Transcript of episode 014 -

Don’t have your wedding on a plantation

Bridget Todd (00:04):

There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio, and Unbossed Creative.

Bridget Todd (00:12):

I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There are No Girls on the Internet.

Bridget Todd (00:17):

As a woman of a certain age, I've gone to my fair share of weddings over the years. I'm also getting married myself, or at least I was until COVID, and now, who even knows? But that means I have seen no fewer than a dozen wedding websites listing outdated wedding cliches to avoid, things like serving drinks in Mason jars, which, I'm sorry to say, I still think is kind of charming. A survey of 5,000 married adults by The Wedding Inbox found that certain old fashioned wedding traditions are now falling out of favor in our evolving world. Take the expectation that a bride's dad will always pick up the tab. Not only is this totally heteronormative, but it's also a norm that a lot of people do not stick to anymore. Today, more than four out of 10 couples share the cost of weddings between both families. And take throwing rice at the happy couple after the ceremony. Even though Snopes found the whole birds eat rice and die thing is a myth, rice can be annoying to clean up, so now many couples have turned to alternatives like blowing bubbles.

Bridget Todd (01:16):

So just like anything else, wedding traditions evolve over the years, which brings me to one wedding element that definitely needs to be left in the past, and that is the plantation wedding. I know what you might be thinking, who would actually want to have a wedding on a plantation, a site of brutalization and torture of black enslaved people? But I'm from the South and I can tell you, it happens. A-list celebrities Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, had their 2012 wedding at Boone Plantation in South Carolina, the filming location for the film, The Notebook. It was also the site where according to one record, 85 enslaved black people were brutalized, while being forced to harvest cotton, pecans, and producing brick.

Bridget Todd (01:59):

Here's an upbeat tour video from the website Southern Weekend.

Speaker 2 (02:03):

It also has breathtaking grounds, which are a popular wedding venue, and it features a truly spectacular home built in the 1930s.

Bridget Todd (02:11):

I mean, they could've at least put the music in a minor key, right? Now, at the time, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, their wedding got so much positive press for being romantic and beautiful. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds Married Where The Notebook Was Filmed!, Us Magazine gushed. People Magazine's headline added that, "The couple tied the knot in a super romantic location." But now, the couple regrets it. They've since had another ceremony, and donated money to the NAACP. It's impossible to reconcile. "What we saw at the time, was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built on devastating tragedy," Ryan Reynolds said in an interview.

Bridget Todd (02:49):

The first step in planning a wedding is often searching websites like Pinterest, Zola, and WeddingWire, and up until last year these sites allowed plantations to be advertised on their platforms as charming and nostalgic landmarks of a genteel bygone era, instead of somber reminders of the brutality of slavery.

It's no surprise the couple say they fell in love with the venue on Pinterest. For most people, the first step in planning a wedding is searching websites like Pinterest, Zola, and WeddingWire, and up until last year, these sites allowed plantations to be advertised on their platforms as charming and nostalgic landmarks of a genteel bygone era, instead of somber reminders of the brutality of slavery. That is, until the civil rights organization, Color of Change stepped in. They worked with popular wedding platforms like Pinterest, The Knot, and WeddingWire to develop new guidelines to stop the promotion of wedding content that romanticizes former slave plantations. And this fits squarely within Color of Change's understanding that part of making change, involves sparking cultural shifts in people's minds. In this case, getting them to stop thinking about slavery from a white-centered lens. It's work that Jade has spent her entire young adult life getting ready for.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (03:41):

My name is Jade Magnus Ogunnaike. I'm the Senior Director of the Media Culture and Economic Justice Team at Color of Change.

Bridget Todd (03:48):

So how does one get a job that involves getting wedding websites to rethink plantations?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (03:53):

First, I went to Howard University, which is sort of like a hotbed for discussions around political activism and black identity. I went to Howard, and I was at Howard during what I call the black youth movement of the 2010s. This is when Trayvon Martin was killed, it was such a big turning point for so many of us, and this is when you have organizations like BYP100, and Dream Defenders coming to the forefront. And so, I was a founding member of BYP100, I think when I was a junior in college, or maybe the summer between my junior and senior year. And immediately after, I wanted to get an organizing job, and quite a few people that I respected had worked in the labor movement.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (04:43):

And so, I went to go work in labor, organizing low wage workers for two years, which was the best sort of education that you can get, and the strongest organizing training possible. And I was getting married at the end of those two years, and with labor, you're required to do such a lot of travel. And so, I was looking for a job that didn't require as much travel, and I had a friend who worked at Color of Change, they happened to be sort of interviewing at the same time I was looking for a job, and it fell into place. I started at entry-level at Color of Change four years ago as a campaign manager, and I've been here ever since.

Bridget Todd (05:26):

So you mentioned getting married earlier. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you. I happen to know from social media that you had a big, beautiful wedding, not that long ago. Congratulations. Did you use wedding planning websites like Zola and Pinterest, and what was that experience like for you planning your wedding?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (05:42):

I got engaged and married, actually quite young for the current modern era that we're in now, and so yeah, I was totally overwhelmed. First of all, I didn't have a lot of money when I was planning my wedding. And so, you're looking at all of these wedding websites, buying all the magazines, listening to all the podcasts about how to plan a wedding. And actually, during this sort of wedding planning was the first time I'd ever heard of a plantation wedding. I'm from Los Angeles, we don't have relics to American slavery in the same way that you might have in the South or the East. And I went to college in D.C., so there are not a ton of plantations in D.C., Although there are some in the broader DMV area. Yeah, that was sort of the first time I had ever kind of seen the plantation weddings thing, and I thought it was just, above all, super duper weird. But I know now that it's a cultural touchstone for a lot of people in the South, so.

Bridget Todd (06:48):

Yeah, I grew up in the South, I'm from Virginia, and I have never attended a wedding on a plantation, but I've definitely been invited to them. I do think there's this sort of unstated norm that if you're from the South, it's a thing that happens. I think that people don't really question it that much, it just kind of becomes part of Southern culture, and it becomes one of those things that people don't kind of make themselves ask any kind of critical questions about or be critical of, because it's just part of being raised in the South.

Bridget Todd (07:19):

It shouldn't be terribly surprising that when some people think of plantations, they think of romantic tree-lined paths, elegant porches, and, "Hey, this would be a great place for a wedding!" We've removed these sites so far from their actual histories and the legacies of the enslaved people who lived and died there, and a lot of people in the South grew up not really thinking critically about the legacy of slavery and the way it's built into the landscape in the South. Visiting my parents in Virginia involves a drive down a highway still named after Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy. And to get to my high school, I drove down Monument Avenue every single day, lined with statues of Confederate soldiers like Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, and I never even really stopped to think about it until I was an adult. I learned about a sanitized, friendly version of slavery and the Civil War, and I'm not kidding, our elementary school even had Civil War Day every year, where all the kids would either dress up as Confederate or Union soldiers and recreate a march on the school yard.

Bridget Todd (08:17):

Now, Jade grew up across the country in California, and she grew up learning about the Missions, outposts built by Spain in California in the late 1700s, where indigenous people were forcibly relocated from their traditional homes, in the name of colonialism and Christianity.

“there are all of these sorts of ways that human atrocities, like slavery, are sort of built into our culture, built into our psyche, and they're so normalized that you don't think about it at all, because it's just something you've grown up with.”

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (08:32):

In California, we have Missions, which were essentially torture sites for Native American and indigenous people, right? And in school, you go and visit the Missions in third grade, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, you build a mission, right? So there are all of these sorts of ways that human atrocities, like slavery, are sort of built into our culture, built into our psyche, and they're so normalized that you don't think about it at all, because it's just something you've grown up with. Yeah. It's really, really interesting.

Bridget Todd (09:05):

So tell me more about how the idea to get wedding websites to stop romanticizing plantations became a reality?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (09:11):

Yeah. So I had just come back, I had a baby, in what year was that? 2019. And so, just come back from maternity leave, and was talking to some colleagues, one of our researchers, [Isha 00:09:25] [inaudible 00:09:26] was talking about, had shared an article I think about plantation weddings. And so, she was like, "Obviously, this is something that's not right. What if we targeted wedding planners?" And so, thinking about sort of the strategy for how we can really affect change is, we could talk about wedding planners, but there's not necessarily a wedding planners association that's like mandatory for wedding planners to be a part of, in order to plan weddings.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (10:05):

From my own experience planning a wedding, I knew that the big engines in wedding planning were these platforms, a lot of them started as magazines, print publications, and then transitioned to online digital publications. And so, I knew already the big ones. I knew The Knot, I knew WeddingWire, I knew Zola, who had begun doing this quite visible publicity campaign on the New York subways at the exact same time as this is happening, about how they're sort of a nontraditional modern wedding platform. Martha Stewart's Weddings, Brides. And so I was like, I love the idea around plantation weddings, especially because this is something that we talk about in the black community all the time. I'm sure if you search plantation weddings on Twitter for the past 10 years, there's been sort of cyclical conversations about them like, "How crazy is this? Why is this allowed," et cetera?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (11:06):

And so I was like, I brought together Isha, and I brought together our campaign manager at the time, [Amani 00:11:11] Brown, and was like, "Let's sit down, and let's target these wedding website platforms. They are the ones to go after, because they are the ones curating this vision and this aesthetic around what a wedding should be, and plantations are largely, a really, really big part of that aesthetic." And the more we sort of went into the research, the darker it kind of became. So yeah, that's sort of how it got started. We sent out letters to all of the platforms I just named. Two of them got back to us, The Knot, and WeddingWire, and Pinterest.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (11:48):

And so, I think the first meeting we had was with Pinterest, with Ifeoma Ozoma, who is an incredible... She used to be at Pinterest, and they treated her and other black employees really poorly, and she left quite publicly this year. And Ifeoma, who is just such a champion of this cause, she was like, "As a black woman, it's not just about my job, it's about what is important for my reputation and ethics, and this is not okay. It's not okay that we push this plantation aesthetic on the platform." And so, what they did was they removed keywords. You were unable to search a list of plantation related keywords.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (12:30):

And then we met with The Knot and WeddingWire, and that was a longer set of conversations, but we also came to sort of an agreement, which we developed some guidelines around what was able to be put on the website. So, they agreed to no longer feature... They'll do like listicles or features of weddings, they would longer do original content featuring plantation weddings, which I thought was a big deal. And the second piece that they did, which I thought was really, really important, was they had a team who went through the directory and sort of culled descriptions. They removed words like Antebellum, they removed words that sort of played on the history of slavery. Probably the most disturbing part of this whole thing is that what we found was that it's not only that slavery was a part of this project, right? It's like, in some of the cabins, they would advertise slave cabins that had been there since the 1700s, and to me, I'm just like, so why on earth would you want to get married next to places where people were beaten, and abused, and tortured, and enslaved, and sexually assaulted?

Bridget Todd (13:48):

Jade's team found that wedding websites use terms like romantic, charming, and elegant to describe plantations, but obviously, any romanticization of plantation life is just artifice to make it seem more charming, and less like a torture site. And even weirder, like a copy of something that never really existed in the first place, some wedding venues in the South were built well after slavery ended, but were designed to look like plantations and call themselves plantations, even though they were never actually working plantations. What do you gain from calling your wedding venue that never housed enslaved people, a plantation? And what exactly are you trying to capitalize on by using that word to sell your venue to prospective couples?

Speaker 4 (14:32):

Bobby Asaro owns Southern Oaks Plantation in New Orleans East. It has never been a real plantation, built only in the '60s to look like one.

Speaker 5 (14:41):

The lighting, the pillows, the sofas. We did all of that to give it a more updated look.

Bridget Todd (14:47):

It just goes to show how deeply the marketing around the fantasy of plantations and slavery, as symbols of nostalgia and elegance, is intertwined with the American South.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (14:57):

What we found was there were quite a few venues who actually had never taken part, there had never been enslaved people on the grounds, but they were also marketing this plantation fantasy, which I hadn't realized was such a big part of so many American psyche. and it's this idea that in the Antebellum South, before the Civil War, when black people were enslaved, this was a great time of gentility and grace, right? And so, that is the aesthetic that these wedding website platforms were playing on, and that so many people plan weddings around. For me, when I hear about pre-Civil War, I think of pain, I think of rape, I think of abuse, I think of torture, but for a lot of people, that's not what they think of. They think of a better time. And so, that part and that piece, it was quite jarring to realize that a lot of what these plantations were doing, was they were marketing slavery as sort of a draw for a romantic place to get married.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (16:02):

Immediately after, we had an exclusive with Buzzfeed that came out about The Knot, and WeddingWire, and Pinterest making these big changes, what had been so interesting was that when we initially sent a letter to Zola, for example, we had sent a list of examples. And so, I had just happened to be checking up on the website just one evening, and went to Zola's website, and they had pulled all of the mentions of plantations from the website, but they hadn't replied to us at all, and that was a problem for a couple of reasons. The number one being is that we're actually not interested at Color of Change in people sort of just pulling things and doing quick fixes, we want people to make commitments, and change policies and rules moving forward.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (16:46):

So yeah, it's great that you couldn't search plantation at the time that I was on Zola's website, but the problem actually is, is that there's no policy around it moving forward. So if a plantation venue puts something up the next day, it could be featured. And as I said earlier, I was taking the subway to work every day and noticing that Zola had all of these ads about how they were so progressive and modern, and a wedding platform for a new sort of partners, and yet, they were unwilling to respond to us and make these policy changes, which is just a way that things are... Companies are so incongruent in marketing and the actual policies that they enact.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (17:30):

And so, when the Buzzfeed article came out, Zola said, "Yes, we're not taking anything down. We're not making any policies. We agree that people should be able to put up whatever they want." A couple of hours later, the New York Times did an article around it, and in that few hours, Zola made a commitment in the New York Times article to no longer feature them. So that was sort of a full circle moment. Brides, and Martha Stewart's Weddings also made these commitments as well too when the articles came out, to no longer future plantation weddings content. So that was a big deal. It was a really meaningful moment.

Bridget Todd (18:04):

It's interesting to see that it took that kind of high profile public pressure that originally, they were sort of not responsive, but when the New York Times writes about it, they seem to have changed there tune pretty quickly.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (18:15):

Mm-hmm (affirmative) It just shows, what we've seen, I think even since the George Floyd protests, is that outward communications are one thing, what a corporation puts out to the world is one thing, and what they do behind the scenes with their own employees, with the content that they push out is a totally different thing. We saw so many corporations, Color of Change also has this [inaudible 00:18:37] called Beyond the Statement, which is about how we've seen so many corporations say, "Oh, black lives matter," right? But when you look at their companies, they're paying their low wage workers who are disproportionately black, $10 an hour. It just doesn't add up.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (18:50):

And so, for the plantation weddings content, as well as this Beyond the Statement stuff, it's important that black people matter in life, as much as they matter in death. It's important that our ancestors, the pain and the torture that they went through is respected, and that was a big piece of this plantation weddings campaign, is that these are sacred sites. These are sites where human atrocities took place. Planting more trees and pointing to the beautiful architecture does not change the fact that these are places... It's not like slavery just happened there, the plantations were built to house slavery. It's very intentional what was happening.

Bridget Todd (19:34):

Let's take a quick break.

Wedding websites not romanticizing plantations may seem like a small change, but sometimes a small concrete action can lead to a wider, more meaningful cultural shift

Bridget Todd (19:43):

And we're back. Wedding websites not romanticizing plantations may seem like a small change, but sometimes a small concrete action can lead to a wider, more meaningful cultural shift in individual people's attitudes. And even if you've never really thought about why having a wedding on a plantation isn't a great idea, platforms like Pinterest not romanticizing plantation weddings can create a larger shift in how everyone thinks about slavery and the way it shows up in our culture. This is not new work for Color of Change. In addition to more traditional activism around social change, they also work to create change using popular culture. In the wake of protests around police killings, for instance, they worked to have television shows that glorify policing as an entertainment device, like Cops, and Live PD, take it off the air.

Bridget Todd (20:27):

You mentioned some of the other work that Color of Change is involved in, and I like that in addition to sort of some of the more traditional things that we think of in terms of demanding accountability, Color of Change also tries to create change through leading on these cultural things, so like the plantation weddings. I guess, why is that so important, in conjunction with some of the more traditional ways that you might think of as getting justice, also pushing forward these cultural changes and getting people to sort of rethink their own attitudes around how they understand and deal with black folks?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (21:03):

Yeah. Culture is a really, really big piece of Color of Change's work, it always has been. From us sort of getting Glenn Beck's show advertisers to pull out years ago, to our work this year to get Cops and Live PD off the air, the culture work is really important. And black people, we are the culture creators in this country, right? And I really view our culture work as not only uplifting and centering, and claiming black culture, which we do through a lot in our Hollywood work and our storytelling work, but it's also about supplanting the white-centered cultural symbols that really harm us. I'm sure so many, this plantation weddings thing leads into such a larger problem, right? Which is the way that slavery is taught in schools, and the ways that people think about it.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (22:01):

I mean, we had a few years ago, a textbook company put out a textbook that said slavery was essentially compared to being an intern, right? And so, because the true story of slavery has been neutralized in so many ways, I think if people really knew in detail the sort of things that happened on plantations, outside of maybe viewing 12 Years a Slave, or seeing Glory, I think they would really think twice about revering these sorts of symbols.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (22:34):

Yeah, the cultural work is incredibly important because culture shapes policy, right? And we see the movement of the past 10 years, as I said, the black youth movement, we see how over time, black organizers and black groups shifted the culture where it is no longer controversial to say, "Black lives matter," right? And you couldn't say that though, in 2013. It was quite a controversial thing to say. And so, we see that culture primes the environment for the policies and changes that need to happen, and culture work is also, it's important, and the work that affects material conditions also matters a whole lot too. And what I love about COC is it's not one or the other, we're definitely concerned with both, and moving campaigns in both areas.

Bridget Todd (23:34):

Definitely. Do you feel that the work that you did getting these wedding websites to change the way they talk about slavery was a successful example of that kind of cultural shift that you're describing?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (23:46):

Yeah, and I think it's also, what's so important about having black leaders at a powerful organization, black organizations really matter, and this is something that we took up because we knew how important it was. So many of us maybe have been invited to a wedding, or been on a plantation tour as a child in school, and sort of felt deeply uncomfortable at the ways that our ancestors were disrespected, and the pain and the torture that they went through was not respected. And so yeah, I think it was an incredibly meaningful moment.

Bridget Todd (24:24):

Did the websites who changed their policies around plantations face any kind of criticism or blowback?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (24:28):

One of the most interesting things, honestly, that I found was that there was quite a bit. I think a lot of people love to play the devil's advocate in sort of comments on articles and things, but when we were talking to The Knot and WeddingWire, the following January... This all happened in November, so talking to them, the following January, I asked, "Have you all received any blowback or criticism?" They said, "None at all." Right? So this-

Bridget Todd (24:53):

Wow.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (24:54):

"None. No one has said anything wrong. No one's said anything in our inbox. It has been a decision that people totally agree makes sense." And so for me, that was such a validating moment. A lot of corporations, they make or don't make decisions based on what will people say, right? And they have this idea in their mind, sort of the same way that candidates for office have this idea in their mind of the standard American, which is a extremely white, conservative person, when the truth of the matter is that people have diversity of thought. The past 10 years has shifted the way that people think around issues of justice, and in such a large way that this was sort of a needed next step, more than an earthshaking Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Bridget Todd (25:51):

So I read a lot of angry comments saying that you all were trying to have plantations destroyed, or burned down, or closed, and there's really no truth in that.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (25:59):

Literally, we never said that. That, to me, was the most shocking thing. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we literally didn't say anything to plantations at all." What we have found through talking to quite a few black historians and curators who actually work on these plantations, is what we really need is for federal and state governments to invest money in these plantations and keep them as museums, right? They need to be designated as historical places and places of note, so they can get funding so that they can be kept open. What we want is for people to hear the actual history of what happened. What we don't want is someone dancing to Baby Got Back on the grave of an enslaved person. That's what we don't want. But we want plantations to stay open as memorials to the pain and suffering that the American people and the American government put black Americans through. That is what we want.

Bridget Todd (26:58):

More after a quick break.

Bridget Todd (27:08):

Let's get right back to it. So how should we think about plantations still standing today? Jade says part of the process involves reimagining our current understanding of how plantations are used, and the role they should play in our culture going forward. And some plantations are doing that kind of work already. At Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville, tour guide Bridget Jones realized the tour focused mostly on wineries, and the lavish weddings that took place there. So she left her job, went to grad school to get a master's degree, and became the plantation's first ever Director of African American Studies. She now works to uncover never before seen histories of the plantation, and incorporates them into the plantation's tours.

Bridget Jones (27:49):

... [inaudible 00:27:49] by working here. Once I got promoted, I was like, this is the moment for the narrative of the slaves to really come to the forefront.

Bridget Todd (27:59):

Now, in absence of the kind of government funding Jade was describing earlier, a few plantations still need to do weddings and events to make money to fund the kind of curation work that Bridget Jones does at Belle Meade.

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (28:11):

There are a lot of black historians on plantations who are doing really, really incredible work, but like I said, what we found from talking to them, is that in order to pay their salaries, a lot of the time, the plantations do have to be open for events, right? And so, I will say that's in the minority, right? Not every plantation is trying to do this incredible truth telling history. That's not the reality for most of them, but there are a few where black historians and curators are on the premises, and that in order to sort of keep the plantation open to tell this true history, they need to have weddings, in order to bring in income.

Bridget Todd (28:52):

And this is why reimagining the role that plantations play in our culture is so important. Right now, plantations sanitize, or at least compartmentalize the history of what actually happened on plantations, in order to appeal to couples looking for a romantic wedding venue, and for a small number of those plantations, like Belle Meade, that money goes into paying for curation that tells the truth about slavery. But if we were able to designate and preserve plantations as historical landmarks, they'd be funded as such, which means they wouldn't need to rely on sanitizing the legacy of slavery, and the literal song and dance of the wedding industry, to stay open. We could have a real chance at using plantations to properly educate people about, and memorialize slavery.

Bridget Todd (29:35):

The Whitney Plantation Museum in Louisiana is the only plantation in the state, with an exclusive focus on the lives of enslaved people. Here's their current founder, John Cummings.

John Cummings (29:44):

We can't rewrite history, but we can correct some of the evils of history, and the number one tool that we have is education.

Bridget Todd (29:59):

They went viral this summer for a social media post explaining why they would never hold a wedding, writing, "Our tour has always focused on the brutal labor and stolen freedom of those that created vast economic wealth for the enslaving families. We do not glamorize the big house or the grounds. In addition to our mission to educate visitors and the larger community about slavery and its legacies, this is a site of memory and reference." So what if that was the popular understanding of the role of plantations in today's culture? Not whitewashing them and selling them as romantic sites of a bygone era for happy couples, but an actual place to memorialize, and come to terms with the true legacy of slavery? Until then, something we can all do right now is spend time reflecting critically about the ways the legacy of slavery shows up in our culture and our lives.

Bridget Todd (30:47):

We saw a very famous couple, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, they had a wedding on a plantation. They later apologized for it, and donated money to, I think, the NAACP, and had a different, smaller ceremony later on. What do you say to someone who maybe had a plantation wedding, maybe they didn't think about the implications of doing it? How should they be thinking about their wedding going forward, or what would you tell them?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (31:11):

Well, first of all, the thing that's so strange about the Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds thing, is he's Canadian and she's from L.A., so really confused about why they want to have a wedding on a plantation. It's not a cultural touchstone for either of them. That thing, that piece has always really kind of disturbed me. Neither of them have ties to plantations, so I thought that was really weird. I think reflecting on the experience, and taking something away from it is enough. I don't think they need to renounce their wedding or burn the photo books, right?

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike (31:50):

But I think in general, transformative reflection can be really, really transformative, and I think undergoing that process is important. I'm not going to say, "Oh, now make a donation to Color of Change because you had a wedding on a plantation." I mean, it would be nice, but that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for people to really look deeply and look inward about the ways that they have perpetuated the legacy of slavery, and that is one way, but there are plenty of other ways. Maybe your kid goes to a high school where they sing Dixie. These are the things to be reflecting on, and looking for other ways that the legacy of slavery shows up in your life, in ways that may not be respectful or reverential.

Bridget Todd (32:38):

When Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds first spoke out about their wedding with regret, I have to admit, I was a little skeptical. How could they only now be realizing this wasn't a respectful thing to do, I wondered? But honestly, it's never too late for anyone to start thinking critically about the role slavery plays in our culture and history. Maybe as individuals, we can't turn every still standing plantation into a site for respectful education about slavery, but we can work to unpack our own roles in honoring the legacy of enslaved people that our country was built on.

Bridget Todd (33:16):

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello@tangoti.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoti.com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio, and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amoto is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.