“By not going to Zimbabwe, you’re basically supporting Mugabe.”
I had to think about this for a while. I was deeply annoyed, but I couldn’t articulate why. I was at an adventure travel event and one of the dudes on the floor said this in response to… I don’t remember what, exactly. I just remember thinking, “What a jerk, plus, he’s completely wrong.” I considered my choices — confronting him with a poorly formed response or going home. “Nope, I’m out,” I said to myself, out loud, and I went to my car.
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You have to go see a place to know its people. I was reminded of this very simple concept last fall when I traveled in Mississippi. I love to find out I am wrong, to confront my own biases and stereotypes about a place and its people. I take less pleasure in being right, but travel is a fine way to learn history too, to internalize it in ways that don’t happen through reading a text book.
It was during my travels in Mississippi I found deeper understanding of the insidiousness of carpetbaggers who exploited devastated landowners after the Civil War. I learned to recognize the clever terminology of “genteel” racism — “Why, we were never anything but respectful of the blacks who worked for us!” I also experienced a sort of transitory Southern utopia during an afternoon at a tiny festival on the banks of the Tallahatchie River, all fried catfish and art and the blues and everyone mixing it up underneath a wide Delta sky.
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“It was criminal, it had to end, you can’t have a democracy and also allow ownership of fellow human beings.” My guide to the battlefield in Vicksburg was vehement, outraged by the wrongness of slavery, horrified by the quantity of blood shed because one half of the country thought you should be able to own another human. “People will tell you a story about commerce, about cotton. Bullshit. The war was about slavery.”
But life didn’t all of a sudden get better with Emancipation, or with the Civil Rights movement and everything about Black Lives Matter teaches us, almost daily, discrimination isn’t over. Is equality geographically proportioned, still? Perhaps you get a larger serving of it in Chicago, Philly, than you do in a small town in the American South. I am too privileged to know for sure. But I was not too blind to notice the dining room at the elegant Delta hotel was filled with white people and the staff were black. That when I crossed another arm of the river, the quality of the houses changed as did the color of the people I saw out front.
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Mississippi just passed a horrendously discriminatory law. The state — which still has the Confederate “Stars and Bars” on its flag — now says it’s legal to deny services to LGBT humans based on your “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t want to bake a cake for the queers, don’t bake them a cake. Turn away the lesbian couple, tell them you’re sorry, you don’t bake for same sex couples. Hell, post a sign in your window, save them the bother of coming in. But don’t expect the government to protect you for actively discriminating against another human being for who they are.
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I loved traveling in Mississippi. Loved it with my whole heart. I could not ignore the poverty or politics of the region, but driving through the Delta was some of the best travel I’ve done in years. The people were — without exception — welcoming, kind, thoughtful, solicitous. When I mentioned to a shopkeeper in Yazoo City I’d be overnighting in tiny Leland, she was dismayed. “Oh, no, it’s Sunday, you won’t find dinner anywhere!” She promptly whipped out her phone and began searching for places to send me. “You’ll need to head to Greenville,” she insisted, as though my eating cereal in the spectacular colonial mansion where I was the only guest was somehow an affront to her, personally. I loved the landscape, the endless sky, the muddy river, the dusty fields. While many of the places I ate lacked for atmosphere, I could not argue with the food, which was always fresh, homemade, delicious, and ridiculously cheap.
About two months after my trip, I found myself wondering if I could live in Vicksburg. I could pick up a gorgeously renovated historic home and hold writing retreats on my wrap around porch, I could follow in the footsteps of Faulkner and Welty and I could learn to play the blues, really learn, not just slap out 12 bar chords. I spent a lot of time on real estate websites and pondering if I should rent my Seattle place and go for a year or just sell everything and call it good.
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Which brings us, weirdly, to not going to Zimbabwe.
I don’t know if you should go to Zimbabwe. I can say nowadays, I’m a little less keen on going to dangerous places. I’m not eager to travel to Saudi Arabia where women are such second class citizens. I put off considering Iran, Ahmadinejad’s antisemitism made me very uncomfortable; the idea of lying about my heritage in order to travel in a place feels wrong. I don’t like to travel in places where it is okay to discriminate against my friends and family. And my openly gay friends shouldn’t have to go back in the closet in order to visit Mississippi.
I also don’t think you’re supporting Mississippi Governor Bryant and his advocates for discrimination by not going to Mississippi. Excuse me, but that’s just fucking ridiculous. If a place says “You and your kind aren’t welcome here,” that is a very good reason to stay away. “We won’t serve you because you’re different” is a powerful anti-tourism message, especially if you’re the different in the cross-hairs.
[I’ve revised my opinion on travel boycotts, that’s why there’s strike-through here.] It pains me to say that I don’t think you should go to Mississippi right now. I believe that the generous hearts of the people I met there are more indicative of the character of the region than Governor Bryant’s hateful law. And I hope that they’ll call for the repeal of this nonsense, pronto. The last thing Mississippi needs is to have the state’s tourism dollars dry up, but for now, it’s the only thing I can see making any difference at all. I can’t wait to tell you to go there again; I can’t wait for the state to make it right. I’m dying to go back — I’m as surprised as anyone by that. Mississippi is an amazing place to travel but right now? Maybe not right now.
If you feel it’s dangerous for you to visit Mississippi, well, obviously, you shouldn’t go. Everyone else, though? Get thee south. The good people of the Delta will steal your heart and fill your stomach. Traveling in the Delta added so much color and nuance to my ideas about America. I can’t overstate the way of my adventures drove home the reality of American history, of what we did — still do — to black people in this country. (Black folks, I have no business telling you how or why to travel in the south. The same for my queer pals. I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do.) But if you, white American, stand in front of the kudzu entangled Bryant General Store and come away unchanged, there is something wrong with you. You should go.
You know who else definitely should visit Mississippi? The Governor of Mississippi. I’m not convinced he understands what happened in his home state. He could head out to Money Road — just like I did — and park his car at the brick remains of this general store. He could learn about a young man named Emmett Till who was murdered because he was black. He could sit and have a good think about what happens when you allow a state to protect those who discriminate against someone because they’re different.
Everyone knows about Mississippi. Except those who don’t. More people need to know. Go.
Lovely as always, Pam. Exactly the way I feel. I won’t go to Mississippi anytime soon. Nor North Carolina. These are places of lovely people and shitty governments. (Sort of like Thailand, where I now reside.)
It’s really hard to know where to draw the line on this stuff. Thailand is horrible to its journalists and bloggers, check out Reporters without Borders if you want to scare yourself into self-censorship.
I haven’t been to Mississippi, but I thought you would like to be uplifted. I propose that you see City of Gold, the documentary about LA restaurant critic Jonathan Gold immediately. It is a celebration of the “other,” rather than the “other” way around. I cried during the trailer, let alone the movie!
p.s. Sorry I somehow missed you in Seattle.
I’m a jerk, I totally forgot to put the date for your reading on my calendar. I had every intention of coming to your event and I just screwed it up. I’m so sorry.
Gay, never going to Mississippi. Except now I kinda want to. Damn you, Mandel.
I wish I could remember where I read the story about how the Delta — the place I traveled — is actually the blue district, and it’s tied to the soil, of all things. The geographer (?) who wrote the piece mapped where the best soil is and how people vote when they live in those rich areas. So, to be completely fair, the region of MS I visited was the region that you’d find the people most accepting/welcoming/whatever. I ain’t saying it’s perfect, I’m just saying my time there turned what I thought MS is on its head.