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Thursday, March 20, 2014

America had an African zoo captive, and he ended his life on this day

America had an African zoo captive, and he ended his life on this day

Have you heard of Ota Benga? His life and death highlights one of many racially motivated atrocities faced by people of African decent in America. The Congolese native and Mbuti pygmy was captured and part of an exhibit for the St. Louis World Fair. Trapped in the captivity of the museum for years, Benga would commit suicide by firing a borrowed revolver in to his chest after chipping the caps off his teeth and starting a ceremonial fire. In what ways are African Americans treated like spectacles today? How can we prevent being mocked?

Friday, January 17, 2014

Melville and the Language of Denial | The Nation

Melville and the Language of Denial | The Nation
"Since my earliest readings of Moby-Dick, I always sensed Herman Melville’s deliberate misdirections: that he was telling some other story underneath the obvious one. So it was not hard to suspect his manipulation of the reader as well as his tendency to hide/display deeper revelations underneath the surface narrative. Benito Cereno fell quickly (for me) into that category because I didn’t believe... a kidnapped African slave en route to ownership by a stranger in a foreign land would be so accommodating. Why would he care about the health and well-being of his captor? I understood that the massacre of violently rebelling slaves would be condoned in nineteenth-century “slave history” as the erasure of evil or the culling of herds. But I saw the equally violent response of the slaves on the ship as that of rational, if enraged, humans unwilling to be kidnapped for profit."
--from "Playing in the Dark" by Toni Morrison