(scattered laughing)
>> Good afternoon,
everyone.
I want to thank you
for coming today.
My name is
Mike Light.
I'm the department head for
the Social Science Department
and I help prepare
and put on this Race and
Ethnicity Conference,
which we try to
do every year.
I'm not going to take up
too much of your time today
because the main attraction
is professor Susan Williams,
who we'll get to in
just a few minutes.
But I did want
to let you know
that we have a whole
host of events this week.
This is the very
first presentation
in the conference series, but
the event will be capped
by our keynote speaker
on Thursday night,
and I wanted to make
you aware of this
in case you're
interested.
This year, we're
really fortunate
to have Professor
Isabel Wilkerson,
who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist and author
coming to Grand Rapids
Community College.
Her book this year is called
"The Warmth of Other Suns,"
and it's about the great
migration of African-Americans
around the turn of the
century from the deep South
to the industrial Midwest
and the West Coast...
and she's been on "Oprah" so you
know she's a big deal, right?
Anybody who's been on
"Oprah" is a big deal.
But she's really
an amazing speaker.
I'm hopeful that you
all will find some time
in your schedule to
come out Thursday night.
It's at 7:30, and it's
in the Spectrum Theater
on the other side of
campus here at GRCC.
We expect a pretty big
crowd, so get there early.
There might even be some
goodies for you afterwards,
some food,
some free food.
So if you're interested in that,
I encourage you to come out.
Today's speaker,
Professor Williams,
is an assistant professor
of European History
here at Grand Rapids
Community College,
and some of you I know have
had her for classes on campus
or you're currently
taking a class from her.
So I don't have
to tell you this,
but she does some amazing
work at these conferences.
She's always been a star
in these presentations.
So I'm excited for what she's
going to talk about today.
She comes to us from
Indiana University
and some of her
research interests
include European history,
the study of identity,
history of gender
and sexuality,
the study of inter-war Europe,
the history of science,
and the study of
the modern Roma.
So without
further ado,
I'm going to introduce
Professor Susan Williams.
(applause)
>> Whoo!
(applause)
>> I got a hoot--
that was pretty cool.
Well, thanks for
coming today.
This is a subject that's
near and dear to my heart
because I think that
studying the imperial gaze
and what that means-- and we'll
go into all this terminology
and everything else and kind
of deconstruct it today--
I mean, that really does tell
us about our modern ideas
about race and
where they come from.
And we're gonna bring in
gender and sexuality here,
and we're gonna be
focusing on a larger story
about hegemony and about the
construction of identities.
And then we're
gonna break it down,
narrow it down a little bit
and talk about individuals--
Saartjie Baartman
over there on the left,
who is also known derisively
as the "Hottentot Venus."
Here's Ota Benga.
He was an African
brought in as an exhibit,
in part, to the
St. Louis World's Fair
and also to
the Bronx Zoo.
We're gonna talk about his
personal story, as well,
to kind of raise
empathy and awareness
about what it is when we
talk about the local level
and the real experience of
people under Imperialism,
what that meant.
And it's a pretty
horrible story,
and I'm sorry in advance
for depressing all of you.
So I'm gonna
kick this off.
I mean, what we're
gonna do today
is have a conversation
about power and control.
So what we're really looking
at is how race is constructed.
We're gonna talk about how
these constructions of race
were discussed during
the 19th century
into the
20th century,
we're gonna talk about
how they were employed
through ideas that-- they
fit into an ideology
that roughly-- that historians
call the "New Imperialism."
And so, this is an
insidious process
and that's the only
way to describe it.
And this also has
very deep meanings
and power within
our society today.
So we're gonna explore
where these ideas about race
came from, we're
gonna think about
how people were taught
about racial difference,
we're gonna think about why
people bought these ideas
because we can't talk about
hegemony and power structures
as something that was
forced onto people
or that somehow people were
brainwashed into believing it.
They get dividends out
of hegemonic systems.
So we've got to
construct this,
think about how
this all works,
and we want to also think
about how these ideas
impacted
individual lives.
We're gonna do this with
typical conference format.
So if you could just save
your questions for the end
because if you don't,
I'll totally get off-topic
and just sit around and BS
with you for like an hour,
and never actually
get to the points
that we wanted
to cover today.
So let's take
a look at this.
So if we're
looking at--
one thing that we're
gonna have to accept here
is that identity is
socially constructed,
and what we mean when
we talk about things
being historically
constructed,
we're talking about
concepts or practices,
and how those concepts and
practices are constructed
through
social ideas.
So what we have to
accept here is that race,
that gender,
that sexuality,
it's not inherent,
it's not biological...
but rather, it's how
we envision race,
it's how we envision
gender and sexuality.
And the best way to
remember this is the idea
that if you look at this
from a scientific viewpoint,
there is actually more
genetic variance within groups
than there is
between groups.
So therefore,
if you look at race
and you say,
"It doesn't exist,"
what we're saying
there is,
"There's actually no scientific
proof that race exists."
That race, in and of itself,
how we talk about race,
how we imagine it, what
we desire to get through,
get with these
conversations about race,
those are all things that
are constructed by societies.
They differ over place
and space and time.
They differ
by what--
these concepts differ
by what community
that you're talking about, what
society you're talking about.
So we are specifically gonna
focus on the 19th century
into the
20th century,
in the European and
American imagination here.
So one of the things
we have to think about,
when you create an identity,
when you construct an identity,
you're not really creating
your identity in a vacuum.
What historians and
sociologists will tell you
is you actually
create an identity
by looking
at an Other,
somebody that you've
identified as an Other.
So by constructing them,
by talking about them,
who they are,
how they behave--
and we'll see even
within this construct
whether they're human
or not human, right?
And it's all part
of the human family.
That's you constructing
an Other,
and therefore, you're
constructing your own identity.
"I am not this."
So you're talking
about binaries, right?
"That person is this,
so I am this."
You're gonna
see this.
I'm just kind of
entering this up
into our
conversation here.
That's really what we're
gonna be talking about today
is how is it that we
construct these identities.
So to give you-- this is my
"race in a nutshell" talk.
So we'll see if I can do
this in, like, 10 minutes.
If you want to think about where
some of these ideas come from,
we actually have to look
back into antiquity.
So during the
Late Antiquity Period--
so we're talking about
Greeks and Romans there--
you have a variety of
people that are constructing
what the idea
of Greek means.
This is Plato and
Aristotle, right?
What Greek means versus
who everybody else is.
So what you do is you talk quite
a bit about the barbarians.
The barbarians--
that's a Greek term
that my class
knows full well.
We've talked
about it before.
The word comes
from "barbar,"
and what the Greeks say is,
"Oh, all those people
"who don't speak Greek, they
all speak this language
"that always sounds like
'bar bar bar bar bar'
"when they talk,"
and so, therefore,
everybody who
doesn't speak Greek,
and who doesn't look Greek,
and doesn't act Greek,
is a "barbarian."
So that's where some of
those first ideas come from
about these kinds
of constructions.
Now, if you
feed this in
and think about what
this means for Europeans
and European history,
we can actually look at the
Pythagorean Table of Opposites.
So this was your general idea
about how the world worked,
coming out of
the Greeks.
This is around the
5th century BCE.
Pythagoras-- you all have
been tortured with him
in any Geometry class
that you've taken, right?
He sets up this list
and he says, "Okay."
So if you look,
finite/infinite,
odd/even, one/many,
right/left,
rest/motion, straight/crooked,
light/darkness,
good/evil, square/oblong,
male/female.
And the idea that starts to
come out of the Greek Period
is that all of this stuff
on the left of the list
is good, and
it's normative,
and everything that's on the
right of the list is not normal.
So when you think about
Western civilization,
what we mean when
we talk about that
and we label classes that way,
whether rightly or wrongly,
is the idea Western civilization
comes out of a mixture
of a bunch of really
interesting ideologies.
So you have a
Greco-Roman tradition
that comes together with a
Judeo-Christian tradition.
So therefore, the
Greco-Roman tradition
is going to
edify, right,
and it's gonna support
and legitimize
that Judeo-Christian
tradition,
which means things that you
might not have seen before
actually is a way that helps
you to understand your world--
these "black and white"
binaries.
Now, if you bring this
into the Middle Ages,
'cause then you've
got to think,
"Okay, well, where did some
of these ideas come from?"
You also got to
bring in, think about
who people in the
Middle Ages were.
People in the Middle Ages tend
to be-- we would consider them,
in Oprah speak,
"kind of negative."
These are people
who really do believe
that the material
world is evil,
that it's tainted,
that it's full of sin.
And so, they juxtapose
in their binary,
and their whole view of the
cosmos, their worldview,
they say, "You have the earth,
and the earth is tainted.
"That's where
human beings live.
"We fell there.
"And that's where we have to
kind of deal with the sucky life
"until we get
into what's good.
"That's the
spiritual," right?
You die and you
go to heaven,
if you do what you're
supposed to do on Earth.
And one of the ways that
they understand this
is they say that every human
being is born with original sin.
So when you're born,
you're already tainted.
You're tainted because you're
part of this material world
and you're tainted by
decisions that Adam and Eve
made in the
Garden,
which means one of the stories
coming out of the medieval world
is the idea that you got
to think about control.
That in their worldview, human
beings are closer to animals
than they are
closer to God,
and you
can see this
even with how they kind
of see their cosmos here.
Here, you
have animals.
They want to make
it a good animal
so they don't make themselves
seem too sucky, right,
so it's a lion...
next to the human being, but
way up here is God, right?
And these are all the
things of the spiritual,
and you're separated
by that.
And so, therefore,
on Earth,
one of the things that
people talk about
is, "How do you control
animalistic natures?
"How do you make
sure human beings
"don't take
that next step
"and become animals, and
enact animalistic behaviors?"
Which means social control is
gonna be very, very important
in the medieval world.
The other thing-- so
here, you have an image.
This comes from the
French Revolution,
but you see these images
all over the place
during the
Late Middle Ages.
So you have a pope,
you have a justice,
you have a
bureaucrat,
and they're all riding on
the backs of the peasantry.
So the idea is all
of these groups
are supposed to
work together.
Anybody who's not a member
of those who work in society,
which, by the way, is about
85% of the population,
anybody who does
everything from begging
all the way up to people who
are very famous merchants
who make a
lot of money.
That's a Third Estate,
and those are people
that you have to control because
if you don't control them,
they'll pick fights
with each other,
they'll go back to that
animalistic nature,
they'll start wars,
they'll start all kinds of
general social problems,
you have chaos,
Armageddon happens,
and then nothing good's
gonna come of it.
So therefore, one of the
stories for the medieval world
is trying to figure out
ways to control people.
Now, if you bring in this
Pythagorean Table of Opposites
into it, you start to
see more and more,
coming into early
Christianity,
the definition that everything
that's white and pure
is a symbol of the
spiritual realm...
and that everything that's dark
and black, that's something--
because it's
binaries, right?
White is good,
black is bad.
Already, so the way that
they define themselves,
they define the
devil as black.
They define-- when they say
that they have bad thoughts,
they don't call
them "bad thoughts,"
they call them
"dark thoughts."
We still use this kind
of terminology today.
We invest in it, and so, that
tells you about the power
of some of
these ideas
and how they continue
in society over time.
So you're bringing a couple
of things together here,
but now, we've actually got
to bring in some new issues
that are gonna
inform our story
coming into the
19th century.
So during the 19th century,
states are very, very interested
in making very good babies, who
will raise to be good workers
and good citizens, who will go
off to fight for those states.
They want to have
a lot of them,
and they want to make sure that
they're gonna be malleable
and that they're
gonna be informed
about what their
responsibilities
to the state are.
And so, one of the
things you start to see
by the time you get
into the 1860s and 1870s
is people having a
conversation about,
"How is it
that we can,
"you know, whether we
breed people together
"or whether we try to make
sure that some people
"don't have sex
and other people do...
"how is it that we can try to
make the best babies we can?"
So that's the-- so what
you're talking about here
is an issue
of competition
within society and
between societies, right?
How is it that England can
make the best English babies
so that we can always beat
the French, and vice versa?
So this is starting to inform
the story here a little bit.
Now, 1870s
and 1880s,
we've got to get into a
couple of new ideologies.
One of them is
Social Darwinism.
What Social Darwinists do-- and
this is a bit of a difficult--
it's a
sticky wicket here.
Social Darwinists
are not Darwinists.
Darwin would be ashamed
of the Social Darwinists.
But what they do is they
take one line in Darwin,
one idea called
"survival of the fittest,"
and they say, "Well what happens
if we actually apply this
"to society,
in general?"
And I threw a couple of things
up here for you to look at.
In Darwin, in his
"Origin of Species,"
he says, "Competition
between individual organisms
"of a singular species
"drives biological
evolutionary change."
This is what's
called "speciation."
Now, what people who
are really interested
in these pronatalist policies
and making a good state
and competition
between states,
how to make England the
best state possible,
how to make the United States
the best state possible,
they grab onto this,
they like this idea.
But Herbert Spencer,
who's one of the people
who writes extensively about
this idea of Social Darwinism,
he changes Darwin,
which is why Darwin
wouldn't like him very much.
He says competition between
all individuals, groups,
and nations drives the
evolution of society.
So what he's looking at
here is societal progress
and that issue.
So he fully believes that
competition is natural,
that you should
encourage competition,
that competition
in and of itself
between people,
between groups,
between what's gonna end
up being termed "races,"
that that's actually
what drives the progress
of society
forwards.
That's one of the things
we're gonna be breaking down,
because what
you're gonna see
is during this New
Imperialist Period,
people are gonna latch onto
this concept of Social Darwinism
as a justification for
taking over new lands,
for competing
with other groups,
and for not just taking
over other lands,
but the idea with Imperialism is
that you have complete control
not just of territory
and economics,
but you have control of that
society and culture, in general.
So we've got to bring
that into our story
as we move
along today.
The other thing that you
see coming out of this era
is the idea of what we call
the "White Man's Burden."
It's a very famous poem
by Rudyard Kipling.
He's the one who kind of
just puts it all out there.
But people were talking about
it from about the 1700s on,
and the idea of the
white man's burden
was that it's the duty
of white Europeans
as the people who are winning,
right, this whole conflict,
it's their job
to go forward
into other societies
and other cultures,
and they're supposed to
civilize other peoples.
So what that means is to
bring what is European
to those people.
Now, you got to think
about something else here
within competition.
Herbert Spencer and
a variety of others
are talking about
these ideas,
but with the acknowledgement
that they're already on top.
And there's a built-in issue
with Social Darwinism
that all the people
who aren't on top
when you start talking
about Social Darwinism,
will never
be on top.
They'll always
lag behind.
They're never
gonna be modern.
They're never gonna
be civilized.
So if you bring that idea
into the white man's burden,
the idea here is you get
those people as civilized,
as less animalistic as possible
in the European mind.
You bring them civility,
you bring them religion,
you bring them the
English language,
or the French language,
or the German language,
as a way to be able to
better control those people
with the general idea
being that they're never
actually going to
become fully human.
So we've got to think
about how it is
that they're setting
up these languages,
and that's what
we'll be looking at
for the rest
of the time.
So when we talk about
the imperial gaze,
what you're looking at there
is that concept of the Other.
So you have
Imperialists,
people who are working with
those ideas of Social Darwinism
and the white
man's burden,
and they're looking
at other cultures...
and they're always gonna
understand that culture
through their
own experience.
So they're not-- you know, they
say that they're going to learn
about these cultures,
that they want to know
more about their history
and they want to know more
about their civilizations,
and their languages,
and their traditions,
but what they do is write books
that always judges them
within this idea of
Social Darwinism itself.
That actually, all of their
traditions, their languages,
their religions, their culture
in general, their politics--
that's a symbol to Europeans
as they set up these binaries
of uncivilized
behavior.
So everything that's not
European is uncivilized.
It's not normal, so therefore,
what's the opposite of normal?
(audience murmuring)
Huh?
>> Abnormal.
>> Abnormal, right?
So when people talk about
something being abnormal,
what kind of language
do they use?
>> Different.
>> Very different,
with that little look on
their face when they say it.
>> Primitive.
>> Primitive.
Anything else?
>> Deviant.
>> Deviant.
Anything else?
I'm just asking.
You're like a
thesaurus for me today.
So when we think about
the imperial gaze, then.
So that's-- think about
it like a movie camera.
So the Europeans will
be the movie camera
and they're filming
an object.
They're not trying to
understand that object,
they're filming it, and then
they're gonna come back home
and they're gonna write
about that object
and they're always gonna use
their ideas of Social Darwinism
and of that
white man's burden
to legitimize why it is that
they should be in control
of those people.
So that's a very important
thing to understand here.
So what
they're doing
is, in fact, legitimizing
Imperialism itself,
and they're gonna
construct identities.
So their interpretations
about traditions, and religions,
and languages,
and politics,
they're all gonna come
with this idea built in
that their interpretations
are always going to suit
this argument about
Imperialism, in general.
It's gonna legitimize why it is
that Europeans should be there.
Now, another thing
to think about--
you know, we talked
about power and control.
We gotta think
about hegemony.
Hegemony is one
of those words.
You see it occasionally, but
you never quite understand it.
So I'll try to explain it as
clearly as I possibly can.
Hegemony, basically-- I mean
the best way to understand it,
is that what you're doing--
hegemony's all about power.
And it's very,
very deep power.
And so, what-- if you talk
about a hegemonic system,
that's a system where
you have a dominant group
who creates social
constructions
to inform other people
within that group
who might not
be dominant,
whether socially or for
whatever reason, gender-wise,
why it is that
they are right,
why it is that their
ideas are normative
and ideas that go against
it are not normal,
are deviant
to them.
Now, hegemony-- it's really
easy to fall into this idea
that when you talk about
hegemonic systems
that that's about
brainwashing,
that it's a dominant group
forcing other people
to believe it, but the way
that you have to think
and a variety of scholars,
particularly people who work
on Imperialism and really pull
this idea of hegemony apart...
and they say, "Well,
actually, you gotta think
"about dividends."
So think about
England, for example.
In the 19th century, who
would you say is in charge
in England in
the 19th century?
If you had to just kind
of label them as a group?
>> Aristocrats.
>> Aristocrats.
Anybody else?
>> Queen.
>> Kings and queens are gonna
have something to say here.
>> Parliament.
>> Parliament.
Who is more and more able to
participate in parliament?
During the 19th century,
what social class?
>> Merchants.
>> The middle class, right?
So they're gonna have
pretty decent dividends
from this power.
Who's not gonna have a
lot of good dividends
from arguments
about power
in a hegemonic system
in the 19th century?
What social group
in England?
>> Peasantry.
>> The people who work,
free farm holders
in the countryside.
Who else?
There's a big group.
>> Women.
>> Women.
Who else?
>> Servants.
>> The serving class, people
who are on that lower end of--
what do we call that class?
>> Proletariat.
>> Huh?
>> Proletariat.
>> The proletariat-- the
industrial working class.
So the working classes in
general aren't really gonna--
we would look at them
normally in a normal story
about England, and we would say,
"Wow, those are the people
"who don't have power in
that hegemonic system,
"and the middle class
and the aristocrats,
"they have a
lot of power--
"the men in those groups
have a lot of power."
But then, you bring
it into Imperialism,
and that's where we get into
really interesting issues
about hegemony
and this concept,
because hegemony
only works
because you agree
to allow it to work,
so therefore, you're
getting something back
from these ideas about
what normative behavior is.
So whereas in England,
the working class,
working class men might
not have any power,
you're gonna
feel damn good
when people start talking
about black people in Africa
because that's a group
that doesn't exist largely
during the 19th
century in England.
But you can look
at those people
and you can go visit those
people and see them in person,
and that's a moment
where you have power,
where you understand in a
hierarchy, a social hierarchy,
there are people
under you.
So we've got to
think about why.
That's what we call
"buying in to hegemony."
Hegemony
wouldn't work,
the whole idea of
hegemony wouldn't work
if people stopped
playing the game,
if people reject the
concept of "normative"
and they reject
binaries.
If they stop
playing.
But hegemonies
always work
because you give
people dividends
and they buy
into it, right?
So one of the things that
we're gonna see quite a bit of--
we've already introduced that
talking about the Middle Ages--
dehumanization.
They're really gonna focus
on animalistic natures.
They're gonna focus--
Rudyard Kipling
very, very famously calls
people from other cultures
who are not European
"half-human and half-child."
So the idea-- or I'm sorry,
"half-devil and half-child."
And so, the idea there is
they're partly satanic, right,
so you got a problem
right there on your hands,
and half-child,
which means that
they're never gonna
become adults,
which means you
need a father,
you need somebody to walk in,
make them toe the line,
give them the rules, set up
how they're supposed to behave.
So dehumanization
in and of itself
is gonna be a very
important factor
when we talk about
that imperial gaze.
So they're gonna be talking
about people as primitive.
So either they're less human,
they're more animalistic--
right, that's with
the dehumanization--
and then, when you talk about
people being primitive,
the idea there is, "Well, we
could try to bring them up
"to a certain level,
but they're never--
"we're always gonna
be more modern."
So they're always
gonna be more primitive
within that scheme
of modernization
and ideas about
modernity.
So the other thing that you're
gonna see quite a bit of,
that's where we bring gender
and sexuality into it...
they're gonna
sexualize the Other.
They want to talk about
African men, for example,
and Asian men being
less masculine...
or alternately, what
they'll talk about
is "They can't control their
animalistic instinct."
They're less human, so
therefore, they need someone
to come in because they're
a threat to white women.
They talk about
this extensively,
this idea that anybody
who's not European
or not American during
this period of time
is a sexual danger to
American and European women.
They'll talk about women
from other regions,
they'll talk about them
being overly sexualized.
They become so sexualized,
they're uninhibited,
that they're actually a
danger to society, as well,
and thus they need
to be controlled.
They're really
gonna play it,
and we'll see some images
a little bit later
where they're really playing
up this sexualization.
And so, thus, if
you take the case--
we're gonna focus in
particular on Africa today--
if you take the case
of African women,
the way that they write about
them is absolutely horrific.
I mean, they talk extensively
about how they're open sexually,
how a good Imperialist
understands
that if he goes
to Africa,
the African women will welcome
him and have sex with him,
that they're not
as inhibited
as those uptight middle class
women in Europe and America...
but at the same time,
they're a danger, right?
If you get
too engrossed
in "becoming native"
is what they call it,
if you become too
sympathetic to these people,
then they've
lured you in.
That's how they do it, through
their sexuality, right?
So we'll examine
some of this as well.
So what we're getting
at here is exploitation,
and that's what
they're gonna do.
They're gonna
exploit populations
in all of these
different regions,
whether it's the Philippines,
whether it's Samoa,
whether it's Africa,
whether it's Asia...
and by exploitation,
we're really gonna see
egregious exploitation.
They're gonna kidnap people
and put them in human zoos
to show people in
Western Europe
and the United States what
these other peoples look like,
what primitiveness
looks like,
what animalistic
behavior looks like.
Now, when we also think
about exploitation,
we've got to think about
why they're doing it
in the first place.
One of the things that
they'll tell the people
who are parts of
these human zoos
is they're not allowed to
dress in European clothing,
that they need to
play drum music,
that they need
to sell beads,
that they need to put
on shows for the people
because they don't ever
want you to be sympathetic
to these people, they
don't want you to build up
any kind of
empathy for them.
This is supposed to be an
education for the people
coming to these human zoos and
coming to these exhibitions
to, again, underline
that hegemonic idea,
underline these constructions
of what the Other is
because you're supporting
Imperialism by doing that.
So if you want to think
about Social Darwinism,
this is how people
look at other cultures.
This is from a
science textbook in 1857,
a book called "The Indigenous
Races of the Earth."
It's a very
famous image
and one of the most popular
ones to use in history courses
about these
kinds of issues,
but there are tons of
these types of issues.
So what's the story
in this image?
What do they want you to know
in a science class in 1857?
>> The white man's on top.
>> The white person's on top.
This is the
"Apollo Belvedere."
This is a statue that's
supposed to show you perfection
of the European species.
What's the other
part of this story?
>> That they're only one
step up from monkeys,
whereas the white man
is two steps.
>> Yeah, so
the idea here--
you see the whole scheme
of the hierarchy here.
The "Apollo Belvedere,"
that perfect example
of ancient culture and
sculpture, that's at the top,
and then, sitting in between
them and a chimpanzee,
not just "Negroes" as they
term it on this image,
but it's gonna be any native
peoples from anywhere, right?
So that fits into
your Imperial story.
So you'll see all
kinds of images
depending on--
for Americans in 1898,
it'll be a picture of
a Filipino, right?
For English
Protestants,
looking at the Irish in
the same period of time,
here you have an
English Protestant man.
Over there on the right,
you have the Negro
and in between the two,
you have an Irish Iberian.
What does
Iberian mean?
Who is this person--
what religion?
>> Catholic.
>> Catholic.
So an Irish Catholic
on this big hierarchy
sits in between the
perfect English Protestant
and an African.
So they're even doing this
within their own states
and we've got to think
about this, as well,
how this works
within Europe.
Florence Nightingale,
perfect middle-class
woman-- what did she do?
What's she so famous?
>> Nursing in the Civil War.
>> Nursing, right?
She's the one who actually
makes field hospitals rational.
So there's the
perfect middle-class
English
Protestant woman.
Who's on the right?
>> Irish.
>> Yeah, it's-- her name on
this is Bridget McBruiser,
and "Mc" tells you
what religion is she?
>> Irish.
>> She's Irish Catholic, right?
So again, they're
making this story
about the Irish being less
evolved than the English.
All right, so then
you gotta figure out,
"Okay, well, that's
all well and good."
I mean, there's
a hegemonic issue
where they start to
construct issues of race.
They socially construct it to be
able to legitimize Imperialism.
Then, we gotta figure
out how they do this
'cause, I mean, that's
a really difficult task.
That's where we get into things
like the eugenics movement.
Now, this is really gonna
take off 1920s, 1930s,
but eugenics as a science
is already starting up
by the time that you
get into the 1870s,
and it goes
hand-in-hand
with the concept
of Social Darwinism.
So eugenics-- this is a front
piece for the eugenics movement.
Eugenics is a self-direction
of human evolution.
So people-- they're
very self-confident,
very optimistic
about themselves
coming out of the
Scientific Revolution
and the
Enlightenment.
So they're saying that states
are gonna start fiddling around
to make sure that a
society evolves perfectly.
And you can see the insidious
nature of this idea
because, as you see, all of
these little tree branches
of eugenics-- it
completely depends
on every social science, every
hard science playing along.
You'll see people
who create culture,
people like Rudyard Kipling
who writes children's books.
What's Rudyard Kipling's
children's books?
>> "The Jungle Book."
>> "The Jungle Book,"
"Kim," "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," that
kids are reading constantly.
These ideas are
gonna be built in.
The white man's burden
is gonna be built in
to all those
children's books.
Take that,
right?
Cartoons from the 1920s--
that's gonna be built in here.
But then, look-- anatomy,
biology, physiology, psychology,
genetics, mental testing,
anthropometry,
history, geology,
anthropology, archaeology,
ethnology, geography,
statistics, genealogy,
biography, economics,
politics, sociology,
religion, education, surgery,
psychiatry, and medicine.
So the whole idea about
the eugenics process
is to completely
construct this narrative
within your entire
college experience,
within your entire
educational experience.
That is the story-- and
you're gonna see people
as we go forward-- I got
a good quote for you,
where you're really gonna
be able to see this.
Some states say
this is a good thing.
This is a picture
of Romanian peasants
and this is part of the
eugenics process in the 1920s.
So here, you have
all the different--
you have the profile
and different images
of heads being taken,
and what they're
trying to do there
is to identify if you go
out into the countryside,
and you grab a
bunch of peasants,
and you take their
photos in this way,
"scientifically,"
they would say this is,
then you would be
able to identify
once you combine
all of these images
what a real Romanian
looks like, right,
and then your
whole goal is to use
the whole eugenics movement to
construct a new generation
of the perfect
Romanian.
So they go into the country,
they do this,
and then we can get into
zoos there within states.
This is the Muzeul Satului
in Bucharest.
You can still go there
whenever you go to Bucharest.
It's the
peasant museum...
and the whole idea--
it's a village museum.
"Satului" is
"village."
So you have, what they did is
they went into the countryside,
they knocked on people's
doors, they informed people
that they were taking their
houses as perfect examples
of culture, Romanian
culture and architecture,
and if they wanted to, they
could come along for the ride.
And they'd take all
of these buildings,
perfect examples of Romanian
peasant architecture
from all over
the country,
they bring them
all to Bucharest,
they plop them
down by a river,
they let the people
keep living in them,
and then you, as a Romanian
living in Bucharest
who's long gone
from the countryside
or at least that's what
the state's hoping,
you can go and be re-edified
about the soul of the nation
by seeing these people, by
listening to them play music,
by experiencing them, by
seeing Romanian architecture.
Now, anybody who takes my Russia
and East Europe class knows
that Romania is a
very ethnically
and religiously diverse
area in the Balkans.
What they didn't bring along
is Hungarian architecture,
and German
architecture,
and a variety of other
different types of architecture
because what they want
to do is create a story
of greater Romania and what
that should mean to people.
It did back-- I got
to throw out the story--
it did backfire on them.
(chuckling)
What they thought was people
would go during opening hours
and they would say, "Yes,
look at those peasants,
"they're in such
horrible conditions,
"but, at the same time,
I see myself in them.
"I see the soul
of the nation.
"My grandma used to
sing that song to me.
"I used to eat that sarmale,
the stuffed cabbage leaves,
"when she would
make them for me.
"I feel more
Romanian."
What ended up
happening
was most of the people living
in Bucharest at the time
were only about
half a generation
to one generation removed
from the countryside.
So they all started
going in the off time
and hanging out with
all the peasants
who they happened to be
related to a lot of the time
from these villages,
hanging out, drinking tuica,
which is plum brandy with
them, and playing music,
and then the government
actually had to shut it down.
They evicted all
the peasants from it.
Kept their houses,
and then, therefore,
you go to a ghost town
now to learn more about
your Romanian soul.
So sometimes, these kinds
of ideas can backfire.
So then, let's
turn our gaze
to where the heck do
people get this idea
that you should put
people in zoos?
So during the
Medieval Period,
this really takes off
during 1500s and 1600s
in the early
modern period
and as part of the
Scientific Revolution.
You have cabinets
of curiosities.
That's a precursor
to a museum.
Cabinets of curiosities--
really rich men
would collect crap...
and you could come
over to their house,
and you could have
a little bit of wine,
and you could look at
the crap they collected.
For the Dutch, this was all
about butterflies, for example.
They liked their
butterflies.
They had huge cases
full of them,
and you could go and you
could compare butterflies
and talk about, when you
bring Darwin into it,
where do we see the
evolution of butterflies,
where did the
come from,
ponder these things while
getting drunk on good brandy.
Now, for other people,
they collected other things.
Some people liked birds,
stuffed birds,
they liked feathers--
you know, whatever
you were interested in.
But the other thing
that we see coming out
of the late Middle Ages into
the early modern period
is some people say, "Well,
I have a lot of power
"and I want to show
people that I have power.
"So I have animals,"
and that's one way
that you could make yourself
look really powerful.
Lots of animals from areas
that nobody had been to before
and animals that
nobody had seen before.
Most famously,
elephants in collections.
That was a
big thing.
The Vatican had
an elephant.
The Tower of London's
Menagerie had an elephant.
They all died
horrific deaths
because everybody couldn't
figure out what the heck
to feed
these things.
So I believe that in
the Tower of London,
they fed it
bread and wine.
So you got a couple of years
at most there, right?
But if you bring people
by and you show them
the extent of
your power,
you show them that people
give you these as gifts,
that says something
about your power, as well.
But during the
Renaissance,
there were some very,
very wealthy people--
the Medicis in Italy are
a great example of this--
who start to collect
human beings,
with the idea being that if
you want to show your power,
you want to show all of
your business contacts,
all of the areas that
through being a merchant
you've come into
contact with,
you just settle some
people in your menagerie.
Then, you invite
your friends over,
you have that good brandy,
and you talk about
how those people are
weird and you're not,
which is basically
every conversation
that they have
about it.
"Let's identify
why they're weird
"and what does
that say about us."
Now, sometimes, if they want
to be really, really liberal,
what they'll say is,
"Look at these people.
"They're all native.
"They're all
so genteel.
"They run in the wind with the
wind flicking back their hair,
"probably, and we've
destroyed their culture.
"We should feel very,
very bad about that,
"and the next time that
I open up my plantation
"and I start yelling
at my slaves
"about the kind of tobacco
that they're raising,
"I'll really think about
Native Americans, right,
"and think about
what we've done,
"and then I'll enjoy
and reap the benefits
"from my plantation."
But the idea about the
"noble savage," as well.
The "noble savage" was
never meant to be
Europeans talking about
another culture, right?
The specificities
of that other culture,
what made that
other culture great.
The whole concept of
the "noble savage"
is how to critique Europeans
by looking at another culture.
Look at
Native Americans.
This is actually this is
one thing that runs through.
If you look at
conversations about Roma,
conversations about
Native Americans,
they're like, "Those
nomadic peoples.
"They don't
own property.
"We own too
much property.
"Those people-- I heard
that they don't even
"have a word for
'war,'" right?
Come on.
"But we have a
word for 'war.'
"I heard that they don't even
have a word for 'money.'
"We have words
for 'money.'
"What does this say
about us as a society
"and how consumerist we are,
how competitive we are?"
That's about as
good as it gets.
That's about the most
that you can expect
if you're looking at
positive responses
about other cultures
during this period of time.
So you have those
cabinets of curiosities,
you have menageries with
the whole idea being
that if you
own knowledge--
and that's one thing
that they're celebrating
during the early
modern period,
during the
Scientific Revolution.
The more knowledge
that you own,
the more control you have,
the more power you have.
States are really happy
talking about this.
"Let's get as
much knowledge,
"let's start a royal
observatory,
"let's have a royal menagerie,
because the more knowledge,
"the more things
that we understand,
"the more knowledge
that we acquire
"and that we show to people
means we are powerful."
So that's kind of in the
background here, as well.
Expositions
start up.
You start to see them
really taking off.
So in other words,
"It's not just about me
"and my friends
drinking brandy,
"looking at my cabinet
of curiosity,
"but I need to
edify and educate
"all of those poor schlumps
of the working class
"and that Third Estate who
we all have to control.
"We need to educate them more
about why it's important
"to think about
other cultures
"and control those
other cultures."
That's where you get
expositions from.
So the idea there being
you bring these peoples
to educate and to edify
your own hegemonic system.
And I should say this
isn't interpretation.
They actually talk
about it in this way.
They say that it's important
to sell people this story
of Imperialism, to educate
people about Imperialism itself,
and what's the difference
between white people
and "dark peoples," as they call
them during this period of time.
This is a French--
you can buy postcards at
any of these expositions.
This is one that's
in Asnieres
during-- this is right
around the 1880s, 1890s,
these really
take off.
You can have them-- so
it's not just big cities
and it's not
just world fairs
that have these
expositions of people,
it's little towns, and they'll
actually travel on a circuit
so that you can come
and see these people.
So they're showing
you there the village
and it's gonna be a Senegalese
village in this case--
and we're gonna look at more
images as we move forward.
So let's talk about
an individual
who was affected
by this system,
and we can look at
Saartjie Baartman.
Saartjie Baartman
was Khoikhoi,
which is a tribe
in Southern Africa.
There also-- during the
period of New Imperialism
well into the 1950s, 1960s,
they were called "Hottentots,"
which is actually
a derisive term
and it was basically
Europeans making fun
of how their
language sounded.
So again, we go back to the
Greeks and the barbarians.
They said, "Oh, their language
it sounds like hottentot,
"hottentot, hottentot
when they talk."
So that's what they
start to call them.
So we see those
legacies right there.
Saartjie Baartman--
she grew up--
the Khoikhoi were basically
we could look at them
as a hunter-gatherer society
in what's now South Africa.
She-- her whole
village was wiped out.
There's a series
in the late 1700s,
and then again in
the early 1900s.
There are huge pogroms
against native populations
in South Africa,
because occasionally you'll
have moments of rebellion
and they decided to eradicate
the possibility of rebellion.
Her husband, her children
were killed during the raid,
and she went to seek work in
a larger town in the region.
When she was there, the
brother-in-law of her employer,
some say her owner--
we're not quite sure
whether she was actually
considered a slave
when she was in
this household,
but the brother-in-law said,
"She looks really funny."
And we'll talk about that when
we look at some images of her.
But, "She looks
really funny,"
and so, what he did is he
talked to her employer
and proposed
a deal.
What he wanted to do was put her
up on exhibition in England.
He wanted to travel with
her to educate people
about what Africans look like
and what they act like.
And so, what
he's gonna do,
he forces her to
travel to England
and he puts her up on exhibition
as the "Hottentot Venus,"
and then, we'll talk
about her death in a few.
So this is
Saartjie Baartman.
So at the bottom here--
this is actually an ad
for this exhibition.
"Love and beauty, Saartjie
the Hottentot Venus."
Venus, goddess of...
>> Love.
>> Love-- goddess of what else?
>> Fertility.
>> Fertility, what else?
>> Beauty, sex.
>> Sex, beauty--
anything good, right?
So they're playing up
on this whole idea.
Venus is
somebody, right?
What they'll say--
as you see Cupid
sitting on her large butt
in this image,
and that's one thing, they're
always going to overplay
anything that's vaguely
sexual about her,
so her breasts
and her butt.
So take care
of your heart.
So if you look at her,
that's that sexualization.
European men are
gonna come in.
They're gonna come
into contact with her
and they're gonna
fall in love with her,
because that's what African
women are, they're Venuses.
They'll welcome you with
open arms, you can touch them,
and this is the deal
with this exhibition.
This is kind of a
mock-up of what happened
during the
exhibition.
What they would do
is put her on a box
and you would pay a
little bit of money,
and you could come in
and for an extra sum,
you could
touch her.
And so, people would come
and they would poke at her,
they'd make
fun of her,
they would try to
ask her questions,
and then they would examine
themselves by examining her.
What do you think that
woman's doing in this image?
What does she look
like she's doing?
You're all like,
"I don't want to say it."
>> Like, checking it out.
>> Checking what out?
>> Her private area.
>> Yeah, she's checking
her genitals out,
because the deal
with Khoikhoi women,
there was a story going
around about them
that they had
extended labial folds,
so therefore they looked
different down there
than European
women did.
So a lot of the women
what they would do
is they would go in and
they would lift up her skirt
to compare
themselves to her.
So that's what we'd
think about hegemony
you would think,
right?
At least women might think, "God
this is a horrible situation."
I mean, I wouldn't want
to be in this situation.
I wouldn't want any woman
to be in this situation.
But you see, right,
they're getting dividends.
They feel really good looking
at her, seeing her difference,
and to them, they talk about
these extended labial folds
as evidence that
she's not fully human,
that she's not fully evolved
like European women, right?
They write about
this extensively.
So it's gonna support that whole
idea about Social Darwinism,
and then, there are
other men over here.
One of them says, "Oh, what
a piece of roast beef.
"What a piece of meat,"
right, when he looks at her,
her butt.
Then, you have
other ones who say,
"Oh, the ridiculousness
of nature."
Right, "Look at
this funny woman
"who's supposed to
be human, but not."
And you see these
repeated regularly.
What's the cautionary statement
in this image about her?
>> She'll go after anyone
who comes close to her.
>> Particularly who?
>> Men.
>> The men, right?
So the woman's kind of standing
in between her and the man,
but the idea is she's
overly sexualized,
she stimulates
these men,
she's half-clothed,
she's primitive,
and so, therefore, she speaks
to the more primitive,
animalistic nature that
real human beings, right,
that's the story here,
have to tamp down.
So now the other interesting
thing about Saartjie Baartman,
what ends up
happening--
they actually do--
there are some people
who try to get
involved in this issue.
They don't like-- they went
to one of these things
and they didn't like the fact
that she's not given clothes.
They only give her
this little skirt,
and so she's not
given clothes.
It's pretty
obvious the person
who's setting up all these
exhibitions is threatening her
as she's standing there,
if she doesn't turn
like people
tell her to do,
if she won't let
people touch her,
the people who
paid extra money.
So he gets a little bit
in trouble with the law.
They bring her
into court.
Now, think about just
basic abusive relationships
and basic power issues
in these types of issues.
She tells the court that
she actually hadn't been--
that she wasn't
being harassed,
that she was there
of her own free will,
and that she was supposed to
be getting half of the proceeds
from all of this
exhibition, in particular.
Now, all of the people who
were providing evidence
against the person
who was exhibiting her
said she wasn't
getting any money,
that he was
torturing her,
that he was abusive to
her and hitting her,
that he had pulled her from
her home up into England,
but you got to think about the
nature of abusive relationships
at that point.
What does she have to go
back to for one thing?
Her family's gone.
Her employers are related to
the guy who's exhibiting her.
She's got nothing.
And what ends
up happening,
people in London stop
kinda coming to the show.
A lot of people had
seen at that point.
He sells her to another
exhibitor in France.
In all likelihood what
was going on in France
was she was put up for live
sex shows at that point.
She ends up dying either of
tuberculosis or syphilis,
we're not quite
sure what.
A few years later, she died an
alcoholic a few years later.
What people would do,
scientists would come
to do sketches of her
because they wanted to show
the primitiveness of her,
these over-exaggerated sexual
parts and everything else.
So what they would do
is talk her into giving--
taking off her clothes
by giving her candy
and giving
her liquor,
because at that point, she
was a die-hard alcoholic.
So her exhibitor would
withhold the liquor from her,
and then they would come in, and
get her to take off her clothes
so they could do what was
called "scientific studies"
of her body.
When she died, immediately, she
was turned into the government,
the body itself-- she was
turned to scientists.
They cut off her genitals,
they cut off her breasts,
they took out
her brain,
they made a plaster
mold of her body,
which was exhibited into the
1970s at the Evolution Museum--
it was really an Imperial
Social Darwinism museum
in Paris.
So the whole museum
itself was--
the function was to
support Imperialism.
But she was
exhibited there
and then scientists could do
studies of her genitalia.
A few-- in the 1990s,
Nelson Mandela requested France
to send her body back, and
they finally decided to do so.
So they actually took
the plaster molds,
they took all of the biological
ephemera from the body,
and they sent it back and
she was reburied there.
But that actually took
about 20 years of wrangling
for them to get
the body sent back.
So that's the
idea, right?
You're not human to the
people who are exhibiting you
and you're not human to
even the scientists, right?
They cut up your
body afterwards
and you're still an
exhibit even after death.
Then, we can think
about these expositions.
The expositions during
this period of time--
I mean, these things
are, like I said,
some of them are small scale
and some of them are huge.
You have these going on--
I mean the big ones happen
all the way from the
1890s into the 1930s,
and we'll talk about
a couple in specific
as we move forward, but
you get a general sense
of the story that
they're selling to you--
"Come and see all of
these different cultures."
This was just a
colonial exposition
that was the whole
focus of it.
But most of these world's
fairs-- that was the point.
You want to show the
greatness of your nation
to all of the
millions of people,
and you're getting huge volumes
of people coming to see these--
14 million at one,
28 million at another
who are coming, and you can
pay a little bit extra.
One of the facets of all
of these big world's fairs
and these Imperialism
expositions
during the late 1800s
and early 1900s
was to have a
village within that.
Now, some of them-- they
go anywhere from about 50
to 400 people, and you
pay a little bit extra
to go and encounter the
natives at that village.
And we'll talk about
how those are broken up
as we look at
some pictures.
The last one's
in 1958.
So it's
relatively recent
that you see these
things petering off.
Now, what they
would typically do
to set these
exhibits up--
the architecture-- what they
would do is sell you it
that it's a Samoan village
or a Filipino village
or an African village.
What it really was was a village
as imagined by Europeans.
They would construct
it well before
any of the peoples were brought
in to staff that village.
Typically, they were
just two-by-fours
with a little bit of
plaster over them,
which is one of the reasons
why some of the Africans
who were brought up
actually died of exposure
during the winters over
at these exhibitions.
They don't care about the
people that were there,
and a lot of the people
that were there
were actually kidnapped
and brought up.
So either you have a
situation where they--
we'll talk about Ota Benga
in just a minute,
but he, in particular,
his whole family,
just like
Saartjie Baartman.
He was informed that--
well, his whole--
he had two children who died,
he had a wife who died,
his entire extended
family was obliterated
during a pogrom
against his village,
and then he had
a guy who came in
who offered him a position at
the St. Louis World's Fair,
but the way that he
sold this to Ota Benga
was that he
owed him, right?
That he had made
deals with people
who were in control of
that general region.
He had paid him a bolt of
cloth and a pound of sugar,
so that Ota Benga was
allowed to travel with him,
and so, therefore, he
purchased Ota Benga.
And so, he plays on
this with Benga
to a point that he
actually is using Ota Benga
to coerce other people into
coming from other villages
along with them to this
St. Louis Exposition.
So they're
using people,
and they're kind of
manipulating people
in order to get these
villages staffed.
So as I said,
most of them--
the others are just,
frankly, kidnapped.
This is a family--
this is a Nook family.
This was for the Hamburg Zoo
and that was another thing--
these aren't just
traveling exhibitions.
Most zoos would
have them as well
during this
period of time.
So you'd go to
see the animals,
and then right
alongside the animals,
you go to see the people
that are what they call
the "missing link"
between those animals
and you as a European,
or you as an American,
and that's actually
what they say.
There's huge exhibits where
they have big signs up
that says "See
the missing link."
So... but their family was
kidnapped into the Hamburg Zoo,
a variety of others-- these are
Kawésqar Indians from Chile.
They were
kidnapped as well
for just a general
European exposition tour
during the 1880s.
Most of these people
didn't make it back alive.
Some of them died
of diseases.
Some of them died
of exposure.
Very few of them are
actually gonna make it
back to their
countries.
Usually what happens
is they're abandoned
once they get to Europe
or the United States.
They're told that the
fare back to Africa
or back to South America
is too expensive,
and that they should just get
a job in their new homeland.
I think four of these people
made it back alive to Chile.
And recently, they've actually
brought the bodies back
because, again, any
time that they die,
scientists are
going to come in
and they're gonna
cut the bodies up
for study of Social Darwinism
and evolution in general.
So this is one Hagenbeck
was a very famous--
he's kind of like Barnum for
the Barnum Brothers Circuses,
and the freak shows
that are going on
during the United States
in this same period of time,
where you can exhibit
difference in a different way.
So-- but he actually has
a number of expositions
that he's-- particularly around
Germany during this period.
And like I said before,
they're gonna bring in animals
and they're gonna bring
in Africans, in particular,
but the Africans
are gonna be told
that they're not allowed
to speak English,
that they're not
allowed to wear
any kind of
European-esque clothing.
They're actually
issued clothing.
So they give them an animal hide
to tie around themselves.
They tell them that they
have to put on shows
for the Europeans,
and, of course, they are
shows that are constructed
by Europeans to highlight
the primitiveness
of that society
in general.
Again, here's another
one of Hagenbeck's--
and these are-- like I said,
these are all postcards.
You'd purchase them there
and then you'd send them back
to show people, you know,
like you'd send postcards now.
This is a human zoo
in Aurland,
and what they'd call these are
"ethnographical exhibitions."
There's a
new interest--
and you can't go into an
anthropology class now
and think that your anthropology
professor thinks this way.
It's a professionalized
science now.
But the first people who were
talking about differences
between races and
different cultures,
many of them are
Social Darwinists
in the 1880s
and 1870s.
And so, what they call
these are, like--
you know, they see this
as anthropology exhibits
where you can
come into contact
not just with animals,
but with other cultures.
Now, as you see
here, it's a zoo.
So we always have to be careful
about terming these exhibits
because the idea here
is that Europeans
have to be on the other
side of the fence,
and they're there to
gaze upon primitiveness.
They're there to come
into contact with people.
You might not be able
to see it really well,
but a lot of the people
at these exhibits
were kept in cages.
They were kept naked
and in cages.
And then, they would let them
put their clothes back on
after
closing hours.
They're also not
allowed to leave.
Sometimes, they
can get paid,
but most oftentimes, it
seems like they got paid
a pittance
if anything.
They were often told, just like
with a company factory system,
they were told that they got
paid in food and in shelter,
right, these
two-by-four houses
with a little bit
of plaster on them.
Here's an interesting
image as well.
This is in
Aurland in 1905,
but here, you have
Africans in the middle--
and there's a joke.
It's supposed to be
a funny postcard.
So the joke-- it says,
"At the black village,
"a little bit of black,
a lot of white."
'Cause you see all
the people around them.
And now look--
little kids.
Little French kids who are
brought by their parents
to see what little
African kids look like.
So you're starting very,
very young with this idea,
not just
children's books,
but you're bringing your
kids to these locations
and you're educating
them about the Other
when they're at
these places, right?
So there's absolutely
no empathy.
Now, some people want to
sit there and try to act.
And you'll see sometimes
historians say,
"Well, if you read
people's journals
"or you read the backs of
some of these postcards,
"sometimes they'll
note that people
"looked a little
bit embarrassed
"or people looked-- maybe
the Imperial project
"didn't go the way
people thought it was."
Maybe people kind of
sat in this moment
and, at the very least,
you got to think...
if you're saying that some
human beings are a missing link,
what does
that make you?
I mean, there has to be some
kind of self critique there.
"Well, wait a minute--
I'm not as special
"as I used to
be anymore."
If people who are
very close to me,
whether you accept
difference or not
if you're one of
these people,
but maybe we're not as
special as we used to be.
Sure, you can try
to say that,
but for the most part, what
usually happens at these things
is they throw mud pies
at the Africans.
They hurl obscenities at
them, they spit on them,
they laugh at them,
they poke at them,
they ask the women to
take their clothes off,
they ask the men to
take their clothes off.
It's a joke.
It's family fun time
during this period.
So we have to be very
careful about trying
desperately to
make these people
seem maybe like how we would
be if we came into contact
with something like this,
as modern people.
These are Samoans, again,
at another human zoo
that this is actually
a car park
where you could drive your car
through, during this period.
It's like drive-by
cultural Imperialism.
And again, just
like you see--
now, that's the exhibits
for average people,
but then scientists, what
they're gonna be doing
is taking
photographs.
They're gonna be
taking profiles
like we saw in that
Romanian image,
taking profiles, taking
body images of people.
They regularly try to bribe
particularly African women
into taking their
clothes off
and taking nude
photographs of them,
and again, these are
all supposed to be part
of scientific
expositions.
It's for teaching
and learning purposes,
so that you can
highlight--
again, think back to that
eugenics tree that we looked at.
So that you can use these
images in every class
and talk about civility,
right, versus barbarism,
or talk about how
Europeans are evolved
and this is your
evidence, right,
because they don't
look like you
or they have a darker
skin tone than you.
This is one of
the images that--
this is a Khoikhoi
woman as well.
So she's part of
Saartjie Baartman's legacy.
But again, they're gonna take
all kinds of images of them.
So thinking about a couple
of the big events here.
You can talk about the
Exposition in 1889.
There's another
one in 1900.
They have these
ethnological expositions
and exhibits all throughout
these huge world's fairs.
And of course, the big story
about the 1889 one is what?
>> (indistinct).
>> What's on
that poster?
>> Eiffel Tower.
>> The Eiffel Tower, right?
I mean, that's civility by
building a gigantic metal tower
that actually
horrified.
We look at it now and we're
like, "Oh, that's romance,
"it's Paris."
Parisians were really pissed
when that thing went up
in the middle of
beautiful Paris, right?
Took a little bit of time for
them to get used to that one.
But the-- so the
ethnological exhibit
at the Paris exposition
in 1898 is 400 people.
The other notable thing
that's happening in 1898
is there's an
exposition called--
a building called the
"Exhibit of the American Negro"
at the same time.
It was concocted by members
of the Tuskegee Institute,
W.E.B. Du Bois and
Booker T. Washington,
and it was supposed
to tell the story
of middle-class
African-Americans,
and they actually
highlight the fact
that they come from Africa,
that they are civilized,
that they are wealthy,
that they are well-educated,
that they're citizens and that
they should be given rights
in the face of things
like Jim Crow laws.
They won 15 medals
'cause Europeans
are all about
their gold medals.
They won 15 medals, and the
American press didn't cover it.
So that tells you sometimes
a story that you're selling--
that you're selling to the
Parisians at this world's fair,
that they're very
interested in,
isn't gonna sell at home
in their Imperial project.
So it's all about place and
space within this, as well.
They get
28 million visitors
and the most popular
exhibit is the people zoo
that they
had there.
It was
wicked popular.
That was one of the big
things that you go to see
when you go to
this world's fair.
The St. Louis
Exposition--
this is gonna get us into
another personalized story
of Ota Benga.
It was also known as the
"Louisiana Purchase Exhibition"
in 1904.
This was when Americans
throw their hat
in the ring of
Imperialism.
Rudyard Kipling writes
"The White Man's Burden,"
this really
obnoxious poem,
and he has it published
all over Western Europe
as well as the
United States
because the whole
point of the poem
was to encourage Americans
to do their duty,
to live up to
the expectations
other white people
had of them
by participating
in Imperialism
and by taking up their role
as paternalists, right?
As the people
who are going in
and accepting that white
man's burden of other cultures.
And Americans, by the time
that you get into the 1890s,
they are
participating.
What areas are
they looking at?
I know there's some American
history students in this class.
What are you gonna focus
on for Americans, 1898?
>> Hawaii.
>> (indistinct).
>> I heard the Philippines.
>> Hawaii and Philippines.
>> Hawaii?
>> And Philippines.
>> Oh, you had said
something else though.
>> Cuba.
>> Cuba, right?
So-- and other parts as well--
Samoa, for example.
I mean, there's a
variety of other islands.
Puerto Rico is
another area
that they're gonna
be focused on.
So the American
exhibition here
is gonna look a
little bit different.
They're gonna have people
from, yes, South Africa
and from New Guinea, but
they're also, in particular--
the biggest volume of
people at this exhibition
is gonna be the Philippines
and also Native Americans.
Native Americans being a
representative at this point
of the
closed frontier.
Buffalo Bill's Wild West
show sets up camp
right outside of the
St. Louis Exhibition.
So there you have somebody
who's also has been
putting on exhibitions
for quite a long time
in American
East Coast cities,
together with-- he actually
brings the show over
to Western Europe
for a while.
But 19.5 million
visitors there,
and this will let us
talk about this guy.
So Ota Benga's another
one of those stories
that we can look at to get
more of the individual impact
of the New
Imperialism.
So Ota Benga--
he's from Congo.
Anybody who
studies Imperialism
knows Imperialism in
and of itself sucks,
but the one place you
don't want to be living
in the 1880s or
1890s is Congo...
because the Congo
has actually become
the private property
of the King of Belgium,
and he uses it as if it
is his private property,
which means he's using the
African populations there
as disposable
workforce.
And yes, other Imperialists
do that as well
and we can't
take that away.
But if you want to see
the egregious nature,
when you don't have any checks
and any balances on Imperial--
you don't have a parliament
to tell you what to do,
you actually keep-- he
closes the borders of Congo.
If you're a missionary and
you want to come into Congo,
you're not allowed
to leave Congo.
There are no reporters
allowed into Congo
during this
period of time.
That's how bad
the situation is,
and because
he sees himself
as this old school
European absolutist,
he can actually control
all those borders
and do whatever he
wants to within it.
So he actually creates a
secret police force for himself
called the
"Force Publique,"
and what he did is he went
into tribes that were decimated
on the interior
of Congo.
He took all the orphans, he
put them up in state schools
and he started
up a process
where you basically brainwashed
all of these young kids
into becoming the
private security force
of the king
in Congo.
And then, he turned around
as those kids matured
and he set them on
their own population,
and it was a
decimation policy.
The whole idea there was
that the basic rule
was if Africans are not doing
what the king tells them to do
and what the government
in Congo tells them to do,
the Force Publique sweeps
in and they kill everyone.
And the deal was to make
sure that they kill people,
the Force Publique actually
had to turn in hands.
So they had to cut off the hand
of the person that they killed
and they turn it in to
get another bullet.
So for each hand
that you turn in,
you get a new bullet
from the government.
That's how bad
it is there.
That's the extreme that
Imperialism can go,
and all these ideas that
we're talking about.
The reason Ota Benga
figures into our story--
he's part of the
Mbuti people.
They were decimated
by the Force Publique
during this
period of time,
and they're gonna
keep being a target,
in particular
the Force Publique.
As you get into
1906 and 1907,
they're just wiped out
during that period of time.
He lost his entire family
just like Baartman did,
and he was a hunter in another
hunter-gatherer society.
He had gone out, and
when he came back--
he went
elephant hunting--
when he came back, his
whole village was gone.
So he had somebody who
approached him at that point,
said that he
had purchased...
purchased from any kind
of duty or responsibility,
'cause they're not gonna
play with the word "slavery"
during this
period of time.
Europeans are always
gonna step forward
and say,
"No one's slaves!
"All the slaves
have been freed."
But it's basically slavery
that you're talking about here.
But he had purchased him
for a bolt of cloth
and a pound of sugar,
and then used,
as I had
said before,
he's gonna use Ota Benga
to convince other people
that they should
come along
and be part of the
St. Louis Exhibition.
So the whole deal is this
guy's in this part of Africa
to collect people-- and
he's particularly focused
on the Mbuti people and
a couple of other tribes
because these are what's
known as "pygmies,"
which a word is
kind of debatable.
Some people say you
shouldn't use this,
some people
say you should,
but that's what they call them
during this period of time.
Ota Benga is
100 pounds.
I think he's
4'6" tall.
He's a human curiosity
to Europeans.
And so, therefore, this guy
feels like he's gonna get
a lot of money by
bringing pygmies in
because that's gonna be the
showstopper for this exhibition.
That's what he's
betting on.
So he brings him to this
exhibit in St. Louis.
And then, from there,
what he's gonna do
is take him with him
to New York City.
Now, they're not quite
sure what to do with him
in New York City,
and so, for a while,
they decide that he should
just be kind of part
of a living exhibit at the
Natural History Museum.
So they give him, like, a
Southern-styled white linen suit
to wear, and he
just hung out.
He didn't get
paid or anything.
He would just walk
around and greet guests
at the Natural
History Museum.
He finally got
himself into trouble
'cause he was
really bored,
like anybody would be if you're
just hanging out in a museum,
picking your fingernails, and
not having anything to do.
He got in trouble
because--
has anybody ever heard the
name "Guggenheim" before?
When you think "Guggenheim,"
what do you think?
>> New York.
>> New York.
>> Art museum and lot of money.
>> Art museum, lots of money.
So he flung a chair at
one of the Guggenheims.
There was a
sit-down dinner,
and somebody asked
for a chair,
and he said, "Oh, I'll get
you a chair," and he acted--
because everybody treated
him like he was so stupid,
that he couldn't possibly
understand European
or American
civility,
so he said "Sure,
I'll get you a chair,"
and he picked
up the chair
and he hurled it across
the room at her,
and came about
this close
to hitting a
Guggenheim in the head,
and that was the point
that he was gently asked
to leave the Natural
History Museum.
And what they did
is they set him up
at the Bronx Zoological
Gardens at that point.
And the deal with the
Bronx Zoological Gardens--
there's a eugenicist
who talks regularly
with the head of the
Bronx Zoological Gardens,
and they decided to set up
a "missing link" exhibit.
So they had him
and a parrot--
I'm not sure how
the parrot works
into this whole
"missing link" agenda--
a chimpanzee,
and an orangutan.
They put them into
the monkey house,
and then they had a
sign-up that said
that you could come and
see the missing link.
And that he,
in their minds--
this is him two
from the left there
looking a little
bit attitude.
I like
Ota Benga a lot.
Very, very curious human
being, very interesting.
He was kind of-- you know,
people who talked to him,
had conversations with him
during this period of time,
he was interested into
getting to know people.
He liked to
learn English.
He liked to kind of
hang out with people
and get to know
this new world
he was coming
into contact with,
but he also thought
people were slightly crazy
that he came into
contact with.
I'll show you a good quote
by him in just a second.
This is one of the images
that they take of him.
Again, they give him
a fake cheetah skin
to wrap around
himself,
or fake cloth to
wrap around himself,
and they're gonna
take images of him
for the general population
to talk up the Bronx Zoo
with a chimpanzee
in his arm.
And of course, the highlight
there for Social Darwinists
is that this is
the missing link.
So any kind of big
promotional imagery
you're gonna see
of Ota Benga...
he's always gonna have
that chimpanzee in his arm.
This is Ota Benga,
over here on the right.
Now, Ota Benga--
what happened
is Baptist ministers
in the area
were, of course, and rightly so
horrified at this whole exhibit.
They didn't like the idea of
the story that was being told.
They also didn't
like the whole idea
that you shouldn't
treat somebody--
ooh, what
just happened?
Magic!
(audience chuckling)
But they didn't like the idea
that you treat Ota Benga--
or that you treat anybody
with this lack of humility.
They didn't like
that they heard--
uh, yes, I would like to
resume the slideshow.
There we go.
So... but they didn't
like the whole idea
that you were treating somebody
with this lack of humility.
They don't like these
Social Darwinist ideas.
And so, they came
to the head,
and there was enough of
a stink in New York City
about Ota Benga
that they decided
that maybe they should
just end this exhibit.
And then, at that point,
the Baptist ministers
decided that they were
gonna civilize Ota Benga.
So what they did is they
put him in a work house
and they gave him
English lessons,
they gave him a new
suit of clothes,
and then they found him
a job in a factory.
And the one thing that they
were really angry about--
and this talks-- you know, we
gotta think about hegemony here.
They were really,
really angry at the idea
that Ota Benga wouldn't
forget who he was.
That's what they
keep talking about.
"We taught him about
how to be civilized,
"we taught him how
to be American,
"we taught him about religion,
we taught him about language,
"we taught him about culture,"
right, meaning theirs,
"and he won't forget
who he used to be.
"He won't forget
his language.
"He won't forget
his traditions."
So they had pretty much thrown
up their hands with him.
What happened--
Ota Benga desperately--
this is the exhibit
sign for him.
Ota Benga was desperately
trying to get back to Congo
during this
period of time.
And there was a number of
problems in South Africa
during this period that didn't
let him get home for a while,
and then, you have the
outbreak of World War I,
which is gonna preclude
him from getting home.
So what Ota Benga did
is he had worked
kind of at this factory job,
at a tobacco farm for awhile.
Now, this is some
of the quotes
that are really
interesting quotes,
that get you to some
of the arguments
we were kind of elucidating
on during this talk.
So here's
William Temple Hornaday,
who's the Bronx Zoological
Gardens director--
"When the history of the
Zoological Park is written,
"this incident will form
its most amusing passage."
So to them, this
is entertainment.
Reverend Macarthur--
"The person responsible
"for this exhibition
degrades himself
"as much as he
does the African."
So there are these
other voices at play
within this story during
this period of time,
but again, these are people
who still completely accept
the idea of "civilized versus
uncivilized" within this,
so therefore,
it's there job.
Humanity for them, in
treating somebody humanely,
is teaching somebody how
to be a good American
and what that
looks like.
Here's the
"New York Times"--
"We do not quite
understand all the emotion
"which others are
expressing in the matter.
"It's absurd to make moan
over imagined humiliation
"and degradation
Benga is suffering.
"The pygmies are very low
in the human scale
"and the suggestion that
Benga should be in a school
"instead of a cage ignores the
high probability that school
"would be a place from
which he could draw
"no advantage
whatever.
"The idea that men
are all much alike
"except that they have had
or lacked opportunities
"for getting an
education out of books
"is now far
out-of-date."
Right?
So it's all about Social
Darwinism for these people.
Here's James Gordon,
another Baptist minister--
"Our race we think
is depressed enough
"without exhibiting one
of us with the apes.
"We think
we are worthy
"of being considered
human beings with souls."
I mean, this has real
meaning to African-Americans,
this kind of exhibit,
when you're talking about
the pre-World War I period,
the Jim Crow
period.
And then,
here's Ota Benga--
"Your city is witchcraft
and you are all mad men."
(audience laughing)
We gotta let him get
in the last word here.
That's when he was
asked by a reporter
what he thought
of the city.
What ends up happening
when he realizes
that he's not gonna be
able to afford a passage,
he goes to a shipping
office and asks them
what it's actually
gonna cost for him
to be able to gain
passage to Congo.
He realized he's never
gonna be able to afford it
on a working
man's salary.
He pulls all-- they
had capped his teeth
because the Mbuti
actually put all--
they file all their
teeth into points.
So they had capped his teeth
so he would look American.
And so, he pulled all
the caps off his teeth,
he tore off all
of his clothes,
he dressed in kind of
one of those animal skins
they provided
for him before,
he did some ceremonies, and then
he shot himself in the heart.
And they discovered his
body the next morning.
So that's the real
cost of Imperialism...
is you've ripped
out everything
that meant something
to these people.
You've told them
that they're less
or you told them
they're inhuman.
You kidnap them, you torture
them, you exhibit them,
and then you just leave
them at the end of it...
because they don't
live up to your story
about the white man's burden
and about civilization.
This is actually
this is still at--
the image that
was up there,
that's still at
the New York.
So write your letters
to your congressman
and a variety of other
officials in New York.
This is
Ota Benga.
What's down there
at the bottom?
>> "Pygmy."
>> "Pygmy."
They refuse to
put his name.
This was taken as
a life image of him,
a plaster cast
of his face,
and it's still in their
exhibits as "pygmy."
So he still doesn't have
an identity to this day.
He's just his race...
and that Social Darwinist
construct of his race.
So let's think
then, very quickly,
and then I'll take
some questions.
Let's think about
where we see this,
why this is so
important to this day.
Children's books, as I
had mentioned before,
this is "Tintin."
You might not have
seen "Tintin" before,
but "Tintin" is the Mickey Mouse
of Western Europe.
You can go to
Tintin stores.
This is "Tintin
Goes to the Congo"
where he goes to edify
and educate people.
He talks about
the Congolese
as a backwards
primitive people.
This was written
in 1930s.
Over on the left...
everybody knows Babar.
Babar the elephant whose parents
were killed by Imperialists,
who decides to go and learn
more about those Imperialists,
so he goes there and he
learns their language
and he learns
their traditions.
He likes their culture, and so
he dresses in a business suit,
he marries an elephant wife,
he has 2.5 elephant children,
and then they come back
to his native land
to educate and edify
the elephants.
We can even see
this in Walt Disney.
"Dumbo"-- anybody know what that
lead crow's name is in "Dumbo"?
Who all speak
jive talk.
"Jim Crow."
It's a joke.
"Dumbo" was made two years
after Congress refused
to pass a law that outlawed
lynchings in the South.
So this was a joke
on African-Americans,
and it feeds into
all the images--
the jive-talking crows,
come on.
"The Jungle Book"--
King Louie.
All the other animals
speak the King's English,
but King Louie speaks this
racist cant of the African...
or their imagination of
the African language.
"Song of the South"-- you all
probably will never see this.
Disney ain't gonna release
this one any time soon on DVD,
but "Song of the South"
really plays up
African-American
stereotypes,
particularly the
stereotype of Uncle Tom.
And "Mickey Mouse
and Boy Thursday"--
this is a quote from it--
"Poor little guy!
"He just makes
mistakes.
"He doesn't
know any better.
"I'll just have
to be patient
"and teach him the
right way to do things."
These are
children's books
and children's cartoons
from the 1940s.
Now, the last exhibit
that we see, 1958,
the Brussels
World Exposition.
This is the last time they
have a Congolese village there.
By the time that you
get into the late 1950s,
you're getting into the kind of
legacies of Post-colonialism.
You're not actually
gonna be able to go
and kidnap whoever you want
to in this period of time,
and you start to see
a bigger awareness
about maybe these
were inappropriate...
but don't pat yourself
on the back too soon.
This is Planète Sauvage
in France.
If you see this
translated into English,
they will call this
"Animal Planet."
Sauvage-- what does that mean?
>> Savage.
>> Savage, right?
So "Savage Planet."
The animal exhibit
at Savage Planet--
it's a little safari
park in France.
The animal exhibits are
all of an African village.
So you put the animals
in the African village,
and then they were
wondering why it is
that people seemed to have a
problem with Planète Sauvage.
When Kings Island, for any of
you who've been there before,
when I was little,
all the animals--
they had the animal safari
and all the smaller animals,
just like with
Planète Sauvage,
were always put in what
was supposed to look
like African houses.
So again, what
you're doing there
is kind of making this
link between the two.
And in 2005,
in Augsburg,
they decided at the zoo there
to host an African village...
and we're shocked
and appalled.
When people, particularly
the large African community
in Germany had a serious
issue with this idea that,
yet again, you have 100 years
after this was the fashion,
you have them bringing back the
idea of Africans within a zoo.
I'm gonna leave
it at that,
and see if you guys
have any questions.
(applause)
>> If you have a question,
speak into the microphone, okay?
>> I was just wondering,
since you kind of dated
all of this back to antiquity
with Greco-Roman ideas,
could we even say that the
ideas of differentiation
between race, gender,
and sexuality
can go back even further to
the rise of the first cities
like in Mesopotamia
and the Middle East?
>> You really-- yeah,
I see where you're going.
Patriarchy, yes.
When you're talking
about differences
when starting to categorize
women versus men,
that comes with first
civilizations...
the idea that cultures
should be male-dominated,
and then starting
to elucidate
on the reasons that
that should be.
With race, what
you really see
that these ideas
starting with the Greeks.
That they-- but then again,
you know how few sources--
you've taken
my classes--
you know how few sources we
have from the ancient world.
Could be that a
bunch of people
wrote a bunch of crap
about all of that.
We just don't
have it anymore.
>> 'Cause I was
just wondering
'cause if you look
in the Old Testament
in Ancient Israeli culture,
they were very big
on differentiating
themselves from the Other.
>> Uh-huh.
>> Like, if they came in contact
with a gentile, they would
have to wash themselves,
like they were unclean,
they like couldn't--
that'd be, say that the idea of
differentiation between race
can even go as
far back as them.
>> I think that what
you're talking about
is a little bit
different than race.
You're talking
about Othering,
which that's you and how
you construct identity.
This is "us versus them"--
absolutely.
You can take it back to
ancient civilizations.
You can see it even between
Sumerian city-states
and how they talk
about each other.
So yeah, that's a really
great piece of evidence
to bring up is
the Old Testament.
You really see
that there.
When we bring in concepts
of race, however,
and how it starts to get
constructed in the Middle Ages,
you really see this coming
out of the Greek city-states.
You see it
coming out of--
what's happening is
Plato and Aristotle--
well, Plato in particular
is attempting to underline
the importance of
Greek domination,
and what he means by that
is Athenian domination
of the general
Mediterranean world.
So they start setting
up all these ideas
about who's a barbarian
and who's a Greek...
and then, within the Greeks,
how do you differentiate?
So Athens
versus Sparta,
and all those quotes
that go back and forth
between the two
city-states.
That's the process.
That's when it
really kicks up,
and starting to--
not just--
you know, when we
talk about race,
what you start
to see
nobody understands that
it's a social construction.
They all understand it
as it's inherent.
So that's where you
start to see that idea
that there's something
different about those people,
and it's their nature that
makes them that way, right?
>> Thank you.
>> That's a good question.
>> I was just
wondering,
as far as like the
human zoos are concerned,
like were the people
that were in it,
were they stuck in there,
or could they leave?
And if they couldn't, like,
did they ever try to escape?
>> I don't have any
evidence that says--
I mean, where are
they gonna go?
You know what
I mean?
There doesn't seem
to be escapes.
What you do see-- they
are not allowed to leave.
They actually have to have
a pass if they want to leave,
and they keep these things
open really, really late.
So there's not
really any down time.
They'll keep it--
you know, for Europe,
I mean, things being open
to 8 o'clock and 9 o'clock
at night in the 1880s,
that's really late.
So-- but you actually
have to have a pass
to be able
to leave.
You do see-- there are
a couple of moments
where they just decide, "We're
not putting on your show
"for you anymore."
"We're done,"
right?
"Go sell your own
stinkin' beads
"and let's see how
swell that show goes."
There are a couple
of moments like that,
and they actually agree
to pay them at that point.
So there are some union issues,
let's put it that way,
with the workforce
there, sure.
Yeah, it's
interesting issue.
But no, I
don't see any--
now, Ota Benga, you
can actually say
what happens is the guy
who brought him over,
he gets really mad at the
Louisiana Purchase exhibit
in St. Louis, and he
takes him out early
because he doesn't like how
the Africans are being--
to him, it was too far that
they were being treated,
not with the level
of low respect
that they're normally
treated, right?
It's even lower
than that.
They're followed around, they
have mud pies thrown at them,
they have people spitting
on them, things like that.
And so, that what was
affectionately referred to
as his "handler," which
same thing in zoos, right,
took him out and that's when
he brought him to the Bronx,
and then dumped him off at
the Natural History Museum.
>> So what's your take on
where we've come to today,
with the image
of beauty...
where that which was once
abhorred is now desired?
Like, you have many white women
who want to be brown or tan,
or they're putting the
injections in their lips
to make them fuller, and
they even have butt surgery,
which is crazy.
(laughing)
And then, you have
the opposite--
you have people like
Asians and black people
doing things
to themselves
that make themselves
appear more European.
So what do you--
>> What's the take on that?
I would say that,
first and foremost,
we have to be a little
bit cautious about that
because lumping everything
in European ideas,
versus Eastern ideas, or
versus Southern ideas--
I mean, that can be
a dangerous game.
Like, for instance,
there's been--
a lot of this relates
to socioeconomic issues.
I mean, no one gets
tans until the 1920s,
and Coco Chanel comes back
from the Mediterranean
all brown and
awesome-looking,
and that meant that you
had the leisure time
to sit on your butt in the
sun for hours at a time.
And so, a lot of women
actually start getting tans
not having anything to
do with other cultures.
It's all
about money.
You look wealthier
if you look healthy,
and then you have all
these people writing about,
"Oh, yeah, rich people--
I mean they're tan
"and they're thin
like Coco Chanel."
Asians-- there's been a
long-standing tradition
that paler is better, and it
doesn't come out of Imperialism.
It actually comes
a lot longer.
It's social
class again.
People who are a little bit
darker are out in the sun,
and so, therefore, you
remain as pale as possible
to show that you're of a
different socioeconomic
situation.
But I do think
that there are--
I mean, I do
think that there
are some legacies there
that have to be explored.
I just don't think that
they've been done well.
It sounds like
you don't, either.
I mean, I just haven't
seen anything
that I'm like,
"Yeah, that really...
"that really kind of
brings Imperialism in,
"in a way that I understand
and I think is critical."
I just haven't
seen it yet.
I think it's there-- I just
think that no one's been able
to really make factual
evidence-based arguments
about it yet that
I've been happy with.
>> When they were picking the
people for the human zoos,
did they typically pick the
more unusual-looking ones
or more
the average?
>> They're gonna pick unusual
because unusual sells better.
And your ability-- now, think
about it from the reverse here,
your ability as a
businessperson
to be able to solidify what
Europeans would see as unusual,
you'll get
paid more.
And you'll have more call for
your business if you do that.
So Khoikhoi, in particular,
are gonna be a target,
Mbuti peoples are
gonna be a target,
anybody who has different,
certain social tradition--
for instance,
neck rings
that stretch out your necks,
things like that--
that Europeans can gawk at
and can SEE difference.
That's not difference
you have to analyze.
That's not a difference that
you can critically evaluate.
That's difference.
And so, therefore, it's
an easier story to sell.
>> Got time for one more?
>> Sure.
>> Do you think that the
idea of human trafficking
might have come
from the human zoos?
The fact that you could
sell these exhibitions
isn't far from the
idea of selling sex.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah... and they
did, sometimes, as a side,
sell sex
in these.
The deal with
human trafficking is--
I mean, you have
human trafficking
in the
ancient world.
It's always
been there.
It's lately become part
of issues of globalization,
where people are
actually confronted by it,
they can't ignore
it anymore,
but it's actually
been there all along.
Particularly even when
you outlaw slavery
in Western Europe,
you have a thriving slave trade
on the eastern borders
and on the southern
borders of Europe
during that
period of time.
So I don't think
that it's a function,
but I do think that it
plays in to it, as well.
I mean, there is
this general idea,
particularly for women, that
women are at your disposal,
that children and young
women in particular
at your disposal,
that they're sexual,
that they should be
made sexually available--
and that's one of the
stories behind all this, too.
The way that European men
are writing about women
from these other cultures is one
where they have expectations...
and they really, you know,
this plays into their desire.
They really do kind
of set up this story
that African
women should be--
African and Asian and
whoever you're talking about
should be up for
their disposal,
and that's part
of their dividend
from the Imperial
process in general.
>> How about another hand
for Professor Williams?
(applause)
Thank you all
for coming.
>> The Irish
history class--
