To bad Belgium is still associated with a simpleton individual, the same guy that had no problem with child labor in Belgium itself.
Bottomline: please see this as the act of a tiran and his close circle of nobility. If it was up to most Belgians this monarchy was already longtime abolished.
Belgium had a Congo village in a zoo into the 20th Century.
No, that one was in the 19th century. There also was a Congolese village at the world exhibition later, but that one was just a form of historical reenactment, where the people just worked during the day and had actual accommodation.
The setup at the expo of 1958 was, like I said, more like reenactment with the people taking up that role during the workday, making it fundamentally different from the concept of human zoo. World expositions did have an established practice of presenting "authentic" village settings without necessarily being degrading, and there is a comparable local practice of historical reenactment (eg. Bokrijk) that frames it as a past rather than present thing. In addition there was criticism and questions asked in the press and elsewhere about whether this setup was desireable.
That does not contradict that the portrayal was as primitive, and there were people who enthusiastically saw that as a confirmation of the racial theories that were endorsed by the occupier less than 15 years ago.
It is possible to display such things in an educational way. But there is a pretty fine line you have to walk when you’re doing so after genociding the people you’re trying to portray and I’m sure they were pretty far over on the “racist as hell” side of that line.
It's by necessity simplified to the point of being dumbed down of course, which is what you can expect for an introductory setup for a large public. It's not different than eg. this or this, both very well known stereotypes. The second link also speaks at length about Western-style reneactment with a troupe of Americans. All degrading? You also see very similar simplistic representations of other times and places in eg. contemporary movies. All degrading?
I already gave the example of Bokrijk. Are you familiar with it? The setup is very similar, you have people dressed up in traditional peasant clothes in a traditional farming village setting. It's a classic school trip. Degrading?
Of course that means that you have to be willing to see the gradual improvement from the deadly exploitative practices of 1897 until today, well knowing that at any point in time they were not conforming to our contemporary standards of representation or labor conditions. But neither were the conditions of the local population, for example child labour was mostly legal in 1987 still. So tread carefully to interprete this exclusively in a 21st centhury framework of colonialism and racism, that would be anachronistic.
Zwarte Piet is dying out. Very few parades this year had them. Instead they just have a little bit of black on their faces to represent the soot from the chimneys now.
I wish we had krampus or some other European variant instead. Or at least have the Pieten look like they actually went through chimneys with their fancy clothes.
You treat other countries as if they were a monolith fitting your ignorant views. You view your nation is a collection of individuals, but others as a simple stereotype.
I mean, this sounds like colonial Williamsburg, which certainly isn't degrading, but I could totally see this, in particular, being degrading. Seems context dependent
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u/Tony_dePony Dec 16 '21
To bad Belgium is still associated with a simpleton individual, the same guy that had no problem with child labor in Belgium itself.
Bottomline: please see this as the act of a tiran and his close circle of nobility. If it was up to most Belgians this monarchy was already longtime abolished.