Plantations Quotes

“What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball… I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.”
― Rosa Luxemburg

“Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in 1917 to her anguished friend Mathilde Wurm:

What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball… I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.

An inordinate proportion of the Marxists I have known would probably have formulated their own views in much the same way. It was almost a point of honor not to engage in 'thinking with the blood,' to borrow a notable phrase from D.H. Lawrence, and to immerse Jewishness in other and wider struggles. Indeed, the old canard about 'rootless cosmopolitanism' finds a perverse sort of endorsement in Jewish internationalism: the more emphatically somebody stresses that sort of rhetoric about the suffering of others, the more likely I would be to assume that the speaker was a Jew. Does this mean that I think there are Jewish 'characteristics'? Yes, I think it must mean that.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy of all white people.”
― James Lee Burke, Jolie Blon's Bounce

“Plantations of good morals are easily captivated, colonized and corrupted by the pests of a bad company. Spray away bad companies and you will experience a bumper harvest of your dream fruits!”
― israelmore ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“As she gracefully descended down portico, the white gloved hand of the lady of the estate met the white-glove worn by a Negro footman, as a vast expanse of hoop skirt filled the carriage doorway. It was a skirt of fine white lawn with ruffles embroidered with little pink and blue flowers complete with green stems. The white trash girl looked on in amazement, involuntarily wincing at the thought of the long hours plantation slave seamstresses had devoted to decorating a dress that might only be worn a half dozen times and survive as many launderings.”
― Gwen Bistrow

“..the guests milled back and forth: men stood with their heads together, discussing politics and crops, their stiff white shirts puffed and ruffled, their voices rising and falling in steadfast opinions as women of fair whispered to one another and laughed behind silk fans, occasionally calling out gaily to pull another into their ring of white shoulder flounced with satin as house niggers dipped and weaved all around them bearing trays of syllabub and sack, almost invisible as the shadows they cast”
― Pamela Jekel

“When the Planters fled from Haiti, they established coffee farms or cafetales, as part of their newly formed Plantation. Generally, coffee profits were about 5%, whereas sugar gave them a 10% return, but much was dependent on the economy and local conditions. Cafetales were easier to start and with as little as 10 slaves, a planter could begin his enterprise. Most of the French plantation owners took great pride in their holdings and beautified their plantations with magnificent palms lining grand entryways and spectacular wrought iron gates. The eastern end of Cuba was still available for development and many big plantations started in this modest way, but eventually the coffee plants were replaced with sugar cane due to the greater profit margin. Though blamed by many as the sole cause for the decline of Cuba’s coffee industry, the U.S. Import Tariff of 1835 was only partially to blame for the fall in coffee production.
From the beginning, the prices of sugar fluctuated and prevented the Cuban economy from ever becoming stable. The first time was when the prices reached a high, during the Peace of Amiens in 1802. The treaty only survived for a year and shortly thereafter prices plunged, when the supply exceeded demand. During the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the price of sugar soared again, until the British conquest of Martinique and Guadeloupe brought the price tumbling down. The following year during the War of 1812 prices rose again, and by 1814 they reached another all-time high. This continued into modern times, creating a feast or famine economy.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba

“There was no mistaking it, throughout the 1950’s, Liberia proudly brandished its American roots by flaunting the palatial homes overlooking the Atlantic Ocean near Monrovia or the antebellum style mansions dominating rubber plantations owned by wealth Americo Liberians who considered themselves privileged. Their homes were closely modeled after the affluent homes of the pre-civil war era in the Confederacy. These beautiful homes stood out when compared to the dirt floor, thatch roofed village homes most Liberians lived in. The best visual description of Liberian architecture,would be in film clips taken from the movie Gone With The Wind.. In the 1950's, Liberia had all the trappings of an American colony stuck in the past.
To a great extent it was this great social divide between the indigenous natives and the Americo-Liberians that brought on the two civil wars in Liberia. This aspect of life in Liberia is highlighted in Seawater Two and will be covered in my upcoming book about the history of West Africa. Many of the Americo Liberians including President Talbert, have been killed of displaced. Because of the fierce civil wars in Liberia the coastal ships of the Farrell Lines fleet were sunk in “The Port of Monrovia” and much of Liberia’s antebellum architecture has been destroyed .”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater Two...."

“Journalist Tony Horwitz describes its laser show as an unfortunate mix of Coca-Cola, the Beatles, the Atlanta Braves, and Elvis sining "Dixie," followed by the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Television ads end with the inclusive slogan, "Stone Mountain: A Different Day for Everyone." Eventually the desire for everyone's dollar may accomplish what the physical elements cannot: eradicating Stone Mountain as a Confederate-KKK Shrine.”
― James Loewen

“Returning to Jamaica, he had the sense of re-entering a place much less likely to alter in the coming years. Year in, year out, the cane fields produced their riches, the gangs swung their way through them, slaves were brought, seasoned, used up, replaced. Planters would go on making improvements to their great houses, to methods of production, and yes, to the conditions in which their slaves lived and worked, because it was in their interest to do so. But fundamentally the structure of life and of society did not change.”
― James Robertson, Joseph Knight

“Nya nodded. "So many people come here without an understanding of the primary cause of the Civil War. Some people think Jefferson wrote the Constitution. I mean there are just so many ways that our public education is failing people by just not giving them the context to understand that Monticello is a plantation, and that slavery was a system that created the economic prosperity that enabled our country to exist. That is not something most people understand. I don't really blame them, because they're not taught to engage that history, and most people are not out here reading all these books that are piled on my desk.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“Angola prison has been regularly and casually referred to as a plantation by state authorities and media for over a century. When many people say "Angola is a prison built on a former plantation," it is often made as an unsettling observation, not as a moral indictment. Is it because our collective understanding of slavery, and its inherent violence, is so limited? Or is it that violence experienced by Black people is thought less worthy of mourning? White supremacy enacts violence against Black people, but also numbs a whole country--Black and white--to what would in any other context provoke our moral indignation.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America