When you see a Black person, what do you see? If I asked you to picture a Black person in your head, which features would you accentuate to let yourself know that you’ve imagined an accurate representation? Have you ever stopped to think about why it is that you’ve developed whatever associations are coming to mind now? Have you considered the external influences on your perception of people?

I can’t tell you where it all began; there’s always been a prejudice against darker people throughout history. I’ve never been in a World History class where the instructor says, “Now, such and such year is when the prejudice against dark skinned people was conceived by this dude”. That’s not really how it works. Throughout my studies it seems like shadeism of some sort has been incorporated in cultures all over the world, but I’m not here to make an argument for universal biases being a natural tendency because I’m almost positive I don’t believe in that being inherent. What I can do, however, is look at the way the image of us has transformed over time creating a depiction of us in the mainstream media that doesn’t even begin to capture the brilliance I see.

I never really had to think about these things when I lived in Tacoma. I went to a school where it was rare for there to be more than three White people in the school. Whiteness was reserved to the highly resented staff, the only White authority figures respected by the students were the ones who proved their ability to speak our language and break up a fight. It’d been like that in elementary and middle school, too, so it’s safe to say moving to Olympia, Washington was a culture shock. I went from a classroom setting where we learned about code switching and talks about how I won’t be received well by professionals because of my skin color to a place where I could go hours and hours without seeing someone who even vaguely resembled me.

The first group project of my Evergreen career was a presentation on a cult in ancient Rome. I was in the basement of the library in a study room with two people who were nice enough; I don’t remember how we got on the subject of racism but as I would learn it would be a topic that got brought up frequently in my presence, because of my presence. The man sitting across from me fidgeted with his baseball cap and casually told me that I’d never experienced racism because I wasn’t from the south. See, he was from the South and that fact apparently made him an expert on the subject of terrible biases. He said that I was lighter than his Black friends back home who have experienced “real” racism and I couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to truly be Black. He then began talking about my features and asked if my hair melted when I straightened it. I told him that I didn’t understand what he was asking. He said, “When I see my friend’s girlfriend straighten her hair it melts. Your type of hair melts when you use a flat iron, I’ve seen it.” It did not matter how much I objected to this idea of our hair being this magical, exotic substance growing out of our heads that melts when it gets too hot, he dismissed my narrative in favor of his distorted White supremacist ideals. I can’t count how many times strangers have walked up to me and began petting my hair because they had an idea that my body was open game. It became immediately apparent after my first few weeks in Olympia that the concept of Black people’s bodies being objects was deeply ingrained in the mainstream psyche, revealing itself in various ways.

What happened? I can’t believe that we’ve always been seen only as objects in the eyes of White people. There’s proof, look at Peter Paul Rubens one of the greatest Renaissance painters. The Four Rivers created in 1616 depicts the God’s of the world’s greatest rivers: Nile, Tigris, Ganges, and Euphrates. Surrounding them are cherubs wrestling with alligators effortlessly while a tiger hisses at divinity toying with nature. Each River God is paired with nymphes who act as feminine power for the river’s flow.

In the center of a painting is a Black woman as a Nymph accompanying Nile, there’s no distortion of her features – she is just as beautiful and alluring as the rest of the Nymphs. She’s the only person engaged with the audience, looking us directly in the eye as if she were inviting us into the painting, to submerge ourselves in the depth of the dark blue tones. While they didn’t make Nile Black (even though he was the one God typically represented as a Black man [p. 348 Black People in European Art]) the association with the people living on the land that the Nile river flows through is represented with the Nymph. She is not an accessory in this painting. She serves a role on conveying a theme and works together with the other deities depicted to do that effectively. She was not portrayed as a caricature of her Blackness; she had a central role that involved her personhood and heritage as opposed to reducing her role to her race.

There are countless depictions of Black people within Renaissance art, and while it might be due to the realism of the era, I could not find any racist or tragically distorted representations of Black people in Europe during the 1600’s, which is coincidental since the first colony came to Virginia in the beginning of that century. Depictions of Black people transformed from the beginning of the century to the end.

The French Encounter with Africans by William Cohen documents misconceptions and prejudices created and perpetuated by Europeans. Cohen writes, “In Europe the color Black denoted evil and depravity and, in an age that believed in symbols, some meaning was attached to the fact that some humans were Black.” (p. 13) What did this meaning consist of? The theories as to why Blackness existed varied from one xenophobic perspective to another. Everything from Black people being descendents of Cain (our skin was turned Black by God to show our affiliation with Satan), to the idea that Africans were born White but turned Black by the sun, dirt, or paint. (pg. 13) The Europeans had negative associations with Blackness from their first encounters. Cohen notes that, “Frenchmen saw the Blackness of Africans as symbolic of some inner depravity, since they thought the color aesthetically unappealing. They followed a tradition rooted in the classical doctrine of physiognomos, which held that what was not beautiful was somehow depraved.” (p.14) In short, because the French and other Europeans went to Africa and were confronted with the antithesis of their societal standards they began to look for “Rational” reasons as to why Blackness existed. The conclusions they came to were that Europeans were blatantly superior simply because they didn’t understand the differences they had with Africans and could not accept them as equals because of their polarity.

Behind the Eurocentric Veils by Clinton M. Jean is titled effectively; this 100 page book covers a span of history from the slavery era to the Vietnam war to evaluate the systematic racism perpetuated by Europeans and how it affects the identity of minorities, specifically Black people. He argues that because Reason is the new God in the Western world, this powerful ideal has othered Second and Third world countries which are seen as primitive and painted in a negative light for the European public. He uses specific examples of important philosophers and sociologists to emphasize the fact that oppression is an inherent part of their ideological structures. One person Jean believes is integral in the process of White supremacist motives being incorporated into modern thought is Hegel. Jean wrote, “Hegel himself described the aboriginal Americans as vanishing at the mere breath of European presence. His stripes on African culture were even harsher: cannibals, traffickers in the sales of their children, primitives (heathens, too) needing the civilized schooling of Western slavery.” (p. 15) The European attempt to understand African culture was a massive failure. Mainstream thought drastically transformed along with the rise of colonies. I suppose it’s easier to support terrible things when there’s widespread propaganda telling the gun-toting majority that the people suffering are less human than they are, especially when the rhetoric is supported by popular philosophers. It’s probably easier not to think about why you have what you have when someone bled for it. And with popular philosophers supporting and creating a rhetoric of White superiority.

Paintings like Her Mistress’s Clothes by an anonymous artist in 1815 effectively boil down the apparent agenda of White supremacy. In this painting is a woman standing in front of the mirror with a menacing hand clutching the face of her Black servant. The Black woman is wearing an ill fitting necklace with flowers, her White dress is pearly  compared to her skin. Her face is flattened and compressed, her hair is done in the same style as her Mistress – a cheap, thinning version at least. The comparison one’s mind makes when looking at this painting is jarring; the emanating quality of the White woman’s skin dominates the photograph. The woman is holding her servant’s head in place in front of what I can assume is a mirror. It’s a dialogue – she’s telling her servant to look at herself while she’s submerged in the Western in that moment. She’s telling her that in order to be beautiful her servant must look and dress like her, something truly unattainable.

The message of White superiority is blatant. The body of a Black woman has been controversial since the conception of this country and has been distorted and skewed under the White male gaze. Our bodies are not seen as beautiful or valuable, but rather as an instrument for pleasure. Our bodies are not seen as strong regardless of the fact that the prosperous life White Americans revel in would not be possible without our sweat and our blood. Here you see the Black woman’s body displayed by a White woman as flawed, only acceptable because of her temporary subscription to Western dress.

Another point of tension between Africans and Europeans were their drastic differences religious practice. In The French Encounter with Africans, Cohen explains, “The Africans’ animism piqued Europeans’ interest, as perhaps their most prominent feature next to coloring.” (p. 15) Missionaries attempted to transform Africans into Christian but weren’t met with great success. The association with Africans and Blackness to hedonism were deepened using Biblical morality. Cohen writes, “… After 1700 Africans were depicted as responsible for their lack of Christianity, a conclusion due, it was said, to their moral failings and to their bestiality.” (p. 17) The African failure to complacently conform to European Christian morals made them sinners.

While the demonization of Black people and Black culture insisted, the fetishization of non-Western culture grew and flourished. The relics which were once used as evidence against African humanity are now being sold in Sotheby’s catalogues for hundreds of thousands of euros. Europeans can appreciate what Black people create (for example: our art, our music, the United States of America,) however when it comes to us as people there are moralistic differences which have greatly hindered unity.

Cette tête commémorative royale, Edo, Royaume de Bénin is item 109 in Sotheby’s Art Africain et Océan which is a catalogue of two patron’s personal collections. They describe the statue, “Cette tête représente un oba, indentifié par la couronne royale, le bandeau frontal et le très haut collier à 28 rangs composé de perles de corail. Chaque côte de la téte est orné d’un motif en forme d’ailette, au born ajouré. Le visage présente des traits naturalistes travaillés aves une très grande finesse, les sourcils signifiés par des hachures réguliéres, de trés fines cercles gravés sous les yeux dont ils suivant la ligne courbe, le front orné du motif classique de triple scarifications.” (p. 26) But what they’re failing to mention when regaling all of the ways which art historians deduce the meaning of these ancient pieces of art  is how these pieces of art were procured. What they’re failing to mention is that the selling of sacred art of another culture, specifically Black culture, that has been demonized and degraded they are further perpetuating the idea that our culture is valueless. These pieces of art were not made necessarily for Western consumption and yet Europeans insist on placing value on our art as opposed to our livelihood. This phenomenon in and of itself is evocative of the dehumanization of Black people and how only valued for our usefulness.

The representation of Black people in Western art and in the media has rarely shown our true colors. There is no exploration of our depth, only our fetishized backgrounds and the disfiguring of our identities. However, while the Western world has created this depiction of us which is simply offensive and wrong, it’s caused Black people to create a counter narrative. Now, this narrative may be ignored by Western media, but it’s still alive. We are actively trying to reshape our image and prove that we are more than slaves in their mistress’s clothes.