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\u2019ve imagined an accurate representation? Have you ever stopped to think about why it is that you\u2019ve developed whatever associations are coming to mind now? Have you considered the external influences on your perception of people?<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t tell you where it all began; there\u2019s always been a prejudice against darker people throughout history. I\u2019ve never been in a World History class where the instructor says, \u201cNow, such and such year is when the prejudice against dark skinned people was conceived by this dude\u201d. That\u2019s 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\u2019m not here to make an argument for universal biases being a natural tendency because I\u2019m almost positive I don\u2019t 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\u2019t even begin to capture the brilliance I see.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d been like that in elementary and middle school, too, so it\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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\u2019d never experienced racism because I wasn\u2019t 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 \u201creal\u201d racism and I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t understand what he was asking. He said, \u201cWhen I see my friend\u2019s girlfriend straighten her hair it melts. Your type of hair melts when you use a flat iron, I\u2019ve seen it.\u201d 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\u2019t count how many times strangers<\/i> 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\u2019s bodies being objects was deeply ingrained in the mainstream psyche, revealing itself in various ways.<\/p>\n
What happened? I can\u2019t believe that we\u2019ve always been seen only as objects in the eyes of White people. There\u2019s proof, look at Peter Paul Rubens one of the greatest Renaissance painters. The Four Rivers <\/i>created in 1616 depicts the God\u2019s of the world\u2019s 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\u2019s flow.<\/p>\n
In the center of a painting is a Black woman as a Nymph accompanying Nile, there\u2019s no distortion of her features – she is just as beautiful and alluring as the rest of the Nymphs. She\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
There are countless depictions of Black people within Renaissance art, and while it might be due to the realism of the era, I <\/i>could not find any racist or tragically distorted representations of Black people in Europe during the 1600\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n
The French Encounter with Africans <\/i>by William Cohen documents misconceptions and prejudices created and perpetuated by Europeans. Cohen writes, \u201cIn 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.\u201d (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, \u201cFrenchmen 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, <\/i>which held that what was not beautiful was somehow depraved.\u201d (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 \u201cRational\u201d reasons as to why Blackness existed. The conclusions they came to were that Europeans were blatantly superior simply because they didn\u2019t understand the differences they had with Africans and could not accept them as equals because of their polarity.<\/p>\n
Behind the Eurocentric Veils <\/i>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, \u201cHegel 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.\u201d (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\u2019s easier to support terrible things when there\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Paintings like Her Mistress\u2019s Clothes <\/i>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 \u00a0compared 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\u2019s mind makes when looking at this painting is jarring; the emanating quality of the White woman\u2019s skin dominates the photograph. The woman is holding her servant\u2019s head in place in front of what I can assume is a mirror. It\u2019s a dialogue – she\u2019s telling her servant to look at herself while she\u2019s submerged in the Western in that moment. She\u2019s telling her that in order to be beautiful her servant must look and dress like her, something truly unattainable.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s body displayed by a White woman as flawed, only acceptable because of her temporary subscription to Western dress.<\/p>\n
Another point of tension between Africans and Europeans were their drastic differences religious practice. In The French Encounter with Africans, <\/i>Cohen explains, \u201cThe Africans\u2019 animism piqued Europeans\u2019 interest, as perhaps their most prominent feature next to coloring.\u201d (p. 15) Missionaries attempted to transform Africans into Christian but weren\u2019t met with great success. The association with Africans and Blackness to hedonism were deepened using Biblical morality. Cohen writes, \u201c… 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.\u201d (p. 17) The African failure to complacently conform to European Christian morals made them sinners.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Cette t\u00eate comm\u00e9morative royale, Edo, Royaume de B\u00e9nin is item 109 in Sotheby\u2019s Art Africain et Oc\u00e9an which is a catalogue of two patron\u2019s personal collections. They describe the statue, \u201cCette t\u00eate repr\u00e9sente un oba, indentifi\u00e9 par la couronne royale, le bandeau frontal et le tr\u00e8s haut collier \u00e0 28 rangs compos\u00e9 de perles de corail. Chaque c\u00f4te de la t\u00e9te est orn\u00e9 d’un motif en forme d’ailette, au born ajour\u00e9. Le visage pr\u00e9sente des traits naturalistes travaill\u00e9s aves une tr\u00e8s grande finesse, les sourcils signifi\u00e9s par des hachures r\u00e9guli\u00e9res, de tr\u00e9s fines cercles grav\u00e9s sous les yeux dont ils suivant la ligne courbe, le front orn\u00e9 du motif classique de triple scarifications.\u201d (p. 26) But what they\u2019re failing to mention when regaling all of the ways which art historians deduce the meaning of these ancient pieces of art \u00a0is how these pieces of art were procured. What they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s caused Black people to create a counter narrative. Now, this narrative may be ignored by Western media, but it\u2019s still alive. We are actively trying to reshape our image and prove that we are more than slaves in their mistress\u2019s clothes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}