Venus Hottentot, Josephine Baker, now Beyonce

Posted April 19th, 2011 by Wandia Njoya

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• 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?

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