And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth..
Acts 17:26
"That darker-skinned people were once displayed in zoos as a demonstration of evolutionary stages in human development is largely but not completely unknown. The new documentary Human Zoos, directed by John West, has helped to correct the record. Dr. West was in St. Louis recently and had the opportunity to
investigate the site of the 1904 World’s Fair where hundreds of indigenous people from America’s Philippine colony were caged.
As West points out, there’s no historical marker to be seen in the pretty, upper-middle-class neighborhood. The history has been effectively airbrushed. He also notes that the human zoos were not strictly an American thing. They were an international phenomenon.
Actually, this fact has caught some attention recently. Last month NPR reported on painful reawakened memories in Belgium of crimes committed against the country’s Congolese colonial subjects, including, yes, displaying natives in a zoo.
The Royal Museum for Central Africa began as a temporary exhibition in 1897 in Tervuren, where [Belgium’s King] Leopold had his country estate.
The most talked-about part of the exhibition was the “human zoo” — a mock African village set up in the estate’s woods and ponds. King Leopold, who never set foot in Congo, imported 267 Congolese men, women and children to Tervuren and displayed them behind a fence.
When Leopold heard they were getting sick because of candy they were eating that was tossed to them by the crowd, he put up an equivalent of a ‘Don’t Feed the Animals’ sign at a zoo, saying, ‘the blacks are fed by the organizing committee.’
But guess what gets left out? You got it: any mention of the prestige science of the day, Darwinism, that emphatically classed Africans as barely a step above animals." EN&V
Acts 17:26
"That darker-skinned people were once displayed in zoos as a demonstration of evolutionary stages in human development is largely but not completely unknown. The new documentary Human Zoos, directed by John West, has helped to correct the record. Dr. West was in St. Louis recently and had the opportunity to
As West points out, there’s no historical marker to be seen in the pretty, upper-middle-class neighborhood. The history has been effectively airbrushed. He also notes that the human zoos were not strictly an American thing. They were an international phenomenon.
Actually, this fact has caught some attention recently. Last month NPR reported on painful reawakened memories in Belgium of crimes committed against the country’s Congolese colonial subjects, including, yes, displaying natives in a zoo.
The Royal Museum for Central Africa began as a temporary exhibition in 1897 in Tervuren, where [Belgium’s King] Leopold had his country estate.
The most talked-about part of the exhibition was the “human zoo” — a mock African village set up in the estate’s woods and ponds. King Leopold, who never set foot in Congo, imported 267 Congolese men, women and children to Tervuren and displayed them behind a fence.
When Leopold heard they were getting sick because of candy they were eating that was tossed to them by the crowd, he put up an equivalent of a ‘Don’t Feed the Animals’ sign at a zoo, saying, ‘the blacks are fed by the organizing committee.’
But guess what gets left out? You got it: any mention of the prestige science of the day, Darwinism, that emphatically classed Africans as barely a step above animals." EN&V
