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Originally Posted by KB0679
Don't feel sorry for the Black basket-weavers; they are entrepreneurs and those baskets aren't at all cheap. The rolling joke among Black folks in SC is that they dress homely selling their wares but when it's time to go home, they drive off in their BMWs. But I always find it a bit amusing that folks are gallivanting about in a city literally built with wealth generated from the slave trade and generally don't have an issue seeing Blacks in low-wage service occupations, but it's the basket-weavers that are off-putting. Kinda reminds me of folks who get upset when they are told about slavery during plantation tours.
The city of Charleston itself (as well as North Charleston) isn't extremely conservative; Charleston County is reliably blue and relatively gay-friendly. The suburban counties are more conservative of course, as it is the South. For what it's worth, a Congressional seat in the region did unexpectedly flip from R to D in the midterm elections. And while he's nobody's liberal, one of the few Black U.S. Senators we have is from Charleston (Tim Scott).
It's true that Charleston's tourist economy is a bit more upscale than Savannah's and NOLA's and doesn't have a big nightlife element to it. It also lacks an HBCU and all of that results in a smaller Black presence in the historic downtown, but that will change somewhat with the opening of the International African American Museum which will essentially be Charleston's version of the NMAAHC in DC. Otherwise there are plenty of Black folks in the Charleston region living ordinary middle class lives, working at the Medical University of SC, Boeing, the port, or other large employers in the region. What you see in the historic downtown doesn't at all reflect what life is like on a daily basis for the average Charlestonian.
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I've been to Charleston many times, and in fact, my parents are 2 of those Ohioans who are moving there (well, building a vacation home on Kiawah Island to be there part of the year). I've felt first hand the conservativeness as a queer, northern, liberal guy. One time I was riding my bike around and some redneck dude in a Clemson shirt came out and tried to tell me I needed to stop biking past his house or else he'd come back out and "things would get ugly". When I went down in 2016, there were Trump signs EVERYWHERE you looked. I've been to restaurants where I've seen local white people talk to the black staff as if it was the 1960s or something. Of course there was the shooting at the AME church in Charleston, but this is America and sadly that could have really taken place anywhere. :-(
Black people weaving baskets in and of itself isn't a big deal. But the fact that they're doing it in front of and inside the former slave market is really eerie, to me at least. It's like the complete opposite of NOLA where it seems like there is and has been tremendous mixing of races, and where the culture of NOLA is inextricably linked to black culture. In Charleston, this does not exist- or at least I've not seen it. You have black Charleston, and you have white Charleston, and there isn't much mixing or influence between the two. There are some interesting sub-cultures, to be sure. The Gullah communities that exist there are incredibly interesting, but they exist as their own thing rather than being integrated into the larger culture of the city.
I love the architecture of old Charleston. I really enjoy the trees and local plants and animals that live there. The fact that it's right on the ocean is also pretty cool, and is a positive point of differentiation from Savannah and NOLA. But in my experience, I have never felt welcome or really accepted there, whereas when I went to NOLA, I left thinking it was an incredibly special, accepting, exciting city. I could be way off, but those are my perceptions
