House Republicans Meet at a Former Slave Plantation to Practice Talking to Black People

UPDATED: NBC News has also picked up on the irony of where the House Republicans are meeting to discuss how to better attract minority voters.  One GOP spokesman described the party's problems as follows:

the GOP had a “good message” for minorities but had suffered from a recent "bad communications."

When are these people going to stop drinking Kool-Aid and face reality?

This article in Gawker was just too good to pass up because it underscores how clueless the Republican party is when it comes to facing the reality of why minorities are voting for Democrats by huge margins.  The conventional wisdom in the GOP - if one can credit any form of wisdom to today's GOP - is that the party has a messaging problem.  Never mind that it is the GOP's POLICIES and open racism and bigotry that are the real problem, not poor "messaging."  Efforts to disenfranchise non-whites, slash programs that disproportionately aid minorities and the admission of those who can only be described as white supremacists into positions within the GOP have nothing to do with the Party's problem of attracting minority votes in the minds of these greed and religious extremism drive party apparatchiks.  So as the House Republicans gather to discuss their so-called messaging problem, where better to meet than at a posh resort located on a former slave plantation near Williamsburg, Virginia.  For those not familiar with this area, the Kingsmill Resort and its affiliated gated community, are very nice - and very, very white with most minorities to be seen only working as servants or waitstaff (some things never really change in Virginia) - and it is located on lands once part of a slave owning James River plantation. Here's how Gawker describes the GOP soul searching gathering:

The House Republicans are holding their annual winter retreat in quaint tourist village Williamsburg, Virginia, this weekend in order to recuperate and prepare for upcoming legislative battles. Besides partaking in discussions about the debt ceiling and gun restrictions, GOP congressmen and women will also be getting schooled in the fine art of how to have "successful communication with minorities and women."

One might presume that people elected to high office in America have at least a general understanding of how to talk to and about minorities and women without saying unimaginably offensive things, but one would be wrong. Far too many Republicans have a remarkable way of saying the absolutely worst thing time and again about everything from rape to Kwanzaa. Sadly, a lesson about why it's wrong to equivocate about a woman being raped or why it's not a great idea to make all your House committee chairs white men is exactly what the GOP needs.

And what better place to talk about making inroads with oppressed groups than in a room named after a famous Williamsburg plantation [i.e., Burwell Plantation], located in the tony Kingsmill Resort, which itself is on the site of another plantation? The GOP has heard your complaints, blacks and Latinos and women, and they're going to try to suss it out while sitting atop dead slave bones.

The link in the article takes you to a page from the Colonial Williamsburg website that looks at the slave owning Burwell family.  One part of the right up is telling: "The seven lists of slaves recorded by four members of the Burwell family between 1746 and 1839 fill ten pages in the Ann Powell Burwell Commonplace Book." Another telling passage:

[T]he widow Burwell noted the births of five children born to four of her enslaved women in Williamsburg between March 1754 and May 1756. She made these entries on the same page that Armistead Burwell used to list “my house Negro’s” in July 1746. There is no evidence that either Armistead or Christian Burwell purchased slaves for their Williamsburg household. The number of urban slaves grew through natural increase. Christian Burwell added a comment below her husband’s 1746 list of “Negro’s sent to Roanoke.” She noted, “The Negroe’s in Lunnenburg 1764 are 18 men and 17 Women.” There were also an unknown number of enslaved children on the family’s Southside property. 

In short the Burwell Plantation Room couldn't be a more appropriate place for the House Republicans to meet since many likely yearn for the "good old days" when the Burwell family was at the height of its wealth and power.

Sunday Evening Reflections

Today finished on a much brighter note than this morning began after a wearisome ordeal in the Sentara Norfolk General ER for nearly four hours and my contemplation of checking into the psych ward. After sleeping in and a slow day - particularly in light of the all day pouring rain - the boyfriend and I drove up to Kingsmill on the James River near Williamsburg for dinner at the home of one of his long time clients who I will refer to as KA. KA is but one of the boyfriend's affluent, educated clients who treat the two of us literally as part of her family never batting an eye over the fact that we are a gay couple. Moreover, neither do any members of her family or her friends - which tonight included one of her dear friends (and her boyfriend) visiting the USA from north of Brisbane, Australia. Also included were two of KA's young grandsons who welcomed the boyfriend and me as if there was nothing more natural than a gay couple joining in the family gathering.

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It was a lovely evening and we departed with invitations to visit Australia and wherever KA's son who is with the State Department may next be assigned. KA is a gracious and elegant woman and it has been such an honor to get to know her as well as other such wonderful women from the boyfriend's client base. They and their families give me hope for the future.

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In fact, I was again struck by the fact that there are increasingly two Virginias: the educated, tolerant, non-Christian fundamentalist and gay accepting Virginia vs. the typically largely less educated, religiously intolerant and fanatic, and homophobic Virginia. Obviously, if the state wants to prosper financially and attract progressive businesses, the former rather than the latter is the Virginia of the future. Bob McDonnell, bigoted homophobic judges of all races and the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells represent a Virginia which hopefully will soon cease to exist. For too long the color of one's skin, one's religious faith or one's sexual orientation has dictated whether or not one receives full civil rights and equality under the law in Virginia. Ironically, it is something that one would think black judges would understand better than anyone, yet in practice such is not the case - at least from the black judges I have encountered first hand. Instead of being unbiased and tolerant of gays, these judges are as bigoted against LGBT Virginians as the segregationists of years back were against blacks. It is truly bizarre that those who should know the evils of discrimination more than anyone are in practice the most discriminatory themselves when it comes to mistreating Gay and lesbian Virginians.