Did guests at an Airbnb rental discover that the hosts are secret antebellum racists, or are the guests overreacting and perhaps seeking fame and attention?
That is not clear, but the vacation rental service Airbnb has removed the rental house in question from its listing service after a guest complained of having to look at “racist” decorations in the home. Calling the home decor “genuinely insane,” guest “Erica” took to TikTok, naturally, to tell a tale of woe about a home she rented in the American south recently.
Photos from the home show that the owners have placed branches of cotton plants with white puffs still on the ends on their walls and in other places. Nestled among the branches are cartoonish stuffed monkeys that appear similar to the famous character Curious George.
Erica described the decoration scheme as “Southern Airbnb core” in her TikTok video, which she is likely pleased has gotten 2.2 million views and countless messages of support from viewers. One referenced a recent horror movie called “Get Out,” about a black man trapped by murderous white people. He said the scenario sounded like a set-up for a sequel to the movie.
Mainstream media appears to align with Erica’s views, blithely describing the cotton and monkey toys as harkening back “to the days of slavery,” explaining to those who don’t know that millions of blacks were “forced to pick cotton on plantations.”
During the height of slavery in America, there were an estimated 3 million African slaves, and 1.8 million of them were put to work on Southern plantations picking and processing cotton as a cash crop by 1850. A mere ten years later, at the height of the antebellum south and before the civil war, slaves picked two billion pounds of cotton annually.
The Airbnb home in question is located in Virginia. The Virginia Museum of History and Culture says that the state had more than a half-million slaves, and they made up an entire third of the commonwealth’s population by 1860.
Erica’s video certainly produced a good amount of outrage from TikTok users, with one calling the decorations “DIABOLICAL.” Many urged Erica to tell on the home’s owners to Airbnb, which worked, as they are now not allowed to rent their home on the platform any longer.
Other TikTok viewers were typically emotive, describing the situation as “insane” and “wicked.”
