Does this building make me look racist?

It was a quick business trip to Nashville and surprisingly more than the business, I found myself more concerned by the architectural vocabulary of my hotel and many of the buildings I saw. The idea of the South now seems to be a "whitewashed" history of gracious antebellum mansions and Georgian homes. The vernacular for this might be know as "Tara Light" and evokes the myth of the genteel old south not taking into account the fact that many of these homes were built on the backs of slave labor. While The White House was also built by slave labor, we seldom see its architectural style reproduced in anything other than parody or miniature. And yet, here I was surrounded by a evocation of a time marked by cruelty and exploitation and expected to not only coo and be awed, but meant to evoke a glory gone but not faded. How are we to react to this amnesia of culture? Can architecture be devoid of meaning and if not, can it be racist? Its one thing for the existing mansions, which should stand, not only as the beautiful structures that they are but as a testament to the time and should be reminders of the mores that created them. Can we recycle a vocabulary of oppression to create a liberated future?

Some might think this extreme but try asking Google if Auschwitz has a gift shop and you can feel the outrage at the simple prospect of the question. While people did not have the good sense to refrain from putting former Slave Quarters on Airbnb, cooler heads prevailed and removed the posting. While we seem intent on creating a future faster than ever, and now a virtual one at that, we can not remove ourselves from the responsibility of our past and that goes for vocabulary in words and architecture.

There was an exhibition at MOMA on this topic, "Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America" which as an interesting Coursera course based on the catalogue for those who wish to know more.