| Author |
Message |
    
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 546
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 - 12:48 pm: | 
|
Via Afro-Netizen http://afronetizen.blogs.com/afronetizen/2005/06/african_village.html
The African Village festival in the Augsburg zoo perpetuates racism say many. Medhat Abdelati was completely blindsided by the media blitz and public outrage. The Egyptian head of the German event-planning company maxVita GmbH has thrown numerous African festivals in recent years in both Vienna, Austria and Munich, Germany, and had come to think of himself as a bit of an expert in such celebrations of Dark Continent culture. Why should his new project turn out any differently?
He should have known better. This time around, his festival, which opens on Thursday and is scheduled to continue throughout the weekend, has turned into an ostrich-sized international egg on the face of the southern German town of Augsburg. Why? The "African Village" event is innocuous enough -- it brings together food stands, traditional crafts, basket weavers and hair braiders for the kids. The problem this time, is that is being held, of all places, in the heart of the Augsburg Zoo. Grass huts and "African" culture are nestled between the monkey cage and the Savannah exhibit -- an uncomfortable juxtaposition for many.
(Also see: http://www.africanfront.com/AF033.php) |
Libralind2
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 157
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 - 08:59 pm: |
|
Well dam this is the perfect place for this:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/06/29/mexico.stamp.ap/index.html
LiLi
|
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3745
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 10:32 am: |
|
'Vette,
It's difficult for me to divine much of an opinion about this sans being able to SEE the exhibit.
But I wonder whether this would be as much of a problem if the German organizers had not selected a ZOO as it milieu. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 548
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 11:42 am: |
|
Well, ABM, hop on over to A-burg--maybe you could not only "SEE" but BE the exhibit! LOL! |
Rustang
Veteran Poster
Username: Rustang
Post Number: 60
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 06:55 pm: |
|
I don't think that anyone has any problem with the exhibit,Abm.The venue that they've selected is what some people find troubling.I'm sure that the organizers of the exhibit find a zoo to be perfectly appropriate,as do a substantial number of the spectators.I took my family to the Houston zoo about twenty years ago and while we were there I noticed a large group of people bunched up in front of what was obviously a new exhibit.Everyone was pointing and smiling to each other.We walked over to see what it was in there and it turned out that the exhibit was very new indeed.It wasn't completed yet.There were three black carpenters climbing around in there nailing up some stuff. |
Anunaki3600
Veteran Poster
Username: Anunaki3600
Post Number: 58
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 05:30 am: |
|
Reminds me of a very sad story. During 1930's there was a TWI (a.k.a Pigmy) kept in the New York ZOO in a cage as an exibit. It took action from the AA comunity in New York to get him released and then sent him back to the CONGO. There is a book about his story. A very sad story. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 554
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 07:46 am: |
|
...and let's not forget the Hottentot Venus... |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3753
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 09:49 am: |
|
I think I recall hearing about that until about a few years ago the preserved/stuffed buttocks of an African woman was on view at a French museum. It was removed and, I think, returned to Africa after years of protests from African officials.
Interestingly, the French viewed it to be a great work of art that 'honored' the unique beauty of Black women. |
Kola_boof
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 318
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 11:33 am: |
|
OMG----
ABM, you need to read the book "Hottentot Venus" by Barbara Chase Riboud.
You need to read it---desperately.
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Born in the colony of Good Hope, South Africa, in 1789, Sarah Baartman was taken to London at the age of twenty by an English surgeon, who promised her fame and fortune. Dubbed the “Hottentot Venus,” she was paraded naked in Piccadilly in a freak-show exhibition and subjected to the unabashed stares and crude comments of the British public, which resulted in a sensational trial for her custody by British abolitionists. Soon afterward, however, Baartman's keeper – who may have been her husband – sold her to a French circus owner. In 1814, her new owner took her to Paris as part of an exotic animal circus to be displayed to French high society. Baartman endured unconscionable exploitation and cruelty as medical experts and leading scientists touted her as an example of primitive evolution because of her genital “apron” and her prominent buttocks.
In an unforgettable saga that ranges from Capetown to St. Helena to London to Paris and back to Africa, Chase-Riboud has fashioned a Dickensian evocation of this icon of scientific racism, whose body, sex, and brain were exploited, examined, and dissected to become a synonym of ugliness and brutality — the absolute negation of European beauty, which even today taints our Western concepts of humanity. Sarah, the tragic heroine, evokes nineteenth-century novels of the “other” such as Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Nigger of the Narcissus.
In Hottentot Venus, Barbara Chase-Riboud evokes this strange and moving story in the voices of Baartman and her contemporaries, combining years of research with the sensitivity and perceptions of a masterful storyteller to bring the story to life. Like Chang and Eng and the author’s own Sally Hemings and Echo of Lions, HOTTENTOT VENUS is a powerful, stark portrayal of the harsh realities of race—a stunning look at the cruelty of curiosity, colonialism, and its twenty-first century consequences.
|
Libralind2
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 161
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 03, 2005 - 08:00 pm: |
|
What a book..Barbara did an excellent job I thought.
LiLi |
Stephgirl
Newbie Poster
Username: Stephgirl
Post Number: 2
Registered: 09-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 03:02 pm: |
|
I've read reviews of Barb's book. Have to say, she has done an excellent job in telling Ms. Baartman's story which has been suppressed in the name of white patriarachial supremacy in the past 500 years. |
Email This Page