Venus Hottentot, Josephine Baker, now Beyonce

Posted April 19th, 2011 by Wandia Njoya

in

• Global Affairs

It is only in France that people will come up with a ludicrous idea of co-opting a clueless black American diva in their reduction of Africa to blackness. It is in France in the 19th century that Venus Hottentot was displayed like an animal and her genitals preserved in a museum. It is France in the 20th century that convinced Josephine Baker that she was affirming human solidarity across racist boundaries by wearing bananas, coconut bras and sisal skirts. But the feminized blackness in the museum and film archives was about to run out, so now it has gotten a boost in the 21st century through Beyonce in blackface. And the editors of L'Officiel, which commissioned the photo-shoot, would have us believe that the pictures are a celebration of African beauty.

They could have saved alot of trouble if they went for a genuine dark-skined African woman. There is Alec Wek, Ajuma Nasenyana and whole lot of African beauties who would have worn those clothes better than Beyonce.

Beyonce has always degraded black femininity by commercializing it - but this time she has hit an all-time low. But although I feel thoroughly insulted by this attempt to sanitize racist sexism, I'm really not surprised; we've seen this before coming from la ville des lumieres (City of Lights) and the "home" of human rights.

However, the most offensive thing of all is the fact that Beyonce was not painted all over her body in blackface (that's why they call it black "face"). In some pictures, she holds up her arms closer to her face, as if to remind us that she is not really black but acting black. She is only black for a moment when she choses, and it will soon be over when the makeup is washed off. She should have stuck to bleaching her face, since that was more personal and did not involve as much those of us who are proudly wear the skin that the good Lord put us in.

And once again, the French "cultural" experts have insulted Africa again, while clothing their insults in benevolent rhetoric about African beauty and recognition of our humanity thanks to the French revolution. Behind this rhetoric has always been the idea that normal Europeans find Africans ugly and semi-human, but praise God, there are extra-ordinary Europeans who have done us the favor of recognizing our humanity when they are under no obligation to do so.

The argument that life has changed (Oprah is rich, Obama is president) and so blackface does not mean the same as less than a century ago is equally as racist. It suggests that Africans have either no historical memory or have no right to it. Wasn't it Hegel who said that history does not include us? The fact that life has improved for black people following the struggles of our ancestors (not the benevolence of Europe) does not mean that we do not remember from how far we have come. We remember our history of pain, oppression and humiliation, and to dismiss it so nonchalantly is to dehumanize our ancestors and by extension us. If there are historical events in Europe about which humor is not entertained, why are those rules relaxed when it comes to us Africans?

I bet at the bars where these so-called artists are sipping wine and nibbling at cheese, they will dismiss the pain they have caused us by expressing some self-righteous horror that their blackface is linked to American racism. France has always used the United States to define itself as anti-racist, and whatever racism there is is confined to invidual flaws. In Fanon's Black skin, white masks, there is an anecdote in which a French colonial officer in Algeria quipped that Africans should see Sartre's play inspired by the Scottsborough Nine so that they could appreciate how good they were having it under French colonialism. When I lived in France, a Senegalese man incredulously praised France as less racist than the United States because they don't lynch black men for sleeping with white women. I was sadly amused at his surprise when I reminded him that we were talking in 2003. During the infamous 2005 urban riots in Paris among immigrant communities, Dominique de Villepin vehemently argued that comparisons should not be drawn with the inner cities in the United States. So now, unlike the United States where blackface symbolizes racism and oppression, some French magazine would have us believe that blackface can be a compliment because of the good heart of the photographer and the magazine editor.

The obsession with sexual relations as a space that transcends racism makes the fact that the blackface caricature was a woman, not to mention the voluptuous Beyonce, all the more problematic. It confirms what African feminists like Obioma Nnaemeka have remarked about the curious obsession of the West with African women's sexuality.

But once again, Africa is expected to praise the gods because France does racism differently. After all, since racism against us is inevitable, why not have it expressed with some panache?

• Wandia Njoya's blog

The Uprisings: Islam and the Arab revolutions

Source: The Economist.

THE sight of corrupt old Arab tyrants being toppled at the behest of a new generation of young idealists, inspired by democracy, united by Facebook and excited by the notion of opening up to a wider world, has thrilled observers everywhere. Those revolutions are still in full swing, albeit at different points in the cycle. In Tunisia and Egypt they are going the right way, with a hopeful new mood prevailing and free elections in the offing. In Libya, Syria and Yemen dictators are clinging on to power, with varying degrees of success. And in the Gulf monarchs are struggling to fend off demands for democracy with oil-funded largesse topped by modest and grudging political concessions.

So far these revolts have appeared to be largely secular in character. Westerners have been quietly relieved by that. Not that they are all against religion. Many—Americans in particular—are devout. But by and large, they prefer their own variety to anybody else’s, and since September 11th 2001, they have been especially nervous about Islam.

Now, however, there are signs that Islam is a growing force in the Arab revolutions (see article). That makes secular-minded and liberal people, both Arabs and Westerners, queasy. They fear that the Arab awakening might be hijacked by the sort of Islamists who reject a pluralist version of democracy, oppress women and fly the flag of jihad against Christians and Jews. They worry that the murderous militancy that has killed 30,000 over the past four years in Pakistan (see article) may emerge in the Arab world too.

Islam on the rise

In Libya the transitional national council, slowly gaining recognition as a government-in-waiting, is a medley of secular liberals and Islamists. There are Libyan jihadist veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan among the rebels, though not in big numbers. An American general detects “flickers of al-Qaeda” among the colonel’s foes being helped by the West, raising uncomfortable memories of America’s alliance against the Russians with Afghanistan’s mujahideen, before they turned into al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which has branches all over the region, is the best-run opposition movement in Libya and Egypt; and last week’s constitutional referendum in Egypt went the way the Brothers wanted it to. Its members have long suffered at the hands both of Western-backed regimes, such as Hosni Mubarak’s in Egypt, and of anti-Western secular ones, such as Bashar Assad’s, now under extreme pressure in Syria. In Tunisia, too, the Islamists, previously banned, look well-placed. On the whole, these Brothers have gone out of their way to reassure the West that they nowadays disavow violence in pursuit of their aims, believe in multiparty democracy, endorse women’s rights and would refrain from imposing sharia law wholesale, were they to form a government in any of the countries where they are re-emerging as legal parties.

All the same, the Brothers make many people nervous. At one extreme of the wide ideological spectrum that they cover they are not so far from the jihadists, many of whom started off in the Brothers’ ranks. The leading Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, an offshoot of the Brotherhood, has been delighted by Mr Mubarak’s fall. It has in the past carried out suicide-bombings in the heart of Israel and refuses to recognise the Jewish state. Some liberals say that more extreme Islamist groups are riding on the more moderate Brothers’ coat-tails. In the flush of prisoner releases, hundreds if not thousands of Egyptian jihadists are once again at large.

Don’t despair
Use the interactive "Graphics Carousel" to browse our coverage of unrest in the Middle East

Islam is bound to play a larger role in government in the Arab world than elsewhere. Most Muslims do not believe in the separation of religion and state, as America and France do, and have not lost their enthusiasm for religion, as many “Christian Democrats” in Europe have. Muslim democracies such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia all have big Islamic parties.

But Islamic does not mean Islamist. Al-Qaeda in the past few years has lost ground in Arab hearts and minds. The jihadists are a small minority, widely hated by their milder co-religionists, not least for giving Islam a bad name across the world. Ideological battles between moderates and extremists within Islam are just as fierce as the animosity pitting Muslim, Christian and Jewish fundamentalists against each other. Younger Arabs, largely responsible for the upheavals, are better connected and attuned to the rest of the modern world than their conservative predecessors were.

Moreover, some Muslim countries are on the road to democracy, or already there. Some are doing well. Among Arab countries, Lebanon, with its profusion of religions and sects, has long had a democracy of a kind, albeit hobbled by sectarian quotas and an armed militia, Hizbullah. Iraq has at least elected a genuine multiparty parliament.

Outside the Arab world, in Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, Islam and democracy are cohabiting fairly comfortably. Many devout Muslims among the Arab protesters, including members of the Brotherhood, cite Turkey as a model. Its mildly Islamist government is showing worrying signs of authoritarianism these days, but it serves its people far better than the generals did. Iran, which once held so much sway, is not talked of as a model: theocracy does not appeal to the youngsters on the Arab street.

Still, Muslim countries may well make choices with which the West is not comfortable. But those inclined to worry should remember that no alternative would serve their interests, let alone the Arabs’, in the long run. The old autocrats deprived their people of freedom and opportunity; and the stability they promised, it is now clear, could not endure. Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s remains a horrible warning against depriving Islamists of power they have rightfully won.

Islam will never find an accommodation with the modern democratic world until Muslims can take responsibility for their own lives. Millions more have a chance of doing just that. It is a reason more for celebration than for worry.