Story by: David Burnette
I want to share part of a conversation I had with a friend.
These bits of old china are embedded in the mahogany countertop of the outdoor kitchen we are building on the deck. On St Croix they are called cheney, or “china money”. It’s been gathered up from the ground by children for generations and used as trading stock. Particularly beautiful pieces more valued than the more plain. Over time jewelers began to make bracelets and earrings from it.
These beautiful bits of fine china came to be because in 1848 the slaves revolted and began to destroy the sugarcane plantations that they had been forced to build and work. As the looting and destruction moved from plantation to plantation the women who had been forced to clean and care for the beautiful imported china took out their anger and frustration and pain on that personal symbol of their oppression. They carried those plates and cups outside and smashed them to bits.
To this day you can go out into the rainforest and find the ruins of magnificent old plantation Great Houses. All overgrown with vine and tree they look like something from a horror movie, and indeed they are. Slavery was nothing if not a horror. If you dig through 150 years of leaves and grass you might still find a shard of pottery. The last person to touch it had been a black person who was “looting”. A person who had been driven to breaking the “law” by racism and hatred and oppression. Slavery.
Vickie and I spent a lot of time picking up these bits of history. And we put some of it into that countertop out of affection for our time there, and recognition of that history.
Those slaves rose up and made change happen. They had to make someone else’s life more difficult for a time, they had to take their lives into hand, they had to break some shit to win their freedom. And they did. They were declared to be free as a result.
There are parallels between that time and America today. Imperfect and more subtle parallels but nonetheless they share roots. I am less offended by the looting than you, especially when I know that in some cases it is started and encouraged by those in power to make a legitimate protest look bad. It happened when we were at Standing Rock and it has happened whenever outrage surfaces. Agent provocateur. Just another form of oppression by “the master”.
So when we use our grill to fix a meal there is a gentle reminder at hand that sometimes you’ve got to break some shit to make progress.