Recently headlines were made when a group of students took offense by a cotton centerpiece at their university president's home. I'm not going to take the time here to rehash the details but you can read all about that here. What I am going to talk about is the conversation that opened up at my own University and place of employment.
We are increasingly living in a time where it seems nothing is safe, something somewhere may offend someone and they will let you know about it. So when the cotton story broke many people dismissed it, some mocked it, others defended it and it all played out before us on various social media platforms. It's easy to dismiss or mock someone online, it's harder to do that when the person with an opposing view is standing in front of you.
So the story broke, I went to work and a co-worker asked a question.
A question that if I'm being honest I would not have had an answer to if I had been alone. She wanted to know why people would decorate with cotton. She had no concept of what a cotton stalk actually looked like, you see she grew up in California, cotton fields aren't lining the west coast en masse like they do in the south. People don't take family pictures decked out in plaid, standing in a field of cotton. She had never even seen a cotton field.
P.S. If you're into cotton field family portraits and you are near Atlanta, GA check out this amazing photographer.
Full disclosure she didn't ask me the question, she asked my boss, and he answered the question and then went on a mission to show her what a cotton stalk looks like. Which led them to my office where most of our seasonal decor is stored. Having these conversations is important, even when they are uncomfortable, even if we think their offense is unfounded. She learned something new about fall decor trends in the south and I learned something new about west coast decor.
Why would someone decorate with cotton?
It's a symbol of harvest in the south. When we put out hay bales and pumpkins we often pair it with stalks of cotton. In the south cotton is just as synonymous with fall as pumpkin spiced lattes. We don't associate cotton stalks with slavery because we didn't stop harvesting cotton when slavery was abolished. It is still a large part of our economy in the south. " Cotton production and related businesses provide jobs for 53,000 Georgians, with an overall economic impact of around $3 billion. " Once we established why cotton is important to the south we showed her how we use it to decorate. I pulled up some pictures to show my co-worker, which she said she wouldn't have even recognized as cotton, but she saw the appeal in using it as decor. Before our conversation all she knew about cotton was what she was taught, which is the southern economy of the 1800's was built from slave labor-one such type was cotton picking. To her cotton lived in the past, it wasn't something that still had a place in today's society.
What do you use for fall decorations?
The cotton conversation lead me to ask what she uses for fall harvest decor. The answer? A cornucopia. To me a cornucopia belongs on the table of pilgrims, not something I see or use today. But in her life, where she grew up that was the popular thing to decorate with. The lesson we can learn from the cotton story is that we all have different experiences and those experiences form our opinions and view points. Sometimes the viewpoint that is formed may not always be accurate. It's not accurate to think cornucopias only belong in the past, in the same way it is inaccurate to think that cotton only represents slavery. Yet that is what our life experiences had taught us. In this same conversation she told me about her first meal in our cafeteria. It was fried chicken, collard greens, black eyed peas etc. She was extremely put off by this spread. She had no idea this was the type of food southerners, of all races, eat today. Before moving to the south it was only featured during international food day, to teach about the past, what slaves would have eaten. But they were never taught that these same foods are a staple of the south and eaten in our homes every day. American culture is diverse and if we take the time to understand where someone is coming from we may learn something we never knew and we may have the opportunity to teach them as well. Now when she sees cotton she won't see past oppression she will see a celebration of harvest. Well...maybe she will see past oppression, we can't erase what was, but she will also know the rest of the story.
There are teachable moments in every day. Let's use them.
