The burden of white Caucasians

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This may seem incredible: the zoos, which showed blacks, in Europe began to close only before the Second World War. The last African was released from the cage of the "human menagerie" in Europe only in 1936.

Ordinary racism

In Europe, there are still alive those whom their parents took to zoos to gawk at blacks in cages and feed them from their hands. Eskimos and Indians were kept together with Africans for the amusement of the respectable public 80 years ago. Ostriches, zebras and monkeys lived in the same enclosures.

"Human zoos" were needed for more than just fun. Scientists worked there: they set up experiments, observed. The subjects were well fed and allowed to sing and dance. A civilized and enlightened Europe: Africans diligently dance in open-air cages, not quite understanding the reaction of others, and the respectable audience rolls with laughter …

The largest such parks were in Berlin, Basel, Antwerp, London and Paris - only 15 cities in Europe. In London, up to 800 thousand people visited aviaries with blacks a year, in Paris - over a million.

A sensational incident: the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, at the Berlin Zoo, uttered a phrase that entered the chronicle of racism. The Iron Chancellor looked in surprise at the African and the gorilla sitting in the cage, and then asked the caretaker, which one of them is a man?

By the way, aviaries with Samoans were also popular in Germany. Exhibited in those menageries and Europeans, in particular, the Sami.

How many ruddy European grandparents in childhood fed Africans by hand, like ostriches and peacocks, is unknown. I won't be mistaken if I assume tens of thousands. In Turin and Basel, blacks were released from their cages only in 1935-1936. In France and Switzerland, the average life expectancy is 85 years. So many retirees in Europe still have to remember the fun of their childhood.

As a rule, Negroes did not live long in the conditions of European winters. For example, it is known that 27 people died in captivity at the Hamburg Zoo from 1908 to 1912.

Historians still do not come to a consensus as to why such menageries were closed. Official version: humanism. But there is another explanation: in the 1920s and 1930s, aviaries with people in Europe began to close due to the economic depression. The people simply did not have enough money for tickets to zoos.

The last time Africans performed for the amusement of the European public was in 1958. The level of humanism by that time did not allow keeping people in the zoo's aviaries. "Congolese Village" was organized within the framework of the EXPO in Belgium. But the question is - how appropriate was it at all to take Africans to Belgium and put on an ethnographic show? Indeed, back in the first decade of the 20th century, Belgian planters in the Congo willingly took pictures with armless children. For edification: little Africans were cut off their hands for the fact that their parents could not meet the collection rate of rubber.

And the norms were such that the locals had to work 16 hours a day. It was slave labor on rubber plantations that cut the Congo population in half.

Belgium lost control of the Congo only in 1960, but its economy remained 100% in the hands of Western companies.

Landing at school

But in America, not only the 80-90-year-old old people remember the time when African-American's concepts ("African American") had not yet, and black Americans were called simply and clearly: "niggrats". In the southern states, a sign in a restaurant, "No Dogs, Indians, Negroes or Mexicans," was the norm.

Until 1940, only 5% of blacks in the South of the United States had the right to vote.

President Roosevelt himself and his wife tried to turn the tide by demanding that blacks be recruited, for example, for the navy, not only for service personnel.

The fleet complied with an entire colored destroyer, USS Mason DE529. But commanding a ship whose crew consisted of blacks was so unpopular that officers were appointed as punishment. All officers, of course, were white.

In World War I, the only African American military pilot was unable to enlist in the US Air Force and therefore served in the French Air Force.

During World War II, the Americans created a separate unit for the colored people: the 332nd air group. The African American pilots fought admirably. From 1942 to 1945, they shot down 260 enemy aircraft, destroyed 950 ground vehicles, and sank one destroyer. 66 pilots were killed in air battles. The group took part in the invasion of Sicily, at the end of the war became overgrown with legends, especially after it was attracted to escort the "flying fortresses". It is believed that these pilots never dropped covered bombers into battle, protecting their crews even at the cost of their lives.

But neither their feats, nor even the authority of the president himself was enough to change the consciousness of the population. The General Directorate of the US Navy presented to Roosevelt a report in which it was stated in plain text that a white man would never allow himself to be commanded by a colored man.

"Whites are a superior race, so they will never treat people of color as equals." Guess where this quote comes from? From Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf? No, all from the same report of the American admirals.

The United States has a legendary division - the 101st Airborne. Glorified, as we have Tula or, say, Pskov. Among her glorious deeds is a special operation. The division was thrown into … guarding black students in a school for whites. It was in 1957.

Segregation was formally outlawed in the United States in 1964. But until 1967, interracial marriage was banned in the south. And Americans who are still not old yet remember parks where benches were divided: for whites and for colored people.

Last tour

But a menagerie with European-style blacks in the United States would be doomed to financial disaster. Why look at people around you for free for money?

Therefore, in American zoos they showed … pygmies.

The most famous of which is Ota Benga. In a cage at the Bronx Zoological Gardens, New York, he sat with an orangutan and a parrot. There was a sign on the grill: name, height, weight, show schedule.

Bengu was brought from Congo. In New York, he was very popular. So much so that the black pastors pleaded with the pygmy to be treated like a human being. Or at least not flaunt it with the monkeys.

Most visitors to the zoo found it amusing to compare pygmy to humans.

The zoo's management declared "an honor to have such a rare transitional form." The press shared their opinion. The New York Times wrote: "Pygmies are closer to great apes, or they can be regarded as degenerate descendants of ordinary blacks - in any case, they are of interest to ethnology."

The pygmy himself put an end to the discussion. The crowds of onlookers bored him so much that he made a bow and began to fire at the visitors. After that, the show had to be closed.

The pygmy was eventually set free. Benga already knew that his village in Africa was destroyed, he had nowhere to return. He stole a revolver and committed suicide

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* Caucasoid race (also called Eurasian or Caucasian) - a race widespread before the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries in Europe, Western Asia, North Africa, partly in Central Asia and northern and central India; later - on all inhabited continents. Especially widely Caucasians settled in North America and South America, in South Africa and Australia. It is the most numerous race on Earth (about 40% of the world's population)