The Chris Moeller Archives

Deen on the cross

Paula Deen, a person I had not heard of until a week and a half ago, is losing her business empire because she's shown herself over these last few days to be incapable of understanding how most Americans are repulsed by the worship of old-fashioned Southern plantation life. An apology for using an unacceptable word can be perfectly genuine-- and accepted, but when your idea of an apology includes an expression of sadness that your slave-owning great-grandfather shot himself in a barn because the Civil War was lost, you are truly suffering a major disconnect from the larger culture you're trying to serve.

Some Americans apparently need to be constantly reminded that the sociological and economic structure of the South, even long after the War has ended, has been vastly more harmful than simply the comparatively mild concept of separate but equal drinking fountains. It has been a system of targeted terrorism directed at a powerless portion of the population, an actively-violent attempt at full dehumanization, a system under which families were once routinely sold into lifelong separation and into situations of sexual assault and physical torture without even the whiff of legal recourse against the perpetrators of the violence. It's been a system under which the public lynching of a black man was cause for a family picnic as recently as this lifetime for the oldest generation of current Americans. It’s a perverted system under which the battle-flag of the terrorist army is still flown proudly by tens of thousands of individuals, and indeed, by two entire state governments.

In New York recently, Paula Deen said that her great-grandfather believed his “black folk” (i.e. slaves) to be part of the family, and that losing their help on the farm added to the misery of losing the War, and then directly to his suicide. She then proceeded to equate that alleged affection to the affection she has for her own black employees today. It's easy to have strong doubts about the stories that have been evidently passed down through the white side of Deen's "family." The historic myth of the “happy slave” is still too often perpetuated. Slaves that were not outwardly "happy" were looked on with suspicion, seen as potential threats, and therefore subject to even greater terror. To have love for a slave is also a baffling notion as owning a slave is, itself, an act of war. The frantic Southern attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 did not mark the start of war, but its climax.

Deen’s not being canned by her corporate business partners because she said a bad word once and now admits to it. We are always desperate to believe such a narrative in white America when a dose of modern-day victimization can help us feel less ashamed of the shame-worthy history of our nation. Deen is getting canned because the weight of her missteps doesn't seem to be penetrating her brain. When confronted with the impact of the public advance of her anachronistic and selfish beliefs, she doubled down with the announcement that “someone evil out there saw what I had worked for and wanted it.” In her recent court deposition, in a civil suit brought against her by a former employee alleging sexist and racist remarks, she was asked if she had ever used "the N word." Her response was that one of the only specific times she remembered doing it was when a black man "held a gun to (her) head" during a bank robbery. So when offered a chance to show regret, her strategy instead is to try to legitimize bigotry.

She’s getting canned for attempting, intentionally or not, to camouflage our nation's original sin, and at this point in history, Americans clearly feel more fatigue for this kind of crap than they do pity. She’s getting canned because her remorse shows no sign of a lesson having been learned. She’s also getting canned by her business partners because of some bad timing. Her testimony in her own case came within days of the start of the celebrated murder trial in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and through which, an acquittal of his killer would worsen already frayed race relations, as well as create a new open hunting season on young black men in America like the ones that helped to keep the plantation of Deen's great-grandpappy afloat for those many happy years before the War.

posted by CM @ 8:40 AM