The Spatial Dimensions of White Supremacy: Reinventing the Lowcountry Plantation in the Gullah/Geechee Nation

Abstract

Each year, millions flock to the US Lowcountry South in search of the illusory appeal of a bygone era; one that never existed outside the white imagination. The contemporary grand narrative of long defunct plantations, standing as beacons of a onceheld hope that the South would rise again, offers a cultural commentary on the state of racial politics in the United States-connecting the social and discursive practices of white supremacy to contemporary daily operations across an entire geographic region, in ways that illustrate the structural dialectic between capitalism and race-making. [Lowcountry plantation, race, Gullah/Geechee, New South, spatial dimensions of white supremacy]

Exponential growth of private coastal infrastructure influenced by geography and race in South Carolina, USA

“…When coupled with rapidly appreciating values of waterfront land, these forces helped fuel the well documented, precipitous decline of Black landownership throughout the mid-twentieth century 65 , 75 , 76 . As Black landowners lost (and continue to lose) their land, these properties were characteristically bought up and converted into sprawling planned communities catering to predominantly White internal migrants from other parts of the US 77 , 78 . This dual process of Black displacement and ensuing subdivision of properties into multiple parcels could produce the positive correlation we observed between dock abundance and the proportion of a tract’s population that is White.…”