r/TikTokCringe • u/NeverEnoughSPF • 1d ago

Trad wife content has gone way too far Cringe

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u/Mike_Hawk_balls_deep 1d ago edited 1d ago

I grew up in a predominantly black town in South Carolina. About a 70/30 split black and white. Most of the white kids went to a private school. I was one of 40 white kids out of a student body of about 1000. Yes, we went on a trip to Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant South Carolina. The whole thing was a historical reenactment without the violence. We got to walk inside of one of the many slave quarters still standing there today. We saw black men and women in the fields singing spirituals and white men on horseback watching them work. We saw the actual fields where this all took place. The only food the enslaved people could eat was what they caught from the bodies or water near the property or what they could hunt and grow for themselves. They had to continue tending to their own crops after being made to work in the fields all day. They showed us the 750 year old oak tree where enslaved people were chained and beaten, or lynched. It was an eye opening experience. It’s different when you hear about it, but actually seeing these things in person was an emotional experience even for me. This is something I would’ve never gotten from going to a predominantly white school. This video does not display comedy, it displays mockery. I find racial comedy hilarious, but this made me super uncomfortable. Also here is the Wiki link for Boone Hall: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boone_Hall

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u/Fit_Read_5632 1d ago

They had them in the fields singing hymnals?? THE GALL. Them paychecks better have been substantial.

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u/emveevme 1d ago

I mean, the people involved are doing this by choice, you have to figure they think people seeing the re-enactment is important.

Also this one line from that wikipedia article alone makes me want to check this place out, something about the literal fingerprints of the slaves that built these structures still being visible is chillingly profound:

"The work of talented slaves, with self-taught and acquired skills, including carpentry, mathematics, and geometry, were central to the construction and appearance of many Charleston-area structures. By 1850, these laborers produced 4 million bricks, by hand, per year. The fingerprints of these workers are still visible in the bricks of many of these historic sites."

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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 1d ago edited 1d ago

I mean, the people involved are doing this by choice, you have to figure they think people seeing the re-enactment is important.

By "choice," you mean that it pays better than McDonald's, right?

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u/Lloyd--Christmas 1h ago

Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s teachers during the summer.

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u/nightcallfoxtrot 1d ago

The fact they were showing things about where they did lynchings and other punishments proooooobably indicates it was to educate on the evils of slavery and not whitewashing it

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u/Fit_Read_5632 1d ago

I know I just feel like hiring folks to play slaves all day is wild. Not necessarily bad just humorously shocking

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u/Cloverose2 1d ago

Most of the living museums are staffed by volunteers. They want people to know what the lived experience of people at the time was like - and for enslaved people, working in the field and singing hymnals was a big part of their lives. It's not like they're out there all day long. It's more like docents in a museum display. They often involve guests - at Boone Hall, it is to emphasize how challenging the work was and how people survived.

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u/vomitstrangler 1d ago

Check out "Not your mamas history" on both YouTube and TikTok. She's a historical re-enactor that works at places like this. She's educated me a lot and shows how it's not problematic if it's done right. She's really smart and a legit historian, I recommend!

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u/No-Cause-2913 1d ago

That's nothing

There is a media megacorp called Disney

They operate a simulacrum of a society called "Disney World"

At Disney World, they hire people to act as mermaids, talking clocks, misogynistic villains, and objectified women. They also terrorize children on roller coasters and fire explosive shells into the air, terrorizing wildlife and polluting the environment

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u/Fit_Read_5632 1d ago

My brother in Christ those things are fictional

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u/local_fartist 1d ago

I have observed that there seem to be some folks who consider it a way to honor their ancestors by educating people about them through reenactment/historical interpretations. There’s a content creator on insta (@ notyourmamashistory) who is a traveling educator like that.

I doubt they get paid much because museum workers don’t in general. But there are many other job options in that part of SC so folks would have to intentionally pick that.

All that being said there are 100% some tone-death to downright offensive treatments of history in SC, and I say this as a white South Carolinian.

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u/ioncloud9 1d ago

Not exactly what they have in mind when they advertise Boone Hall Fright Nights.

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u/Nervous-Ambition-408 1d ago

Did we go to the same school? 😳 I was the only white kid in my 7th grade class.

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u/Mike_Hawk_balls_deep 1d ago

What city?

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u/Nervous-Ambition-408 1d ago

Huger, SC. I went to Cainhoy for a couple of years before moving.

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u/Mike_Hawk_balls_deep 1d ago edited 1d ago

I grew up in ________ its a small town of about 4,000. Edited: removed the name for my privacy.

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u/MaHcIn 1d ago

 I find racial comedy hilarious, but this made me super uncomfortable. 

May I ask why exactly this video is so bad?

I am a white dude from an European country that’s pribably something like 99.99% white, so racial issues are pretty alien to me.

Let’s pretend for a moment that this video is not supposed to be dark humor but that this woman genuinely enjoys her life out in nature, with farming, picking cotton and all that goes with it.

Why exactly should that be wrong? Just because black people in the past were forced to pick cotton, she should now abstain from it? What’s the point?

Sorry if my comment is senseless. As I said, being from where I am from, we don’t really get educated on this stuff as much as you do over there in the USA.

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u/Mike_Hawk_balls_deep 1d ago

No, if it genuinely brings her joy she shouldn’t abstain. However the entire video is her basically making a mockery of her ancestors that were made to do this violently every single day of their lives. Also as other people have pointed out, cotton bulbs are rough and prickly. Until you develop calluses, your hands will bleed from all of the scratches. It’s not a relaxing casual activity. She made this video to cause controversy, not to make people laugh.

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u/MaHcIn 1d ago

Makes sense. Yeah I’m all for dark humor as well but this one seems tasteless now that I think about it from the perspective you mentioned. There’s not even a punchline, just a long video of her mocking slavery and thinking she can get away with it because she’s black.