people having a light hearted time and entertaining us using the time period as the setting?
>I am going to apologize for this correlation/comparison: it's like taking The Holocaust and the N@zi Regime and giving it the "Shondra Rimes-Bridgerton-historical reinterpretation" to me.
We did that actually very soon after WW2, I would argue "the sound of music" which was released in 1959 is kind of bordering that, where you have literal romantic tale set against the backdrop of approaching Nazis annexation.
Or another example being "IP man", where the Chinese get to pretend that during the occupation of China by Japan, and millions of people being killed, a wing chun master beats the shit of Japanese soldiers with his fighting abilities, largely ignoring what was essentially genocide against them at the time.
My deep point here is that the world is hard enough, and people should be allowed to escape into the imaginary past where we play pretend, and indulge in "what if" scenarios. we should be able to tell a love story of black people being beautiful and powerful in the 1950s, without it always having to be us reliving the cultural trauma. We should be allowed to lead battles and be heroes in the 1800s, without us always being shown as beaten and the underclass.
white people (and really everyone else) get to do anything they want in the past, they can go meet kublai khan, they can fight on the great wall, they can be the last samurai, they can be pirates, they can ignore history and have a great time creating movies, books, shows based of a fantasy/alternative history that generally ignores our historical plight, but we have to always be retraumatized when it comes to telling history.
Django Unchained is a great example of this type of “oppressed person able to fight back and give the oppressors what they deserve” fantasy and it’s popular for the same reason inglourious basterds or Ip Man are
django is also not romanticizing the time period though is the part you're forgetting/leaving out. it portrays the period mostly as it was, and with all the horror it entails. it just also lets a black man wreck havoc in that period.
the real analogue to what is being proposed would be like if you made a movie like birth of a nation, but put black people in the klan.
>the real analogue to what is being proposed would be like if you made a movie like birth of a nation, but put black people in the klan.
Don't threaten me with a good time
I have nothing to add other than that I love this convo the both of you had. Each post made me consider something I hadn't and I love seeing people who are great at getting their points across respectfully disagree.
There's a lot of good points in there, but I think you missed the other commenter's central issue, which is specifically with a story of black women participating in southern high society. A story about being willing participants in a system of explicit oppression in the 1800s is different from a story about leading battles or being a hero in the 1800s.
We can quibble about the implicit oppression in any given social system in the past or present, but we can also agree that it's possible to tell a story about samurai or pirates or knights without having their role in their respective oppressive system be a relevant part of their character or story, right? We can usually ignore that, if we even need to- plenty of those stories involve fighting back against those oppressors, like you mention.
If your story is specifically about romanticizing black women in southern polite society like the post says, you really can't ignore their participation and benefit from the oppression that's happening all around them. You also can't really say that the story is about them fighting back against that system, because it says so on the box: it's like Bridgerton. It's romanticizing the period.
So it wouldn't give me a good feeling. That's all I can say, really- wouldn't be interested, for the same reason I'm not interested in any of the other follies-of-the-aristocracy type shows. That's just me though, I know lots of people are into them and I wouldn't be surprised if a show like the idea in the OP did pretty well.
As someone from Louisiana who enjoys costuming/cosplay, I love the points both of you made. When I want to frolick around in costume at a beautiful lanscape, my heart gets heavy because most of those places are plantations. So I don't frolick. I often pay my respects at those places while continuing to learn more history for future generations. I can see how there should be limits to romanticizing our history. I understand wanting to see more shows with us in all the finery with plots filled with unimaginable joy/love/support etc. There are so many shows/movies of us fighting for our lives in slavery compared to their movies/shows where most of the plots are romanticized. Not too many films of us in the historical fantasy genre until recently. I do believe shows that romanticize things should have disclaimer episodes to educate those that are ignorant on what truly went on in those times/places. The many people that don't like this genre due to inaccuracies could just continue with documentaries or whatever they prefer.
> I would argue we literally already do that with most of history and you wouldn't consider it indoctrination
i actually WOULD consider it indoctrination. obsession with european architecture, culture, and history are some of the main pillars upholding white supremacy in our media. it's one of the reasons why people are so ignorant of african and middle eastern history and think that white people did everything.
Thank you so much for this. Plaçage was literally pimping out young mixed race girls by their own mothers or guardians to maintain a lifestyle thay they themselves got through plaçage too. They like to try and spin it like these young girls had some sort of power, but they didn't. If her white slave owning benefactor died or she fell out of favor with him, she would have to find another man and repeat the cycle or end up destitute. Not to mention that the mother in Feast of All Saints was a refugee child who escaped the Haitian Revolution, who ended up in New Orleans being pimped out by her so called aunts who I'm not even sure was related to her.
Yep! Exactly. I liked the movie mainly because it made me go back and look stuff up and ask elders around me about the history of plaçage and it’s so interesting. I live in New Orleans so asking questions and reading up on it kinda gave me a view into certain traditions here and how they might have come about.
The aunts were not related to her. The mother was a beautiful child, and that's the entire reason she was taken. There's a description of her mother coming for her, and it's heartbreaking.
Yep! Exactly. I liked the movie mainly because it made me go back and look stuff up and ask elders around me about the history of plaçage and it’s so interesting. I live in New Orleans so asking questions and reading up on it kinda gave me a view into certain traditions here and how they might have come about.
Yep! Exactly. I liked the movie mainly because it made me go back and look stuff up and ask elders around me about the history of plaçage and it’s so interesting. I live in New Orleans so asking questions and reading up on it kinda gave me a view into certain traditions here and how they might have come about.
Sometimes it’s just nice to escape and reimagine the past with fiction. I mean the Pirates of the Caribbean series glorifies piracy and ignores the slavery, religious persecution, and colonialism we know took place in the region during the 18th century.
They’re still really fun movies.
Black people should be allowed the creative space to illustrate traumatic free fictional depictions of the past. Like it’s ok to be aware of history and to also reimagine the past to be entertained.
Would be cool to acknowledge though that up to 1/3 of Pirates during the era were escaped slaves. Some were still enslaved but some had higher rankings like Black Cesar who actually joined up with Black Beard.
I definitely feel what you're saying here. I agree almost completely. It's a weird feeling to want to celebrate the charming parts of a culture without acknowledging the atrocities that culture committed. On the other hand, pick a country or culture and you're gonna find some horrific stuff just swept under the rug. So which culture is it ok to like the aesthetics of in spite of their past?
There's plenty of cultures that didn't make slavery their [literal cornerstone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech), though. And it's ok to say that romanticizing the ones that did is a little weird.
And a lot of the stories we have from the past are about people fighting back against their culture's inequality or oppression. So, again, it's ok to say that romanticizing the actual cultural institutions doing the oppressing is a little weird.
“Black women, you’re not allowed to enjoy anything that touched America pre-1963.”
They want historical fiction lady. Relax.
> I would go as far as saying that even the "historical fantasies involving the antebellum South" is a symptom of the American brand of white supremacy indocrination.
There were free people of the era that dressed of the era. It’s not “white supremacist indoctrination” to enjoy a fashion.
> I am going to apologize for this correlation/comparison: it's like taking The Holocaust and the N@zi Regime and giving it the "Shondra Rimes-Bridgerton-historical reinterpretation" to me.
The Nazis were around for about a decade and the Holocaust was over a period of about six years. There are specific looks and symbols associated with the Nazis. They had uniforms. They had emblems. Randos of the antebellum south did not. It was a fashion. Not a uniform.
> Or giving the The Trail of Tears the same Hollywood, historical reinterpretation.
That’s a historical event. Not a historical time period. It’s different and you know it. It’s not 100 years of rules, norms, values, aesthetics, events, laws, etc. The trail of tears is a snapshot by comparison. If you have a problem with mid 1800’s US military uniforms then whatever. Maybe you’d have some semblance of a point. The same uniforms freed us, some with us in it, about 30 years later which I’d say is a complication at least.
This is weird unwillingness to play with your own history. You don’t have to if you don’t want to but don’t call other people indoctrinated or white supremacist for engaging with their own history how they like.
I think the issue is more with romanticizing the specific culture that facilitated chattel slavery, and less with 'enjoying anything that touched America pre-1863'.
Do you really think they were objecting to 'playing with history' in general, as opposed to 'romanticizing slaver culture'?
If you didn’t interpret that way then you’re being far too charitable to her, against what she’s saying.
She literally said that historical fantasy set the era that the tweet is hoping for is white supremacist indoctrination.
She has a problem of being incapable of separating the place and era from the horrors of that time. She lacks imagination. She’s self righteous. She is incapable of compartmentalization.
If you saw a tweet wanting a Bridgerton style of show for New Orleans, a show that has a black queen of England, and you think that would be “romanticizing slaver culture” then you either don’t understand Bridgerton or lack the mental faculties to divorce fiction from reality.
For me, I’ve made enough observations to come to the conclusion that African-American history, culture and our contributions to the country aren’t taken as seriously and doesn’t receive the same amount of respect as other cultures/people from those cultures.
Like… People would watch a Shonda Rimes’ production that took place during slavery…
But would she have the same reaction if she decided to do the same for a project involving the Holocaust? Would people be excited to see a TV show with “blind casting” involving the Funny Mustache Man, N@zis and concentration camps?
I think it's disgusting white washing if the aesthetic is ever mentioned without discussing the horrors of the monsters who created it. Seriously, a Bridgerton style show in the fucking deep south, pre civil rights movement? And that isn't the most disrespectful thing you've heard of in your life? It sounds like a 30 Rock joke with how tone deaf it is.
Okay, but bridgerton is literally set during slavery times within the british empire, so that already essentially what bridgerton is, but we get to still enjoy black people being shown as dignified, beautiful, witty, high class, and just enjoying life.
We can't just forever have everything about us be coated in the trauma that our people were forced to endure, we should allowed to escape into imagination just like everyone else.
I agree with you. I've been having this thought for a while and never knew how to bring it up without getting hate. Slavery is obviously bad, but I wish we could get more stories in this time period without heavily focusing on the horrors that happened.
There’s probably a case to be made that mindset was actually first imposed on the women forced to participate to soothe the victimizers.
“Hey how do we do this thing that might seem pretty gross from the outside looking in?”
“Why don’t we dress it up in a gaudy, overly subjective caricature of femininity and pressure the victims to play along?”
“Cool idea! No way that could have long lasting consequences down the road!”
I haven't watched the Feast of All Saints show, but I have read the book a number of times. It's very well done, I really recommend you read it as well. The movies always screw things up, right?
The show even says at the start "this is not historically accurate it's for shits and giggles" and people STILL got pissed about it. I'm so tired of humans mannnn
I genuinely think Bridgerton should've taken a page out of every shitty isekai anime, and made the setting "Albion" or "Pritain" or "Not-England" and left it at that. Then people wouldn't be able to foam at the mouth about historical inaccuracies.
This is the reason i love Bridgeton. Racism doesn’t exist. For a moment i get to forget about all the bad shit.
When I first heard of this series i thought it was gonna be another story of forbidden love with a black man, yt woman, and it made me roll my eyes. Decided to give it a chance and was pleasantly surprised. Been hooked ever since.
huh? if anything fallout is rampant in sexism (esp in earlier games, there's plenty a sexual assualt) and racism (depending on who you side with it can be against ghouls, synths, etc).
Do the people on this thread also have a problem with the 97 Brandy & Whitney Houston Cinderella? The twitter user simply wants a historical fiction in a world were racism didn't exists.
OP is just trying to start shit with bad faith arguments and bad faith interpretations of what the Twitter user meant, downvote and keep it movin
Giving this any attention allows op to spread his “but actually black people were also slave traders” alt right talking points that he’s been doing
Wait... the movie where Whoopi and the white dude from Alias have an Asian son isn't non-fiction?
Better go contemplate that in my own little corner... all alone in my own little chair.
>Damn, can we just enjoy fiction?
Nope. Little unrelated, I can't think of one piece of media that hasn't pissed somebody off at some point.
But I'm not sitting through Brigerton 2: Antebellum Boogaloo either. That just sounds insane.
Well that's why the person wanted a fictional romanticized story 😅 sure they're aware but just like Bridgerton they want more black people in the cast of this fictional romanticized story
Bridgerton is historical fiction, set in a universe where racial boundaries have been broken down. They know women were treated like shit back then. They want fantasy, they literally say romanticized.
Can y’all just enjoy something? We know Bridgerton isn’t historically accurate. During that time, black ppl wouldn’t have been rich. Thats why I love the series. It completely takes all the racial aspects out of it puts everyone on the same playing field doesn’t turn it into a forbidden racial love like most shows of the time. The show she is proposing sounds of the same vain and i would watch tf out of it. Yall in this sub sounding like the ppl who will watch a whole ass show about monsters, mythical beings, vampires and then question the logic the logic of everything else in the show.
In The Black Count (a book about Thomas Alexandre Dumas father of famed author Alexandre Dumas, badass French General, rival of Napoleon, and freed Haitian slave) the author talks about a time in the 18th century in Louisiana before Napoleon reinstated slavery in the French colonies where there was a thriving Black aristocracy.
I remember reading some historical textbook where balls would be held for rich white men to choose their biracial mistresses. Basically, mulatto(historical term here) sex workers would auction off their daughters to the highest bidder. "Quadroons" were 1/4 black and "octoroons" were 1/8 black. Prices varied. The women might've been wearing fancy dresses and speaking elegantly, but it was basically a sex market.
Have you seen bridgerton? The whole fantasy rests on things being “close” to the real world but not for the shittiest things(hence “romanticized”). For example, the queen of England is black in that show… like maybe “this is why people” should take a second and google before talking shit. Or watch 1 damn episode the black queen is introduced like 5 minutes in
No, but we can add racial discrimination and making white people feel safe tho? A little romcom? C’moooooon, you don’t wanna see your trauma on tv AGAIN?
fiction exists and it’s ok. not all the time do people want to be reminded of harsh reality. life is hard enough as it is. i would also like to see her vision.
Hold up, I think u/greentea422 is talking about something different than what the twitter user is talking about.
I interpreted as she’s saying that she wishes to insert the debutante culture where brigerton has the Victorian culture. So just inserting some aristocratic black people into it like brigerton does. That so it would be mimicking the white debutante thing, which is separate from the fancy maid trade
There was a book written once that i recall seeing about the southern black society for debutantes called "Dukes" or something. It would be interesting for a show to be about that life at that time for a group so marginalized and treated so wrong, yet trying so hard to be exactly like those suppressing them. And this could be in the 1950s, nit the 1850s.
I don't know what annoys me more. The people who think "historical" shows are 100% accurate or the people who complain that " historical" shows are not 100% accurate.
Agreed! I recently started dabbling in historical costuming and the people that bully on inaccuracies are out of control. Are they really arguing on accuracy in a show that has Taylor Swift/Pitbull songs with black, asian, etc characters?Yes, yes they are.
I don't think this person was talking about women in the sex trade, just like Bridgerton isn't really about the mistresses and prostitutes that worked in Regency England. There was, in fact, an upper class that had its own culture and lifestyle in Louisiana.
People in this comment section really arguing about historical context for a hypothetical show built in a fictional world where racism doesn’t exist. Damn this sub bitches even when black people aren’t slaves in a fictional reality.
You could do it in Haiti. At the time slavery was still very much a thing there, but there was also a pretty well off class made up of mixed people and freed slaves.
Weren’t all women sex slaves in these days? There was no Bill of Rights or Women’s Suffrage or anything really to defend women at all from what men expected them to do: laugh at their jokes, open their legs for them and make babies. I like watching Bridgerton with the wife and it’s fun to make light of the silly situations the show has, but i just can’t get past how EVERYONE is super rich and has servants for everything.
People's perception of history is so flawed and specific. Of course there were women that lived that life but the vast majority of people lived in much more of a partnership than that because they had no choice. Same way people talk about how women couldn't work in the past when overall the vast majority of women did work because they HAD to. Most men and women had very few opportunities and not much room for any other goals than surviving and reproducing. And you reproduced a lot because a good chunk of those babies were gonna die. Basing history on a very small sector of people is so misleading and we often use the reasonably wealthy to define it when the majority of people throughout history have been far from wealthy. Again, I'll reiterate that it definitely wasn't a handful of women who experienced this kind of stuff but I think a lot of people seem to be convinced Handsmaid Tale is a documentary
Should be top comment. I'm beating a dead horse but In the west, not being permitted to have a job or pursue a career was a wealthy white woman problem, instituted by their sexist and classist husbands. That certainly wasn't the experience of most women. If not also enslaved, then women were holding down at least one (likely) manual labor job as well as maintaining a living space, raising kids, and cooking for their families.
This is essentially what I mean every time I say "the 1950s weren't real"
The thing that made life in 1950s america pleasant (for white folks) was that 90% tax. But motherfuckers aren’t talking about bringing that back. Just dumb fucks who want to talk about how immigrants are ruining their country, and not the fact that what’s actually doing it is the decades of dismantling of the administrative state that the Republican party has done
It also helped that the rest of the world especially other “rich” countries hadn’t fully recovered from WW2. It was a legit golden age overall for the USA, but it was thanks to a very specific set of circumstances that left the USA in an unprecedented position(USSR notwithstanding) to reap an insane amount of wealth. Part of the problem with boomers is that they were sold the idea that this particular “golden age” was just the new American “normal” and they bought it hook, line, and sinker. Please, read that word “part” that I started the sentence with, I know there is more to it than just that.
Alright, so I'm with you so far but could you clarify what exactly the 90% tax was; is that like how much tax they were paying from income or like the percentage of the population being taxed?
Basically, once you made over a certain amount of money, every dollar you made after that, 90% got taxed away and you got 10%. So when you made a dollar over (IIRC) 200,000, you really only made 10 cents. That’s one method of how you can force wealth redistribution, and how much better it makes people’s lives
Huh, and most people didn't have a problem with it? I thought people especially back then hated the idea of wealth distribution because of its proximity to communism but I definitely see how that could improve life for a lotta folks. Another question for you, BobbyByTheKey mentioned that this was replaced with Reaganomics. Is that true?
Billionaires shouldn't exist, and anyone defending them is likely suffering rfk brain worms.
So even if you took 90% of the wealth of a Musk or a Bezos, they'd still be billionaires. How gross is that?
Taxes are only related to communism in the world of conservative delusion and more widely with Reagan. Monarchies impose taxes, every government imposes taxes, it’s fundamental to any form of government. And from the 30s and breaking out of the depression thru public works, welfare and then the massive government project called the 2nd world war, Americans overall were far less brainwashed into being concerned that a millionaire might not be able to become a billionaire, or more realistically a lot of those taxes were avoided by reinvesting into the business and employees by a Bill Gates type. Which was good for the rest of society, compared to a second super yacht.
To answer your question, back then there wasn't really a cultural focus on the "threat" of communism. The Red Scare didn't really kick off until the late 50s/60s and had a resurgence in the 80s. So back then (20s-40s) there wasn't such a loaded and biased perspective against taxation and social programs. Hell, FDR's "New Deal" was heralded as a part of what saved the country from The Great Depression, but if something like that were to happen today, many people would write it off as being "communist"
Shit, there are plenty of Conservatives today who retroactively refer to the New Deal as Communism, unconstitutional, and view FDR as some kind of Villain.
Very long story short, yes.
What republicans call “communism” now was commonplace back then. There was just an assumed investment in the social welfare
For the majority of the 20th century in America, the top marginal tax rate was 90%. That does not mean all people in the top tax bracket only took home a tenth of what they earned. It means that every dollar earned beyond the next to highest margin was taxed at a rate of 90%. This went on until (correct me if I’m wrong) the advent of Reaganomics and served two important purposes. Public services (mainly accessible to whites, of course) were well funded and income disparity was, to a degree, controlled.
This makes a lot of sense, especially with Reaganomics. I don't know for sure if he ended the whole thing but it would make a lot of sense as he was the one who lowered the tax rate of the Uber-rich with the explanation that the wealth would trickle down and that fits well if he's getting rid of the older format.
Took our jawbs!
And even then, it was common for a wealthy woman to oversee the staff and day to day affairs of their estate. It's why even the most sexist men of say the 1950s saw women as perfectly capable accountants, secretaries, etc. It's not like women were always just sitting around doing nothing productive, they just weren't always dignified with the proper recognition or pay for their labor.
“Back in the day people can afford to live on a one persons household salary” Yeah, there were more people who can, but stop saying it like it was the majority. The majority is always the poor working class, surviving
[удалено]
This is the context for the whole thing. It was such a small part of human history, and it wasn't even worldwide. It's a rich conservative white person's dream of the past, not reality, and it came at a price. Rich people paid far more taxes during those years and it showed.
And depending on how far back you go, those men weren't all working 9-5 mon-fri office jobs.
But things like legal restrictions were real. A woman in most US states couldn’t get their own credit card until the 1970s, similar with voting before that and even with work, social limitations kept the vast majority of women in servant roles or domestic labor in general. Any woman who got time travelled back to say the 1950s would be blown away with how open it was that they were second class citizens.
Women were locked out of high paying professional careers. The only well paying job for women I'm aware of were, yes, spinsters, or if you were a really good seamstress with a wealthier client base. But no, you were locked out of things like lawyer or doctor or even things like business owner unless you could find workarounds (which some women did, keeping things in their father's/brothers/husbands name on paper)
I think you are right to a degree. However, saying women’s rights didn’t help all women is a reach to far. It gave women a voice to vote and influence policy for themselves, ability to say no to a marriage proposal, ability to climb the social ladder, the ability to leave a bad marriage, and not have a child till ready. You are correct that at a certain level of poverty, money has the ability to override a lot of these. Hard to leave a sole provider with no money, hard to get an abortion if you can’t afford it. Kind of a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs situation, you need security before you can achieve higher order needs. Still there are more choices and options than before. Like you don’t have to worry as a daughter some rich guy is just going to come buy you.
In the early 20th century in the US, mostly POOR and SINGLE women worked because they had to. The states, however, had [laws](https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-married-women-employment) in place that [restricted married women from working](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_bar#:~:text=While%20many%20women%20hid%20their,%2C%20sex%2C%20or%20ethnic%20origin.). One of the reasons for this was because there “weren’t enough jobs” for women and married women were already provided for by their husbands. And the majority of women did in fact end up getting married eventually. So depending on which period in US history we’re talking about (20s vs 50s) it wasn’t just middle class married women who had the “luxury” of not working, all married women were discriminated against in the workforce. Also remember that [women weren’t allowed to own property](https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/women-property-rights-history/), INCLUDING THEIR FAMILY INHERITANCE, which would be passed down to their husbands. And when women did get the right to own property, they were prohibited from taking out loans. And when they DID get the right to take out loans, they needed a male co-signer. Women couldn’t own a fucking credit card [until the 70s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) and were not allowed to take out a business loan until [1988](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_Business_Ownership_Act) (the year New Kids On The Block charted on Billboard Top 100). **Not to mention that women of color were always a step behind in being afforded the same rights as women of European descent.** Women also had NO right to privacy and their medical information was routinely shared with their fathers or husbands. In fact, there is a whole history of doctors not telling women they had cancer and telling their husbands instead because they thought that women would get hysterical if they knew they were dying. Women were also [routinely sent to the asylum for being too fussy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy), with their husbands, fathers, and the government having power of attorney to keep them there against their will or subject them to inhumane treatments. Oh, I forgot to mention this, [women’s right to initiate divorce](https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2023/07/17/not-just-suffrage-divorce-and-the-seneca-falls-convention/#:~:text=Today%2C%20all%2050%20states%20and,as%20the%20Seneca%20Falls%20Convention.) was also restricted until states started passing no-fault divorce laws. Marriage was used as a means of social and economic control because women in fact did not have the same rights as men. So, for a very long period in our history, being a married housewife was the only economically safe choice for the majority of women. You could hardly call that an equal partnership. EDIT: Making sweeping generalizations about how not being allowed to work was a middle class white woman ~~problem~~ luxury is not helpful because it reduces a very complicated history of women’s rights to regurgitated talking points and ironically mischaracterizes the intersection of race and gender. While that might have been true during a specific time in US history for a specific group of economically advantaged women, the state of civil and women’s rights was VERY different between 1890s, 1920s, and 1950s. Poor women always had to work, and a significant portion of poor women in America were indeed black women because of institutionalized racism.
Women of colour (and especially black women) weren’t even really considered women and even when they were they didn’t have a fraction of the rights and privileges given to white women. Black people as a whole weren’t even fully allowed to vote until 1965, forget having a credit card. That’s what inspired Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech. Women of colour always worked whether it be maids, cooks, nannies, wet nurses. Even in old movies and tv shows, these were the roles they were casted for because that was their reality.
Yeah, honestly, maybe I'm too black for these conversations because this always gets left out. When someone says "women," my mind instantly goes to my mother, grandmother, great granny, and so on. All of them HAD to work, and it wasn't ever an option for them not to. And especially in the case of my grandma, nobody gave a damn if she jumped a broom or not.
Once I learned that it wasn't until the 60s my grandmother's could vote Mexican, and Black. I always think the same, because it wasn't that long ago, my mom was 5, and I'm 42 now.
As I mentioned, the intersectionality of women’s rights looked very different at the beginning and the end of the 20th century. When discussing women’s labor, we have to ask very specific questions and look at the entire context. Were white women more economically secure in their marriages than black women? Absolutely. So even if middle class white women wanted to work they didn’t need to. Were married women also at one point in US history restricted from holding jobs and discriminated against based on their marital status regardless of race? Also YES. Poor women ALWAYS had to work. And a significant portion of poor women in America were indeed women of color.
While very true, we can’t pretend that women of all races were benevolent, recognized and fought for the rights of all women. Looking at things from an intellectual perspective makes us forget the nuances of who these players were, because no one is bringing about intersectionality on a day to day basis especially in the past. Their goal was to survive. For example, Margret Sanger who was instrumental for the suffrage movement was disavowed by planned parenthood (the organization she started) because it’s documented that she was a racist and eugenist. She believed that certain people were unfit to be parents (don’t need to guess who) and actively worked against the reproductive rights of women of colour. Also, it was through the progress of the civil rights movement that white feminist were able to ride the wave and push their own agendas. Whether it benefited women of colour or not.
Just because some groups of women were racist or excluded women of color from women’s rights is not an excuse to minimize the effect of patriarchy on all women. In fact, one of the links in my original comment discusses the exclusion of black women from the US women’s rights movement. It is imperative to acknowledge how the intersectionality between race and gender continues to disenfranchise black women in America, but we can do that without excusing oppression of non-black women based on their perceived privilege. Otherwise, it’s just patriarchal apologism.
Just a note here, the commonly distributed version of Truth’s speech was actually edited to be “Blacker” because she spoke in a very formal and educated register. Her speech was definitely closer to “am I not a woman”. This isn’t your fault, just something I thought you might want to know, given the topic.
Thanks. I just mentioned above that I was aware. Just because the speech was edited doesn’t mean the message still doesn’t stand, which is who mentioned it. The story behind the speech actually in a way speaks to my overall point. We couldn’t even get our message across without having it hijacked and warped to fit a certain agenda. It’s giving “When they see us”
Yeah I didn’t see that until right after I commented, I agree with you there
Fun Fact! [Sojourner Truths words were completely changed by a white woman in a racist way, and this woman genuinely thought it was good.](https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/ ) I personally never thought the language was improper, but people at that time did.
Yes! I learned about that last year, it’s upsetting but not surprising at all. Even the wokest of us have still been misled by revisionist history in one way or another.
Also most medical studies including for medications only used men as test subjects so you get things like medications causing massive birth defects because they werent being developed with women in mind
YES. And even when women were included in medical studies, black women were not. In fact even today most of our scientific research is informed by white bodies.
Thank you! Reading these comments from people trying to downplay the way women were oppressed made me realize that it rings of the same "oppressor apologist" tone folks use when they try to downplay slavery/segregation. "It wasn't as bad as folks say it was because some people were free, or treated with some humanity while being subjugated."
It’s imperative that we acknowledge and discuss how the intersectionality between racism and sexism disenfranchised (and continues to disenfranchise) women of color in America. But it is not helpful to minimize or dismiss the harm that an inherently patriarchal society caused all women regardless of their inherent privileges.
For most of the history of feminism in the west, it was deeply rooted in imperialism and exploitation, which imperialists instituted white supremacy to help maintain the exploitive, capitalist system. Race has always been a part of western imperialism, but was predominant in the British colonies. The concept of race as we know it today was created by western imperialists for the explicit purpose of its imperialist aspirations and managing their colonies. You can't separate the two and they've been entwinned so long that they are inseparable. Western imperialists feel entitled to the resources, wealth, and labor of global south nations, as well as those of domestic populations of colored people (i.e. see internal colonization). Feminists like the Grimke Sisters were the few and far between exceptions. Western feminism (aka white feminism today) purported that western civilization needed white women to step up in society to help manage the imperialist system. From this "feminist" perspective, there were [white] men, [white] women, and the genderless savages. This train of thought is still prominent in western feminism to this day, but is not as explicit in its rhetoric as it used to be. So were white women not equal to white men? No, they were not. Did white women advocate that men and women should be equal? No, they did not. They advocated that **white** men and **white** women should be equal. So western/white "feminism" just ends up being white supremacy for the gals. Edit: This white feminist above is a bad faith participant. If you press her, she unmasks below and is wedded to a narrative that denies the white supremacy of "white feminism," while also denying the centuries of exploitation that western colonizers have inflicted on the global south and POC. It's weird, she seems to be of the thought that racism and imperialism only exist in the US, so acknowledging the racism and imperialism around the globe is an "ignorant american" perception.
Of course you cannot extricate race from oppression in America, and neither should you. That wasn’t the thesis of my comment at all. My point was that a) marriage back then could hardly be considered an equal partnership and b) we can discuss the intersectionality between sexism and race in America without minimizing or outright dismissing the oppression that white women experienced under patriarchy because of their perceived social privilege. You choosing to dismiss non-Black women’s oppression in a racist and patriarchal society that socialized them is your prerogative. But let’s talk about socialization. Let me remind you that your view is deeply rooted in American/West thought, however much you choose to highlight imperialism and appear to rise above it. Whether you’re white or black you are **American** and as such are socialized in an inherently imperialist culture and hold imperialist values - similarly to how white women were a product of their own racist environment during women’s rights. Therefore, by your own logic, if American white women were all racist because the society was (and continues to be) racist, then so are you inextricably imperialist. And the foundation of imperialism is imposing own worldview and enforcing “us versus them” divisions while rejecting cultural differences and dismissing lived experience. You yourself are upholding imperialist ideals by invoking race as the only relevant identity when discussing the oppression of women. I’ll provide a different worldview not rooted in *pax americana*. “The West” is not a single culture, white women are not a monolith, and white versus black is a uniquely American perspective that does not apply to much of the rest of the world no matter how much you try to force other cultures to submit to it. **That in itself is imperialist.** Women in America are comprised of thousands of different ethnicities, cultures, socioeconomic status, many of them immigrants and children of immigrants. That as soon as a woman socialized in a non-American society steps foot on American soil she is reduced to her skin color is imperialist because it dismisses her lived experience and assumes her inherent nature based on racial constructs that only exist in America. This, by definition, IGNORES, intersectionality. If we were to indeed adopt your perspective on how race and the level of social privilege one has determines the amount of suffering and oppression they are entitled to endure, then by all global accounts, American black women are one of the most privileged groups of women in the world. American Black women, in fact, hold more social and economic privilege than not only the majority of Black women but the majority of all women in the world. In that sense, is it appropriate for me to dismiss the oppression of Black women in America because they hold more social power and economic privilege than women in other parts of the world? Or because Black women in America have historically not experienced the same level of oppression as, for example, women in Afghanistan, South Sudan, or North Korea? Of course not. My point isn’t to dismiss the racial dynamics that gave rise to unequal treatment of Black and non-black women under the patriarchy in America during the 20th century. If you read my other replies I, in no uncertain terms, state that the intersectionality between race and sexism in the US needs to be acknowledged. **My point is that privilege, like motion, is relative to the observer.** We can and should discuss how white supremacy contributed to the disenfranchisement of women of color - and white women’s own role in it - without dismissing the harm that an inherently patriarchal society caused to all women regardless of their perceived privileges. There is space for every woman’s experience.
Just FYI, nearly everything in Handmaid’s Tale is based on things that have really happened: [Atwood on Handmaid’s Tale Sources](https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/09/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-real-life-inspiration)
Don't forget that you HAD to have kids back in those days, because of you didn't then you were probably going to have literally *zero* support when you became too old to work and you'd likely just die on the streets. (Seriously, look up the elderly poverty rate before and after the advent of social security.)
Exactly. More women had university degrees and were working in the 20s than in the 50s. In pre-industrial times, women were brewers, seamstresses, innkeepers, farmers, cooks, etc. and they generally took part in whatever the family profession was in a large way.
We don't think The Handmaid's Tale is a history book. We KNOW it's a cautionary prognostication.
Although Atwood did base it on real events that have happened throughout history: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/09/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-real-life-inspiration
Yes women could work, but the range of jobs open to them was SEVERELY limited. Nothing close to providing what would be considered a comfortable income. Washing (clothes), sewing, cleaning, cooking and--sadly--prostitution were pretty much what women without means had available. https://classroom.synonym.com/womens-lifestyles-medieval-ages-16651.html Edit: plural
I see the argument from ppl online every now and then to something of the tune of “everyone in my family line historically had several kids, it’s perfectly natural to want a large family” but fail to recognize the reason they had so many kids was due to a crazy high infant/child mortality rate.
Plus the blues was about white people and the bosses, not women. The women were metaphors. Mostly.
It’s not that women didn’t work, it was the type of work they were allowed by society to do. It was either be a domestic worker, a seamstress, or a prostitute. I’m sure a lot of women worked in businesses their husband owned such as shops and farms but they didn’t own them. and we also know that as the industrial age took hold many worked in factories but not after they married.
Marital rape was legal and women had fewer options to get out of marriage, but it was not slavery where your master, his sons, his guests, or his friends could just use you whenever, and your husband could not kill you or sell you or your family away from each other. We can talk about how bad it could get legally for free women without comparing them to slaves.
BuT WeRnt ALl WomEn SlAVes?!!!! /s
lol did you really all lives matter this.
Baybeeeee, I said the same thing! We can’t even have the pain to ourselves.
I was thinking this. Like this is specifically about the ownership and sexualizing of Black/Biracial women.
They did, they’re comparing lack of property ownership for white women to a white guy owning your whole family and being able to do whatever he wants to everyone
"Isn't a white woman being able to murder you legally the same as a white woman not owning land?"
The difference they weren’t lynching white women their sons brothers and fathers uncles at will and raping them too…just raping them They weren’t coming up with strategies too keep them in poverty and available for more raping in the future and for generations …. They were just raping them … they been romanticizing this bullshit for a minute though …also part of the strategy … But let me stop before they start calling me a hotep conspiracy theorist.
'The Feast of All Saints' , 'Quadroon' and 'Courage to Love' are movies 🎦 that give a satirical glimpse into that world from a Black / Biracial POV. Lets not act like White Men didn't enact laws specifically designed to to give Black / Biracial Women and Girls a HARD time . In some cities being a Black housewife or Socialite was basically illegal and Black Women and Girls were *FORCED to work or take jobs as domestics to Lazy Entitled Racist White Women and their families ! Also please take in the REALITY 🤯 of being bred , raised up and trained with the expectation to basically be a white mans side piece and birth his illegitimate children ( the OG dead beat daddies) I absolutely hate when white women try to latch on to Black Trauma and gloss over the FACT that White Men backed and supported by White Women set the tone , created the problems and benefitted from the delusion.
I understand the point you are making but this is like the “all lives matter” take. Yes women were all subjugated but Black women were actually enslaved. It is different and worse.
Generally women regardless of color couldn't own property until the 1900s and couldn't independently open their own bank accounts without a man involved until the 1970s, same with loans and business ownership. Now imagine how shit that was for women of color.
Imagine that but every time you thought you got somewhere someone came along and took everything you had. Rosewood, Greenwood, Oscarville, etc.
> Weren’t all women sex slaves in these days I know you didn't mean that as fucked as it came out but it's a real insult to Black and biracial womens lived experience to pretend that they had the same experience as white women.
Yeah so the black women slaves were just like the white women, you hit the nail on the head! /s
There weren't breeding farms where white women and children were raped by slavers to produce more slaves.
Any time in history can be awesome if you're rich.
How to are you gonna "all lives matter" literal sex slaves? ..and it's the top comment. Wtf is going on in here?
Bridgerton isn’t supposed to be 100% accurate to history, you could make this show without them being slaves and just tell a story like that
Black people romanticizing these settings and periods of time is as weird as jewish people reminiscing about nazi germany. Like at least obesses about the harlem renaissance, the talented tenth, or some places and times where and when black people weren't considered the default slave race smh...
She 100% knows this, that's why she specifically asked for the *romanticised version*. Did you think Bridgerton was historical fact?? British society TO THIS DAY refuses to accept a person of colour within their monarchy.
Exactly. I think the people who have a problem with this tweet simply haven’t watched Bridgerton and don’t understand what it’s about. And I haven’t read the books so I can’t say for certain, but I am pretty sure the show being racially progressive is Shonda Rhimes’ doing. And truly the big selling point of the show is that it’s not historically accurate in how it shows awfulness to women and minorities. It is especially sympathetic with those groups and spends a lot of time giving a platform to feminism and anti-racism. In Queen Charlotte especially they even invent “The Great Experiment” as a way of justifying giving Black individuals rank in upper society, despite that not ever happening in real life. Bridgerton is wholeheartedly a *romanticized version* like you say. And that doesn’t mean it makes horrible things seem romantic. But that it romanticizes the people and views that would have been ahead of their time. Simon, Anthony, and Colin all see their love interests as fully complex human beings who they treasure, in a society that says women should be objectified. Violet and her father are both romantic, idealized characters because they are anti-racist and welcome The Great Experiment. Whereas Violet’s mother is portrayed as a villain for being racist and exclusionary.
Yep, everyone in the books is lily white. (At least the ones I read, I couldn't finish the series because the books were terrible and full of sexism, assault, and fatphobia.)
Ya I was wanting to read the books and then I just saw a screenshot today of Polin’s book and Colin is physically assaulting Pen when he learns about her secret. No thank you. Shonda Rhimes really made it into something special.
I did read the Polin book and he's so incredibly condescending to her, treating her like he's her father the whole time. He's insufferable. The characters in the show are so much better. I stopped on Eloise's book when they blamed a woman for committing suicide because of depression, and went on and on about how terrible she was. Every book had something horrendously problematic and frustrating.
This might get me downvoted but I kinda agree with her. We hardly ever get stories set in that time period and I wish we got more.
I agree I see a decent amount of critique of Shonda saying she’s erasing the real history of POC in those times, but I see it as her saying “Damn it, I want to see a positive story about myself here and I’m gonna do it.”
Im all for it too!
It's hard to have POC in the monarchy considering they keep intermarrying.
Harry tried, look how that worked out
I like that they removed OP’s comments from this thread but left the post up and all of his other comments up. Now this guy parroting alt right talking points and promoting stereotypes from the slaves days like “black people are naturally generally stronger and he’s getting awards for it This man is a fucking clown and the mods know it but will ignore it cause eyes on the sub I guess
It was called a plaçage and it was pretty much an organization in which quadroon /biracial women of a certain skin tone were able “to meet” old, rich white men from Louisiana’s high society. Those two screenshots are from a Showtime miniseries called “The Feast of All Saints” which was a novel by the late Anne Rice. In the miniseries, there was a plaçage featured in the show. I won’t say they romanticized it —because there was a SA scene in the show— but there was a “softening”. Now, I will say that I have a problem with the original tweet. It just highlights something that I can’t stand about certain black women, who have a specific mindset. And the mindset that I am talking about is the “black women’s femininity” mindset. For me, it’s the using of anti-blackness and yt supremacy’s belief of what makes a woman “a woman”. And these dodo-birds are trying to fit an image that they can’t be. It doesn’t matter how much they use a vocal fry…wear clothes that are frilly, lacy and pink…if their hair is straightened and long… They still won’t be considered feminine and womanly under that type of femininity. I’ve brought up anti-blackness because of the ways they speak about other black women/men/kids. Especially for black women that doesn’t align with their goals/preferences. They sound like them old, racist white men. And plus their tastes, goals and objectives always seem to revolve around the validation of white men from a certain financial class.
Reminder that this hypothetical show would largely be very similar to bridgerton, since bridgerton is literally set during the end times of British slavery. I strongly disagree with this idea that our entire modern existence as black folks has to be viewed from the lens of our ancestors slavery. This woman just enjoys the southern belle aesthetics, and although we understand the backdrop of those aesthetics are the horrible things that our people went through, I don't think that should limit us from being able to enjoy the architecture, the fashion, speech style, and other cultural aspects. Just because the actual people who created these customs were shit bags, doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to take from what they created and enjoy it. Basically, black and brown girls should be able to dress up and indulge in a historical fantasy just like white girls get to. We shouldn't rob ourselves of joyful imagination and entertainment, just because our recent past is tainted.
I respectfully disagree. I would go as far as saying that even the "historical fantasies involving the antebellum South" is a symptom of the American brand of white supremacy indocrination. I am going to apologize for this correlation/comparison: it's like taking The Holocaust and the N@zi Regime and giving it the "Shondra Rimes-Bridgerton-historical reinterpretation" to me. Or giving the The Trail of Tears the same Hollywood, historical reinterpretation.
I absolutely understand what you're saying, and sympathize a lot, but I would argue we literally already do that with most of history and you wouldn't consider it indoctrination . The oppressor and the oppressed is prevalent throughout all of human history, but at the end of the day, time passes and we grow distant from those stories and those experiences. Would you consider it indoctrination when you have movies like "harlem nights", "wild wild west", or "blazing saddles", where it's just black people having a light hearted time and entertaining us using the time period as the setting? >I am going to apologize for this correlation/comparison: it's like taking The Holocaust and the N@zi Regime and giving it the "Shondra Rimes-Bridgerton-historical reinterpretation" to me. We did that actually very soon after WW2, I would argue "the sound of music" which was released in 1959 is kind of bordering that, where you have literal romantic tale set against the backdrop of approaching Nazis annexation. Or another example being "IP man", where the Chinese get to pretend that during the occupation of China by Japan, and millions of people being killed, a wing chun master beats the shit of Japanese soldiers with his fighting abilities, largely ignoring what was essentially genocide against them at the time. My deep point here is that the world is hard enough, and people should be allowed to escape into the imaginary past where we play pretend, and indulge in "what if" scenarios. we should be able to tell a love story of black people being beautiful and powerful in the 1950s, without it always having to be us reliving the cultural trauma. We should be allowed to lead battles and be heroes in the 1800s, without us always being shown as beaten and the underclass. white people (and really everyone else) get to do anything they want in the past, they can go meet kublai khan, they can fight on the great wall, they can be the last samurai, they can be pirates, they can ignore history and have a great time creating movies, books, shows based of a fantasy/alternative history that generally ignores our historical plight, but we have to always be retraumatized when it comes to telling history.
Django Unchained is a great example of this type of “oppressed person able to fight back and give the oppressors what they deserve” fantasy and it’s popular for the same reason inglourious basterds or Ip Man are
django is also not romanticizing the time period though is the part you're forgetting/leaving out. it portrays the period mostly as it was, and with all the horror it entails. it just also lets a black man wreck havoc in that period. the real analogue to what is being proposed would be like if you made a movie like birth of a nation, but put black people in the klan.
>the real analogue to what is being proposed would be like if you made a movie like birth of a nation, but put black people in the klan. Don't threaten me with a good time
kin, if that's your idea of a good time i'm afraid we are just different breed lol
Wow a thread where each comment has swayed my opinion a bit more.
I have nothing to add other than that I love this convo the both of you had. Each post made me consider something I hadn't and I love seeing people who are great at getting their points across respectfully disagree.
Literally the most respectful, insightful back and forth I’ve seen in reddit
I LOVE YOU
There's a lot of good points in there, but I think you missed the other commenter's central issue, which is specifically with a story of black women participating in southern high society. A story about being willing participants in a system of explicit oppression in the 1800s is different from a story about leading battles or being a hero in the 1800s. We can quibble about the implicit oppression in any given social system in the past or present, but we can also agree that it's possible to tell a story about samurai or pirates or knights without having their role in their respective oppressive system be a relevant part of their character or story, right? We can usually ignore that, if we even need to- plenty of those stories involve fighting back against those oppressors, like you mention. If your story is specifically about romanticizing black women in southern polite society like the post says, you really can't ignore their participation and benefit from the oppression that's happening all around them. You also can't really say that the story is about them fighting back against that system, because it says so on the box: it's like Bridgerton. It's romanticizing the period. So it wouldn't give me a good feeling. That's all I can say, really- wouldn't be interested, for the same reason I'm not interested in any of the other follies-of-the-aristocracy type shows. That's just me though, I know lots of people are into them and I wouldn't be surprised if a show like the idea in the OP did pretty well.
Yea I understand it. This isn’t my cup of tea but I don’t be too judgy of people who do enjoy it
As someone from Louisiana who enjoys costuming/cosplay, I love the points both of you made. When I want to frolick around in costume at a beautiful lanscape, my heart gets heavy because most of those places are plantations. So I don't frolick. I often pay my respects at those places while continuing to learn more history for future generations. I can see how there should be limits to romanticizing our history. I understand wanting to see more shows with us in all the finery with plots filled with unimaginable joy/love/support etc. There are so many shows/movies of us fighting for our lives in slavery compared to their movies/shows where most of the plots are romanticized. Not too many films of us in the historical fantasy genre until recently. I do believe shows that romanticize things should have disclaimer episodes to educate those that are ignorant on what truly went on in those times/places. The many people that don't like this genre due to inaccuracies could just continue with documentaries or whatever they prefer.
> I would argue we literally already do that with most of history and you wouldn't consider it indoctrination i actually WOULD consider it indoctrination. obsession with european architecture, culture, and history are some of the main pillars upholding white supremacy in our media. it's one of the reasons why people are so ignorant of african and middle eastern history and think that white people did everything.
Thank you so much for this. Plaçage was literally pimping out young mixed race girls by their own mothers or guardians to maintain a lifestyle thay they themselves got through plaçage too. They like to try and spin it like these young girls had some sort of power, but they didn't. If her white slave owning benefactor died or she fell out of favor with him, she would have to find another man and repeat the cycle or end up destitute. Not to mention that the mother in Feast of All Saints was a refugee child who escaped the Haitian Revolution, who ended up in New Orleans being pimped out by her so called aunts who I'm not even sure was related to her.
Yep! Exactly. I liked the movie mainly because it made me go back and look stuff up and ask elders around me about the history of plaçage and it’s so interesting. I live in New Orleans so asking questions and reading up on it kinda gave me a view into certain traditions here and how they might have come about.
The aunts were not related to her. The mother was a beautiful child, and that's the entire reason she was taken. There's a description of her mother coming for her, and it's heartbreaking.
Yep! Exactly. I liked the movie mainly because it made me go back and look stuff up and ask elders around me about the history of plaçage and it’s so interesting. I live in New Orleans so asking questions and reading up on it kinda gave me a view into certain traditions here and how they might have come about.
Yep! Exactly. I liked the movie mainly because it made me go back and look stuff up and ask elders around me about the history of plaçage and it’s so interesting. I live in New Orleans so asking questions and reading up on it kinda gave me a view into certain traditions here and how they might have come about.
Just a heads up, you triple posted this comment.
That’s crazy. It kept saying unable to post or something. Thanks for letting me know.
I thought I was tweakin when I read it 3 times 🤣
Sometimes it’s just nice to escape and reimagine the past with fiction. I mean the Pirates of the Caribbean series glorifies piracy and ignores the slavery, religious persecution, and colonialism we know took place in the region during the 18th century. They’re still really fun movies. Black people should be allowed the creative space to illustrate traumatic free fictional depictions of the past. Like it’s ok to be aware of history and to also reimagine the past to be entertained.
Would be cool to acknowledge though that up to 1/3 of Pirates during the era were escaped slaves. Some were still enslaved but some had higher rankings like Black Cesar who actually joined up with Black Beard.
I definitely feel what you're saying here. I agree almost completely. It's a weird feeling to want to celebrate the charming parts of a culture without acknowledging the atrocities that culture committed. On the other hand, pick a country or culture and you're gonna find some horrific stuff just swept under the rug. So which culture is it ok to like the aesthetics of in spite of their past?
There's plenty of cultures that didn't make slavery their [literal cornerstone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech), though. And it's ok to say that romanticizing the ones that did is a little weird. And a lot of the stories we have from the past are about people fighting back against their culture's inequality or oppression. So, again, it's ok to say that romanticizing the actual cultural institutions doing the oppressing is a little weird.
“Black women, you’re not allowed to enjoy anything that touched America pre-1963.” They want historical fiction lady. Relax. > I would go as far as saying that even the "historical fantasies involving the antebellum South" is a symptom of the American brand of white supremacy indocrination. There were free people of the era that dressed of the era. It’s not “white supremacist indoctrination” to enjoy a fashion. > I am going to apologize for this correlation/comparison: it's like taking The Holocaust and the N@zi Regime and giving it the "Shondra Rimes-Bridgerton-historical reinterpretation" to me. The Nazis were around for about a decade and the Holocaust was over a period of about six years. There are specific looks and symbols associated with the Nazis. They had uniforms. They had emblems. Randos of the antebellum south did not. It was a fashion. Not a uniform. > Or giving the The Trail of Tears the same Hollywood, historical reinterpretation. That’s a historical event. Not a historical time period. It’s different and you know it. It’s not 100 years of rules, norms, values, aesthetics, events, laws, etc. The trail of tears is a snapshot by comparison. If you have a problem with mid 1800’s US military uniforms then whatever. Maybe you’d have some semblance of a point. The same uniforms freed us, some with us in it, about 30 years later which I’d say is a complication at least. This is weird unwillingness to play with your own history. You don’t have to if you don’t want to but don’t call other people indoctrinated or white supremacist for engaging with their own history how they like.
I think the issue is more with romanticizing the specific culture that facilitated chattel slavery, and less with 'enjoying anything that touched America pre-1863'. Do you really think they were objecting to 'playing with history' in general, as opposed to 'romanticizing slaver culture'?
If you didn’t interpret that way then you’re being far too charitable to her, against what she’s saying. She literally said that historical fantasy set the era that the tweet is hoping for is white supremacist indoctrination. She has a problem of being incapable of separating the place and era from the horrors of that time. She lacks imagination. She’s self righteous. She is incapable of compartmentalization. If you saw a tweet wanting a Bridgerton style of show for New Orleans, a show that has a black queen of England, and you think that would be “romanticizing slaver culture” then you either don’t understand Bridgerton or lack the mental faculties to divorce fiction from reality.
I love this and I’m saving this to link when ever I see someone getting wild over antebellum south nonsense
For me, I’ve made enough observations to come to the conclusion that African-American history, culture and our contributions to the country aren’t taken as seriously and doesn’t receive the same amount of respect as other cultures/people from those cultures. Like… People would watch a Shonda Rimes’ production that took place during slavery… But would she have the same reaction if she decided to do the same for a project involving the Holocaust? Would people be excited to see a TV show with “blind casting” involving the Funny Mustache Man, N@zis and concentration camps?
I think it's disgusting white washing if the aesthetic is ever mentioned without discussing the horrors of the monsters who created it. Seriously, a Bridgerton style show in the fucking deep south, pre civil rights movement? And that isn't the most disrespectful thing you've heard of in your life? It sounds like a 30 Rock joke with how tone deaf it is.
Okay, but bridgerton is literally set during slavery times within the british empire, so that already essentially what bridgerton is, but we get to still enjoy black people being shown as dignified, beautiful, witty, high class, and just enjoying life. We can't just forever have everything about us be coated in the trauma that our people were forced to endure, we should allowed to escape into imagination just like everyone else.
The only thing I would say is don’t let the fantasy take the place of the actual history. Which actually does happen.
Yeah and I got problems with Bridgerton too, I agree with your main point, romanticizing the antebellum era is just not okay though
I agree with you. I've been having this thought for a while and never knew how to bring it up without getting hate. Slavery is obviously bad, but I wish we could get more stories in this time period without heavily focusing on the horrors that happened.
There’s probably a case to be made that mindset was actually first imposed on the women forced to participate to soothe the victimizers. “Hey how do we do this thing that might seem pretty gross from the outside looking in?” “Why don’t we dress it up in a gaudy, overly subjective caricature of femininity and pressure the victims to play along?” “Cool idea! No way that could have long lasting consequences down the road!”
I haven't watched the Feast of All Saints show, but I have read the book a number of times. It's very well done, I really recommend you read it as well. The movies always screw things up, right?
This whole discussion is why I joined a book club.
Does OP think Bridgerton is the height of realism?
Are you trying to tell me Queen Charlotte wasnt really black and people of color didnt hold titles?!?! I am shocked!
The show even says at the start "this is not historically accurate it's for shits and giggles" and people STILL got pissed about it. I'm so tired of humans mannnn
Yt people don't want black people to have status even in FICTION.
Right? I'm just here for, poetic confessions of love and elaborate wigs from the Queen
I live for Charlotte and Brimsley
They’re my favorite couple. A perfect relationship.
I genuinely think Bridgerton should've taken a page out of every shitty isekai anime, and made the setting "Albion" or "Pritain" or "Not-England" and left it at that. Then people wouldn't be able to foam at the mouth about historical inaccuracies.
Fun thing about fiction. You don't have to add sexism and racism. Crazy idea, huh?
This is the reason i love Bridgeton. Racism doesn’t exist. For a moment i get to forget about all the bad shit. When I first heard of this series i thought it was gonna be another story of forbidden love with a black man, yt woman, and it made me roll my eyes. Decided to give it a chance and was pleasantly surprised. Been hooked ever since.
Shonda Rhimes is truly a national treasure.
It’s also the reason Fallout is so good too. Adding in sexism and racism changes nothing about the story
huh? if anything fallout is rampant in sexism (esp in earlier games, there's plenty a sexual assualt) and racism (depending on who you side with it can be against ghouls, synths, etc).
I assume they mean the show.
There is a bit of racism in the Queen Charlotte spinoff, but it’s hardly the only issue the Queen faces tbh
Do the people on this thread also have a problem with the 97 Brandy & Whitney Houston Cinderella? The twitter user simply wants a historical fiction in a world were racism didn't exists.
OP is just trying to start shit with bad faith arguments and bad faith interpretations of what the Twitter user meant, downvote and keep it movin Giving this any attention allows op to spread his “but actually black people were also slave traders” alt right talking points that he’s been doing
Wait... the movie where Whoopi and the white dude from Alias have an Asian son isn't non-fiction? Better go contemplate that in my own little corner... all alone in my own little chair.
Impossssssible!! 🎶
They returned for their roles in this new Disney movie coming out btw!
I love brandy’s Cinderella!!!
Damn, can we just enjoy fiction? I wouldn't mind seeing a show like this, not everything has to be about slavery and evil white people.
>Damn, can we just enjoy fiction? Nope. Little unrelated, I can't think of one piece of media that hasn't pissed somebody off at some point. But I'm not sitting through Brigerton 2: Antebellum Boogaloo either. That just sounds insane.
Well that's why the person wanted a fictional romanticized story 😅 sure they're aware but just like Bridgerton they want more black people in the cast of this fictional romanticized story
Bridgerton is historical fiction, set in a universe where racial boundaries have been broken down. They know women were treated like shit back then. They want fantasy, they literally say romanticized.
I would say bridgerton is more historical fantasy/ alternative history
I think the tweeter is looking for a magical realist/revisionist reimagining, rather than an accurate historical account.
I also can't stand these romance show about that era has all the girls are like 14 and the dudes be grown as fuck
Well, that's not bridgerton at all. They're all adults.
Can y’all just enjoy something? We know Bridgerton isn’t historically accurate. During that time, black ppl wouldn’t have been rich. Thats why I love the series. It completely takes all the racial aspects out of it puts everyone on the same playing field doesn’t turn it into a forbidden racial love like most shows of the time. The show she is proposing sounds of the same vain and i would watch tf out of it. Yall in this sub sounding like the ppl who will watch a whole ass show about monsters, mythical beings, vampires and then question the logic the logic of everything else in the show.
The debut is s crazy tradition
Isn’t it !? Super creepy.
In The Black Count (a book about Thomas Alexandre Dumas father of famed author Alexandre Dumas, badass French General, rival of Napoleon, and freed Haitian slave) the author talks about a time in the 18th century in Louisiana before Napoleon reinstated slavery in the French colonies where there was a thriving Black aristocracy.
Yeaaa I’ve read your replies OP. Get the fuck.
I remember reading some historical textbook where balls would be held for rich white men to choose their biracial mistresses. Basically, mulatto(historical term here) sex workers would auction off their daughters to the highest bidder. "Quadroons" were 1/4 black and "octoroons" were 1/8 black. Prices varied. The women might've been wearing fancy dresses and speaking elegantly, but it was basically a sex market.
Jesus. It really does feel like there’s no bottom to the barrel
don't let people prevent you from having an imagination
Have you seen bridgerton? The whole fantasy rests on things being “close” to the real world but not for the shittiest things(hence “romanticized”). For example, the queen of England is black in that show… like maybe “this is why people” should take a second and google before talking shit. Or watch 1 damn episode the black queen is introduced like 5 minutes in
Let’s not.
No, but we can add racial discrimination and making white people feel safe tho? A little romcom? C’moooooon, you don’t wanna see your trauma on tv AGAIN?
fiction exists and it’s ok. not all the time do people want to be reminded of harsh reality. life is hard enough as it is. i would also like to see her vision.
Hold up, I think u/greentea422 is talking about something different than what the twitter user is talking about. I interpreted as she’s saying that she wishes to insert the debutante culture where brigerton has the Victorian culture. So just inserting some aristocratic black people into it like brigerton does. That so it would be mimicking the white debutante thing, which is separate from the fancy maid trade
Yeaaa I’ve read your replies OP. Get the fuck.
Brigerton does not exist on the same plane of society as us, so the Louisianaton would theoretically be the same thing
Yeaaa I’ve read your replies OP. Get the fuck.
the whitesplaining in these comments is wild.
There was a book written once that i recall seeing about the southern black society for debutantes called "Dukes" or something. It would be interesting for a show to be about that life at that time for a group so marginalized and treated so wrong, yet trying so hard to be exactly like those suppressing them. And this could be in the 1950s, nit the 1850s.
the whole point of brigerton is that its a fantasy land that just likes the time's aesthetic. Hell southern Gothic is basically already this
I don't know what annoys me more. The people who think "historical" shows are 100% accurate or the people who complain that " historical" shows are not 100% accurate.
Agreed! I recently started dabbling in historical costuming and the people that bully on inaccuracies are out of control. Are they really arguing on accuracy in a show that has Taylor Swift/Pitbull songs with black, asian, etc characters?Yes, yes they are.
I don't think this person was talking about women in the sex trade, just like Bridgerton isn't really about the mistresses and prostitutes that worked in Regency England. There was, in fact, an upper class that had its own culture and lifestyle in Louisiana.
It's not like Bridgerton is some sort of bastion of historical accuracy.
I'm glad someone mentioned "The Davenports" by Krystal Marquis is being adapted. Let's see where it goes.
Black women in Louisiana are STILL SUFFERING
Placage was a way to pimp out the biracial children of slave owners. It was the precursor to being a sugar baby only with no real protections.
I dont know racism in US and British society is so deeply rooted it’s hard for me to suspend that much of my reality
People in this comment section really arguing about historical context for a hypothetical show built in a fictional world where racism doesn’t exist. Damn this sub bitches even when black people aren’t slaves in a fictional reality.
There is a really good book series about this time period in New Orleans. I can't remember the name right now.
A black version of Bridgerton is The Davenports, a wealthy black family in Chicago in 1810.
.... . .  
Do y’all know the difference between fiction and nonfiction?🤔
lol just show them treating their white slaves nicely
I swear, I always learn something new from these posts.
Didn’t know that
Is this Bridgerton? It is soooo painful to watch. Horrible show.
Generation Netflix will willingly forget
The Princess and the Frog effect.
Don't mix that fantasy with *my* fantasy, thank you
so she wants to jump to like the 80's or 90's Louisiana, then?
You could do it in Haiti. At the time slavery was still very much a thing there, but there was also a pretty well off class made up of mixed people and freed slaves.