“Tintin in the Congo” (1930, 1946) is a comic book by Hergé in which Tintin, a young Belgian reporter, and his dog Snowy go to the Belgian Congo in Africa and have many adventures. It first came out in 1930 and was revised in 1946. I read it in English translation.
In 2011 the English translation had these words in the foreword:
“In his portrayal of the Belgian Congo, the young Hergé reflects the colonial attitudes of the time. He himself admitted that he depicted the African people according to the bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period – an interpretation some of today’s reader may find offensive. The same could be said of his treatment of big-game hunting.”
Only some? And maybe not even them?
African people according to Hergé:
- Appearance: jet black skin, big eyes, big pink lips – not unlike a golliwog doll or a minstrel entertainer in blackface.
- Dress: half naked mostly, some wear bits of Western clothing, like a tie without a shirt.
- Intelligence: about that of a five-year-old, except for the witch doctor, who wears a pot on his head.
- Language: Broken French, even to each other (assuming the English translation tracks the French).
- Religion: witch doctors, fetishes, juju, Christian missionaries, worship of white people.
- Military power: spears, shields, bows and arrows. Whites commonly have guns, blacks almost never do except those working for whites.
- Race relations: some blacks hate whites, most seem to worship them, sometimes almost as gods.
Worship of whites: At one point a black woman says of Tintin:
“White man very great! … Has good spirits … Him cure my husband! … White mister is big juju man!”
In the last scene of the book you can see a black person worshipping the images of Tintin and Snowy.
Christian missionaries: There are missionaries there, who run schools and hospitals. Snowy remarks:
“Missionaries are the tops!”
That bit is important because, as the book later informs us, Belgium is apparently getting rich off of Africa’s diamonds. Trading mineral wealth for “civilization” had been seen as a fair deal by many white people since the days of Columbus.
Labour: In one scene Tintin accuses them of being lazy – and then stands there while they do all the hard work! One of his first acts after arriving in Africa was to hire a “boy” – a black servant.
These stereotypes matter. First because the Belgians ruled the Congo and did so badly, costing at least ten million people their lives. Second, Tintin is read in many countries, not just Belgium. He is translated into 38 languages, even Tibetan!
Africa: And, of course, there can be no story of Africa without the animals, like monkeys, lions, giraffes and elephants. Hergé throws in crocodiles, buffaloes, antelopes, leopards, a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus.
As to big-game hunting, Tintin kills an elephant, not in self-defence mind you, and takes just the tusks. Apart from Snowy, Tintin is quick to kill animals with his gun. He does not, however, kill any black people even though they try to kill him.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- Not in H.G. Wells:
- golliwog
- minstrel show
- blackface
- white paternalism
- antelope
- juju
- Belgian Congo
- Deloria: Conquest Masquerading as Law – more on that “fair deal”
546
“First because the Belgians ruled the Congo and did so badly, costing at least ten million people their lives.”
@Abagond: The ten million are widely disputed. But that’s irrelevant. What is relevant that when those atrocities occured Congo was NOT ruled by the Belgians. It was the personal possession of King Leopold II and was called “État indépendant du Congo”. His “Force Publique” was comprised of white officers while the soldiers were black. This “Force Publique” was responsible for unspeakable atrocities.
This caused international scandal and under international pressure Belgium took over the Congo from King Leopold.
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Hum…
Abagond, I think you wanted to say:
Language: Broken French, even to each other.
Remember, it was a Belgian colony not a British colony!
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@ munubantu
Right, of course. Thank you.
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I’m really at a loss what to do with these older works which are classics but ridiculously racist and sexist. I don’t particulary care for Tintin, but I adore Asterix and that is pretty racist too. Should they be read by children? Does an introduction comment like the one qouted really help?
For written stories changes to the text can be made, but pictures? Also these changes have their own problems.
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Leopold The Second and his exploitation of the Africans in the Congo and his cruelty of subjecting them to oppression by making them harvest rubber, and cutting their limbs off when they didn’t make the quota. This TinTin is racist and full of ugly stereotypes about Africans. This is just revolting.
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““In his portrayal of the Belgian Congo, the young Hergé reflects the colonial attitudes of the time. He himself admitted that he depicted the African people according to the bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period – an interpretation some of today’s reader may find offensive. The same could be said of his treatment of big-game hunting.”
Only some? And maybe not even them?”
Yep, only some, mind you the interpretation is Hergé’s depiction of those views, not those views themselves. If you don’t like it, you should not be reading it, Belgium seems to be a free country of sorts, with lots and lots of comics, sharing a comics culture with the country to the north with a more mature look on the medium, while in the south there is an even bigger market with a more sophisticated view of the art.
Really, though Hergé has been quite influential, nowadays it seems quite bland, I mean a young hero goes to a country full of half-nude folks, without a love interest development? What the heck is wrong with him?
On the other hand, and that is a much more serious issue, those depictions still strongly influence the way black people are drawn in modern Belgian comics. The Dutch comic industry retired that style in the 70’s, which is not to say that a Dutch artist will never use it, but not without being aware he or she is going retro. Connvincing people that some racist expression is “so last century” works much better than shocking, racist, politically incorrect… at least with artists, the brave, the Dutch, free spirits, New Yorkers, scientists…
But the Belgians…
To be honest, when I saw THIS, it reminded me of Ollie the Ox from Ox tales, if only he had been wearing wooden shoes, that could have been a defense… (Ollie is a Dutch ceation, with the Dutch name Boes, which can be read as the plural of cow sounds, but also as multiple expressions of disapproval).
(https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/sites/default/files/styles/landscape_2/public/content/images/2017/06/26/UitgeverijStandaard.jpg?itok=Rvxvv67m)
(there is a bit of full body black mermaid nudity in it too, technically a goddess)
Writer Dalila Hermans described the depiction as half an ape, (which is an understatement), and just animal-like, but she also pointed out this Tintin can be placed in its time, and is thus not really an issue, compared to the new stuff.
So, yes, only a very few, the same ones who find art predating their country by centuries offensive. What people should and do find offensive is that those depicted attitudes are still with us…
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A Tibetan translation? Does it really exist?
And what might seem to be so offensive about a big game hunting?
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As racist as TinTin, Asterix and Obelix, and other french language comic books were, it never stopped me, my relatives and friends from enjoying them. We had great fun speaking in broken french. Racism isn’t as crippling when you are surrounded by black people who range from foolish to genius.
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@gro jo
How can Asterix & Obelix be racist? It’s about Celts and Romans, both nations were Caucasian, with no presence of Nubian or other Black people down there at the North in Gallia at that time. I really don’t understand that baitsuo stuff like making anecdotic narrations about ‘Black Sir Arthur’s knights’ or ‘Black Chinese taoists’ just because of false understanding of equality and justice. There should be a borderline between a racist belief and a true fact.
I understand, of course, that a cultural context defines what is racist / offensive and what is not. E. g. a joke made by a police officer escorting enchained Black illegal immigrants to a court and comparing himself to a slave driver would be most likely regarded as an offence in the USA and just as a joke in Russia (because we never had a race-based slavery background, but a different form of slavery instead).
To me, stating these comics being racist is like calling ‘rasist’ Amos Tutuola’s books because they don’t feature any character of Caucasian race, or calling a ‘racist’ any talk show anchored by a Black celebrity, with Black guests and targeted for Black audience.
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“@gro jo
How can Asterix & Obelix be racist? It’s about Celts and Romans, both nations were Caucasian, with no presence of Nubian or other Black people down there at the North in Gallia at that time.”
Is this a Russian joke or are you as ignorant as your question makes you sound? If you are a true fan, you’d know that they even ended up in North America before Columbus! Plenty racist depictions of Africans in these comic books. You may not think so, just as I don’t think that Russian women being depicted as ugly is “anti-Russian”, as far as I’m concerned, but that only speaks to our mutual ethnic blind spots!
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@gro jo
Are there really any Africans? NA Africans in the pre-Columbian time in comic books, seriously?
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@ A Russian Nagpo
How telling that you didn’t address whether the black people in chains would think it was a racist slur or just a joke. Do you think their feelings would be different if it happened in Russia instead of the U.S.?
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Gro Jo said:
“If you are a true fan, you’d know that they even ended up in North America before Columbus! Plenty racist depictions of Africans in these comic books.”
I’ll add that there are also racist stereotypes of Native Americans in the comics about Asterix’s adventures in North America.
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@ Kartoffel
That’s a good question. I just ran across an essay discussing this. The author gives examples of changes that have been made to books by authors or publishers. Mostly he talks about the conundrum to parents concerning how to handle racism in children’s books and movies.
I don’t agree with everything he says in the essay (for starters, I think he adheres too much to the idea that not discussing racism will shield his children from it and is too cowardly about addressing their questions). But it seems a good starting point for grappling with this issue.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-to-read-a-racist-book-to-your-kids.html
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And this is a good response to the NYT essay:
http://themovingcastle.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-not-to-read-racist-books-to-your.html?m=1
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And this is the Chabon essay on reading “Huckleberry Finn” to his kids, which is referenced in both links above:
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/01/the-unspeakable-in-its-jammies/69369/
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@Solitaire
How telling that you didn’t address whether the black people in chains would think it was a racist slur or just a joke. Do you think their feelings would be different if it happened in Russia instead of the U.S.?
Their feelings would be the same as those of any other prisoners. Otherwise they would be treated either as bad as the white prisoners, or a little bit better (becsause of being foreigners). That’s different from racism.
’ll add that there are also racist stereotypes of Native Americans in the comics about Asterix’s adventures in North America.
Still no African Americans in America before, say, 1500s, as gro jo tried to put it. Not even in comic books (where, to the best of my knowledge, the Celts are passing for Native Americans).
Is this what you call ‘a racist stereotype’? Or the way of picturing the Indians (any example?)? But that’s a comic book, where the things are supposed to be oversimplified by default (just like any baizuo point of view). By the way, do you find ‘baizuo’ being a derogatory / insultive term? I only use it to sum up certain oversimplified views.
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@Solitaire
http://themovingcastle.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-not-to-read-racist-books-to-your.html?m=1
Ah, the gorilla. The. Gorilla. Are you all guys serious? I wouldn’t even bother should it be a brown bear among Slavic troops of Romans. Sometimes the objects are just the objects, without any second meaning hidden.
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From the first page of Asterix the Gladiator:
There is also a black crew member drawn in the same golliwog style.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“Their feelings would be the same as those of any other prisoners”
Really? You think white prisoners would have the exact same feelings about a slave joke?
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Native Americans’ depiction in Asterix:
Stereotypically derogatory in appearance, mishmash of inaccurate apparel and hairstyles for the region, speaking funny-sounding gibberish.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Read it again more carefully. There is no gorilla. The child thought the black crew member was a gorilla because he is drawn in the golliwog style, which makes black people look animalistic.
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@Solitaire
”Really? You think white prisoners would have the exact same feelings about a slave joke?”
Well, maybe they would have worse feelings, because actual Russian slaves were also Whites.
As for the picture, it shows Nubian slaves, but they could be Phrygian or Capaddocian or Gauls.
The picture of the pirate crew member is at least ambiguous and, in my opinion, doesn’t count as racism.
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Stereotypically derogatory in appearance, mishmash of inaccurate apparel and hairstyles for the region…
Same for the Gauls. Or the Vikings.
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The black crew member in Asterix:
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“A Russian Nagpo
@gro jo
Are there really any Africans? NA Africans in the pre-Columbian time in comic books, seriously?”
Dude, quit embarrassing yourself with this shocking demonstration of how tenuous your grasp of English is, or is this more of what passes for wit in Russia?
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“…speaking funny-sounding gibberish”. That gibberish is what a turkey sounds like to the French, being an ‘expert’ on Asterix and Obelix you ought to know that!
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“Same for the Gauls. Or the Vikings.”
No, the degree to which it’s taken with the Native American characters is much worse. It would be as if Russian characters were represented as wearing a mix of English, Italian, and Swiss traditional outfits while drinking tea, floating in gondolas, yodeling, living in Dutch windmills, and holding Spanish-style bullfights.
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Dude, quit embarrassing yourself with this shocking demonstration of how tenuous your grasp of English is, or is this more of what passes for wit in Russia?
It’s your logic (if there is any) I don’t understand, not English. And, generally speaking, the ad hominem argumentation you are trying to put here is, mildly speaking, quite an embarrasment for yourself,
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@gro jo
…being an ‘expert’ on Asterix and Obelix you ought to know that!
– I never stated I am 😀
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@ Gro Jo
Then I stand corrected.
However, if memory serves, in the English translation the Native characters’ vocabulary consisted of little more than “ugh” and “how”. Was it any different in the French?
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@Solitaire:
How do you attach the pictures here?
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@ A Russian Nagpo
I just copied and pasted the URL for the image. Sometimes that appears on Abagond’s blog as a link, sometimes as the image itself.
I don’t know how to ensure the image appears, although I suppose there’s code for it.
By the way, Gro Jo’s snipe about being an expert was aimed at me, not you.
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@Solitaire
I’m a multicorporal transpersonal, so the target is not quite important.
https://t0.rbxcdn.com/1890da50b0306a1f9b076fa46bec40e4
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Gro jo’s snipe was aimed at A Russian Nagpo, but I see you were the one who wrote the comment.
“A Russian Nagpo
@gro jo
…being an ‘expert’ on Asterix and Obelix you ought to know that!
– I never stated I am”
That’s apparent. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
“It’s your logic (if there is any) I don’t understand, not English. And, generally speaking, the ad hominem argumentation you are trying to put here is, mildly speaking, quite an embarrasment for yourself,”
Oh dear, I see that I have to break it down for you, how tedious.
I wrote: “Plenty racist depictions of Africans in these comic books.” You ‘brilliantly’ replied: “@gro jo
Are there really any Africans? NA Africans in the pre-Columbian time in comic books, seriously?…Still no African Americans in America before, say, 1500s, as gro jo tried to put it.”
The gro jo you speak of lives in your imagination because you failed to grasp the fact that the exclamation mark placed before “Plenty racist depictions of Africans in these comic books.” indicated that two thoughts were being expressed. The “they” in the following sentence referred to Asterix and Obelix, not to pre-Columbian blacks. “If you are a true fan, you’d know that they even ended up in North America before Columbus! ” The “Plenty racist depictions of Africans in these comic books.” referred to other books in the series that depicted Africans such as Baba the pirate. Next time you wish to comment on something I write, have the decency to know what you’re talking about and read what I wrote with care, it will save you the embarrassment of having things explained to you as if you were a two year old.
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@gro jo
You are funny 😀 , And you may not thank me for helping you somehow structure the mess you use instead an intelligible English. 😀
Still, because you don’t know what I am talking about you are not here to judge if I know what I am talking about or not. As simple as that.
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@ Gro Jo
Then I stand corrected again. 🤐
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@ Kartoffel
I think that changes to the original works (texts/pictures) should not be made. In no way!
The best approach would be to have an introductory comment or chapter explaining the context where/when the work was created or is referring to, etc.
My take on issues like the ones raised by this thread were developed in another thread, “Black Pete”. See one of my comments there:
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“As for the picture, it shows Nubian slaves, but they could be Phrygian or Capaddocian or Gauls.”
The point is not that black people are shown as slaves so much as it is the way they are drawn. The Gauls, slaves or free, are not drawn to look inhuman.
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@Solitaire
Are they? What about the Indians? They look quite human, in my opinion.
Not sure if the blacks look really dehumanised in these pictures.
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“A Russian Nagpo
@gro jo
You are funny 😀 , And you may not thank me for helping you somehow structure the mess you use instead an intelligible English. 😀
Still, because you don’t know what I am talking about you are not here to judge if I know what I am talking about or not. As simple as that.”
Alright, run along now, I’ve wasted enough time educating you. I’ve no idea what the first sentence means, and no desire to figure it out.
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@gro jo
…our mutual ethnic blind spots!
*Again; there had been no race-based racism and/or slavery in Russia. Ever. Not even in the slavery times.
E. g. the Araps of the Highest Court were (usually but not obligatory) black-skinned persons with one of the highest service ranks possible (for details, see e. g. diaries of Nancy Garden Prince who spent most of her life together with herhusband at the courts of Alexander I and Nicolas I).
Alexander Pushkin was a third generation descendant of Abram Petrovich Gannibal who had been born in Ethiopia (or, according to Dieudonné Gnammankou’s research, a Kotoko from Logon sultanate, a state following the Sao civilisation) and later received an aristocratic title form the Imperial Court, having in his personal possessions some slave villages (of course, the villages were populated by the whites).
Etc., etc.*
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Uh-huh. Baba’s arms are hanging down past his knees like a gorilla’s, and you don’t see anything odd about that.
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I already know all this stuff about Pushkin. Russia became a language of high literature due to the genius of black African ancestry. I also know that African American entrepreneur, Frederick Bruce Thomas a/k/a Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas became very rich in Russia before the October revolution. https://blog.oup.com/2015/02/frederick-bruce-thomas-african-american-imperial-russia/
Our disagreement has nothing to do with any of these things. You misread what I wrote, and went on a diatribe about something you wanted to get off your chest. I explained to you the difference between what I was saying and what you thought I was saying. Let’s agree to drop the subject.
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This Dutch comic changed the way the black character was drawn from the golliwog caricature to a more realistic image.
Older style:
Newer style:
http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=urn:gvn:MVC01:NVPH-1919&size=large
See the difference?
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@gro jo
Russian literature is not just Pushkin, and Russian became a language of high literature due to a combination of causes and effects, which include much more than a language, or genetics, or anything else.
The rest of your previous post is ok for me.
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It’s interesting how this ‘colonialism for chldren’-topic was rendered in a Russian cartoon Three Bogatyrs on Distant Shores (2012), where the characters were sent to a tropical region by a group of conspirators (led by a witch).
The natives are pictured as uneducated, naive (they are surprised by a trick for children, don’t know how to make fire and worship the bogatyrs as half-deities whose coming was predicted in a prophecy, so they are actually literate), and they are opposed to a huge gorilla (an obvious reference to a King-Kong movie).
http://www.bigcinematv.com/403-tri-bogatyrya-na-dalnih-beregah-2012.html
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@Solitaire
…you don’t see anything odd about that.
Exactly, because there is a lot of pirate characters in a Russian cartoon based on Stevenson’s Treasure Island who have the similar appearance with Baba (short legs and overlong arms, stout torso and broad shoulders) and all of them are, surprisingly, whites 😀
BTW, there is not a single black character in this version of the Treasure Island.
https://www.karusel-tv.ru/media/suit/image_in_broadcast/media/image/2007/09/06/12746/ostrov.sokrovish.part1.avi.image6.png?v1481903501
PS: In the beginning of the cartoon there is a moment when Blind Pew shot with a canon ball or smth else dances a lezginka before fainting unconscious, but as much as I dislike anti-Muslim and anti-Chechen propaganda in Russia, I wouldn’t say that this is a ‘dehumanising Caucas nations’ or portraiting them as enemies.
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Pushkin is credited with turning Russian into great, world literature by most knowledgeable people across the political spectrum.
“Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (/ˈpʊʃkɪn/;[1] Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин, tr. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin; IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr sʲɪˈrɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn] (About this sound listen); 6 June [O.S. 26 May] 1799 – 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1837) was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era[2] who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet[3][4][5][6] and the founder of modern Russian literature.[7][8]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin
I tell it like it is. The rest of your previous post is ok by me.
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@ Solitaire
“I just copied and pasted the URL for the image. Sometimes that appears on Abagond’s blog as a link, sometimes as the image itself.
I don’t know how to ensure the image appears, although I suppose there’s code for it.”
I’ve found that the image file designation like .jpg, .png or .gif has to be the very last bit of code on the URL for the image to show on this site.
If there are other characters appended to the end of the image (a lot of newspapers do that for their own reasons) or even a question mark (?) after the image file designation, the image url will just show up as a text link.
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@Solitaire
See the difference?
Yeah, the racial trates are shown less distinctly*
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@Solitaire
The entire ‘golliwog effect’ can be explained by biology, not ‘racist culture’. I remember my first experience when seing an African person in the real life (and I was about five years old then).
In a single-race environment one’s own race would be considered as a ‘norm’, cf
the first Japanese pictures of Portuguese Europeans end later up to the members of the Black Ships crew led by commodore Perry (or the modern anime and manga characters who are usually very ‘white’).
An African Portuguese sailor
But usually ethnical jokes, wheather offensive or not, tend to low the tension down (as it is the case at least with one African country after a civil war).
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@ A Russian Nagpo
The older artwork gives the black character white eyebrows. Is that a racial trait found in young people of African descent?
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Also, his lips extend well into his cheeks and down to the point of his chin. Is this simply showing racial traits distinctly? Or is it gross exaggeration?
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Another example
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@ Afrofem
Thanks! You’re right, that’s exactly what happened in the last batch of four images I tried to post above.
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https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/black_ships_and_samurai/gallery/pages/30_044_PerryKawaraban.htm
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Well, look at that. The Japanese were able to draw African people (lower lefthand corner) more accurately than the European artists of Tintin, Asterix, etc. Fascinating.
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@Solitaire
You just haven’t seen the Japanese pictures of commador Perry’s crew. And as for this person, I doubt he is an African.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“And as for this person, I doubt he is an African.”
Why not?
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@nagpo are you a thelemite?
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@Solitaire
Because the other picture of the ‘Barbarians from the South’ show the persons with same tanned skin colour and because free African sailors seem to be an impossible thing during the slavery times, so they are most likely Arabians.
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@v8driver
No, I am not.
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Another Japanese picture of a European.
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@A Russian Nagpo
“free African sailors seem to be an impossible thing during the slavery time”
Why would it be impossible?
Have you never heard of the Moors of Portugal and Spain?
Look closely at the hair of the men depicted in the left of the painting you last posted. It appears to be tight close curls — African hair, not Arab.
Anyway, I don’t understand why you are introducing these Japanese paintings. Their depictions of non-Japanese people are nowhere as unrealistic as those of blacks in Tintin and Asterix. Nowhere does someone’s lips take up the entire lower half of their face. No one has white eyebrows.
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Here is an account of a black African who arrived in Japan with Europeans in the 1500s and became a samurai. Interesting how things that wouldn’t seem to be possible in slavery times actually did occur.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
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Well, they are culture-biased. A culture or growing up within environment composed of one’s own race only makes the idea of one’s own race be the only ‘norm’. The Japanese pictures of the Black Ships’ crew are a good example of that. Too long noses and too hairy faces of whites, or too broad lips and too small eyes of the blacks… whatever.
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https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/12935/archive/files/aa284f441289bbc986eb8fb52860cb77.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1502152935&Signature=F415zYjdrjwrtor1Hph9Yb%2BcBHw%3D
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@ A Russian Nagpo
So basically when black people today (like Abagond who wrote this post) object to this type of racially biased artwork, your response seems to be:
1) It doesn’t look racist to me.
2) Japanese people drew Europeans in a similar way.
3) It’s normal for a single-race culture to do this.
Is that a correct summary or have I missed something?
“A culture or growing up within environment composed of one’s own race only makes the idea of one’s own race be the only ‘norm’.”
This begs the question of why it still happens today. There are people of black African descent living all over Western Europe, yet this style of representation is still used by the French, the English, the Belgians, etc. Why has it been used in the USA for centuries when black people have been present from early colonial times and the nation was never compsed only of one race?
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This is how Japanese people were depicting themselves in the same time period:
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And another:
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One more:
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@nagpo why do you use a goetic sigil as your moniker for lack of a better term, so modest, a duke even.
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@Solitaire
Sorry, but the other Europeans’ mental faults are none of my business now. The rest of your summary of my points seems to be OK for me. My current culture is multiracial and non-racist (though it’s ethnocentric, but that differs). If people somwhere outside of my cultural milieu practice e.g. ritual mass killings or human sacrifice, or prefer to suicidally jump down from roof buildings on a regular basis, I am not the person to cure their mental deseases, nor to join their perverted company.
As for the rendering the pictures, you seem to miss the Japanese cultural code and the context. The whites are rendered either as comical characters or demons, while the Japanese pictures are drawn to make the impression of semi-godlike warrior spirits. In other words, the Japanese (even the Kabuki theater character playing a demon or an evil-doer) are spared from ‘losing one’s face’, while the Europeans are not.
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@v8driver
‘Cause it’s not my moniker and ’cause, in my opinion, it’s Gusion who needed to be tamed here and because I don’t remember any Arabic for it.
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“free African sailors seem to be an impossible thing during the slavery time”
Wrong.
In 1813 the US navy counted 15% of its personnel as black.
“The U.S. Army was soon established and accepted blacks; the U.S. Navy was created in 1798, accepting black sailors as it had during the revolution and continuing to do so throughout the nineteenth century.” http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/african-americans-military
“Around 1856 (Benjamin) Bradley built an engine that was capable of propelling the first sloop-of-war (a small warship carrying guns on one deck) at the rate of 16 knots an hour. His engine was the first ever created that was powerful enough to run a war ship. Bradley was unable to patent his invention under the United States law because he was a slave. He did however sell this engine and earn enough money to purchase his freedom. His date of death is unknown.
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/bradley-benjamin-1830
Bradley’s invention dates two years after Commodore Perry showed up in Japan. Black sailors had served in the US navy since 1798.
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@nagpo and your argument about xenophobia couched in ‘normism’ or perhaps cariacturization of people who look different falls flat once you interact with them on a peer basis. I don’t know, the gut reaction, of course, is to say ‘it was the times’ back then, but that follows the same trajectory.
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It’s very little context with a couple japanese paintings, deflective from belgian colonialism.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“Sorry, but the other Europeans’ mental faults are none of my business now.”
Then why have you been defending their artwork? You seem to have spent a lot of time and energy arguing that the Tintin et al. depictions aren’t racist.
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v8driver
and your argument about xenophobia couched in ‘normism’ or perhaps cariacturization of people who look different falls flat once you interact with them on a peer basis. I don’t know, the gut reaction, of course, is to say ‘it was the times’ back then, but that follows the same trajectory
Sorry, I don’t understand your message here.
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@Solitaire
First, it was rather an interpretation than a defence. Second, an artwork is an artwork. Third, when you see a hurtful object as a concept, or as a combination of cause and effect, it doesn’t hurt that much.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Ok, so since you said I summed this up correctly, let’s talk about #1. When a black person says this type of artwork is racist, your response is: “It doesn’t look racist to me.”
What makes you more qualified to determine that than Abagond?
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“Third, when you see a hurtful object as a concept, or as a combination of cause and effect, it doesn’t hurt that much.”
Mary Burrell did put it into context in her statement upthread:
One could easily argue that putting this artwork into context makes it hurt more. It adds insult to injury.
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@Solitaire
What makes you more qualified to determine that than Abagond?
The fact that I know about my own intentions, thoughts and perceptions (including those of any artwork) better than Abagond (with all my due respect), or you, or anybody else.
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@Solitaire
One could easily argue that putting this artwork into context makes it hurt more. It adds insult to injury.
A context is to be determined by the environment or by a culture. I think this is a good illustration of the difference (which I thought to be a stereotype, but so far our communicative scenario seems to follow the pattern).
The scene from a Russian 90’s cult film Brat (The Brother) is about a Russian guy named Danila Bagrov who occasionally became a killer and whent to the USA to help his brother. Meeting a compatriot Russian prostitute, the three prepair crawfishes they caught on an open fire where they are stalked by an African telling them this is a wrong type of food.
Danila (D) uses the Russian word similar to that what sounds like a derogatory term in English but, having the same origin, means somtheing more like ‘African’. The following dialogue between Danila and the prostitute would go in English like this:
The Prostitute (P): You shouldn’t have called him African.
D: Well, who is he, then?
P: He’s Afroamerican.
D: What’s the difference?
P: To them, this word is an insult.
D: But that’s how I was taught at school. China is populated by the Chinese nation, Germany, by Germans, Israel, by Jews, and Africa is populated by Africans.
I don’t find it racist or hurting not just because I am unaware of atrocities in the Belgian Kongo, but rather because there is no a racially insultive term or view for Blacks in my culture.
(There is also an interesting interpretation of this conflict scene by most of Russian audience, but that’s another story).
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hnujfB1Ras)
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@A Russian Nagpo
Fair enough. But why do you feel the need to express those opinions in a predominately black space?
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Or to put it another way, do you believe your thoughts and perception about the aforesaid artwork are more correct than the thoughts and perceptions of, for example, Abagond and Mary Burrell?
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“I don’t find it racist or hurting not just because I am unaware of atrocities in the Belgian Kongo, but rather because there is no a racially insultive term or view for Blacks in my culture.”
Who cares whether you find it racist or hurtful or insulting? You aren’t the target.
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“and Africa is populated by Africans.”
So I watched that clip and Africans is certainly a loose translation. Negroes or Blacks would be closer, wouldn’t it? The name refers to color, not the continent.
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“which I thought to be a stereotype, but so far our communicative scenario seems to follow the pattern).”
Well, you certainly seem to be insisting that everyone see through your Russian lens, or at least that they give you leeway because of your Russian lens.
But this isn’t a Russian site. It’s run by an African American. The lens here is predominately that of the African diaspora. For that matter, the Russians in that movie clip were in the U.S., and the one guy was defending his right to say things Americans find offensive. I guess it’s not only Americans who can be ugly and boorish when stepping outside their culture
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If Herge drew black people with the same level of realism that he drew white people, they would look something like this:
which is comparable to how he drew white people:
But instead we get the Uncanny Valley Freak Show:
They do not even look human. They look like clowns or like they are wearing masks. Herge was a skilled artist, so I have to wonder if he saw black people as fully human.
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@Solitaire
1) Fair enough. But why do you feel the need to express those opinions in a predominately black space?
2) do you believe your thoughts and perception about the aforesaid artwork are more correct than the thoughts and perceptions of, for example, Abagond and Mary Burrell?
3) Who cares whether you find it racist or hurtful or insulting? You aren’t the target.
4) So I watched that clip and Africans is certainly a loose translation. Negroes or Blacks would be closer, wouldn’t it? The name refers to color, not the continent.
5) Well, you certainly seem to be insisting that everyone see through your Russian lens, or at least that they give you leeway because of your Russian lens.
a) In short, because I like to exchange ideas and because I like to learn smth new
b) There is no such a thing as ‘right perception.
c) Neither is any of the people here (unless someone spent his or her former life in Belgian Kongo).
d) Wrong. There are some lately introduced derogatory terms for blacks in modern Russian, but none of them sounds like негр [negr]. So African is the most exact translation I can think of.
e) Wrong again. Not just because of wrong understanding, but also because I don’t identify myself with Russia and/or Russian culture in the first place
I am flattered, of course, by the importance of my commentaries you suggest by your strange reaction to them.But I am just telling about possibilities of alternatives views on the same things (there is no such a thing as ‘right perception’, remember?).
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I believe this Herge was just a racist and didn’t see Africans/black people as human beings that’s why he depicted them in his work this way.
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During WWII Hergé wrote for Le Soir under censorship of the national-socialists. During this period he wrote “The Shooting Star”, not only an anti-american but also antisemitic album.
After the war he was arrested for collaboration but spent only one night in jail.
Since he was francophone he received much less harassment than Flemish collaborators.
Brussels was originally Flemish but the Frenchspeaking higher classes wanted Belgium to be unilingually French en wanted to eradicate anything Flemish. To this day Le Soir is vehemently anti-Flemish.
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@ teddy1975
Sorry for the delay in getting your comment up. I got hit by a ton of spam and your comment got caught in the spam filter.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“c) Neither is any of the people here (unless someone spent his or her former life in Belgian Kongo).”
Is that your perception? That these images do not have any impact on black people today?
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“there is no such a thing as ‘right perception’, remember?)”
Well, that’s just your perception, isn’t it? So it, too, is not a right perception. I think there are some Star Trek episodes along these lines. 😁
BTW, then just replace “Russian lens” with “whatever group it is you identify with lens.” Please excuse my confusion, since you use “Russian” in your moniker, linked to and translated a clip from a Russian film, keep bringing up Russian attitudes towards slavery and black people, etc.
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@ A Russian nagpo
So are you saying that “Tintin in the Congo” is not racist because Herge did not mean it to be racist?
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@abagond
As a cause for an ultimate effect, an intention is of course important, but what we would call ‘a personal mindmap’ also matters. E. g. if I occasionally and without any intention hurt someone, this doesn’t mean a person is not hurt just because ‘I didn’t mean it’. The effect, however, would not be entirely the same as with a deliberately caused trauma.
I’m saying that most of the commentors here perceive ‘Tintin in the Congo’ as a racist work and I don’t, both types of perception are caused by our personal mindmaps on interracial relations multiplied by a collective ‘tacit knowledge’ (which, again, would be different for each person in this thread). Hence, ‘there is no such a thing as ‘right perception’. A perception of an object as a disgusting, pleasant or neutral doesn’t make it disgusting, pleasant or neutral per se, only in a relation towards the object felt.
If here were persons with a third or fourth types of personal track on interracial relations, we’d have a third or fourth types of perception, etc., like a) racist; b) non-racist; c) both-racist-and-non-racist; d) neither racist, nor non-racist.
Hence, there is no such a thing as ‘right perception’.
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@Solitaire
…keep bringing up Russian attitudes towards slavery and black people, etc.
I doubt if anybody here would like any American attitude towards slavery and black people should I bring it here along 😀
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Another Aya in Yop City fan I see……
I don’t see any of this as racist. But then again, as a black Caribbean, American race relations seem like one of those old Star Trek episodes that I read about.
I read the comic. It was pathetic. Not because of how Herge sees black people, but because of how he wants and thinks he is seen by black people. They cannot see black people as humans, because they do not see themselves as human – but for different reasons.
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“A perception of an object as a disgusting, pleasant or neutral doesn’t make it disgusting, pleasant or neutral per se, only in a relation towards the object felt.”
Nothing like using abstract philosophical reasoning to dismiss the lived experiences and valid opinions of POC. This is just another way of saying “anything but racism” and thereby avoid having to put oneself into another’s shoes and grapple with unpleasant realities.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“I doubt if anybody here would like any American attitude towards slavery and black people should I bring it here along”
Why the sudden coyness?
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@Solitaire
1) Nothing like using abstract philosophical reasoning to dismiss the lived experiences and valid opinions of POC. This is just another way of saying “anything but racism” and thereby avoid having to put oneself into another’s shoes and grapple with unpleasant realities.
2) Why the sudden coyness?
1) Nothing like abusing logical thinking to impose your mind matrix on alternative life versions. If I hadn’t created a cause to experience an effect of a certain type of a suffering for a life, why should I accompany another person in his or her diatribes or lamentations? Just for a sake of some perversed understanding of humanity and solidarity?
You know, in my country you don’t always have to be Black to be treated by police like a Black can be treated in yours.
2) Why coyness? If you want to be accepted by a group, you have to find a middle point between their interests and yours. The word ‘sudden’ suggests that your mind pattern for my speech behaviour differs from my actual intentions, which, in turn, proves that you don’t understand it thoroughly. Sorry, but this is the best English I could offer 😀
Here’s another illustration on interracial communicative relativity (from 34:02 to 40:40, especially from 39:52 to 40:40).
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru6_MMMEc4M)
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@ A Russian Nagpo
“Just for a sake of some perversed understanding of humanity and solidarity?”
Humanity and solidarity are perverse?!? Please elucidate!
“You know, in my country you don’t always have to be Black to be treated by police like a Black can be treated in yours.”
Actually, that’s true in the U.S. as well. So what’s your point? How does that have anything to do with artwork and comics?
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@Solitaire
Humanity and solidarity are perverse?!? Please elucidate!
I think your feeling is based on wrong understanding. Humanity doesn’t always mean solidarity. Perversed humanity, as is the case with most baizuos, doesn’t always mean compassion. Solidarity, perverted or not, doesn’t necessarily mean any form of humanity, perverted or not, etc.
In my mind, it is more important to be compassionate than being humanistic or sharing solidarity with a person who suffers any kind of a physical or emotional pain. E. g. feeling a compassion for a beggar doesn’t mean I should become a beggar myself. Moreover; becoming a beggar myself, I could hardly help any beggar at all.
As for the second part of your question, I sea the whole thread here as informative source about how people of different post-empire or post-colonial (or neo-colonial) states tend to picture the Other in their popular visual narration. So this blog and this thread are about bigger issues than just artworks or comics.
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@ ARN
“I think your feeling is based on wrong understanding.”
Now, now. You’re contradicting yourself. If there’s no such thing as a right perception, neither can there be a wrong one.
“In my mind, it is more important to be compassionate than being humanistic or sharing solidarity with a person who suffers any kind of a physical or emotional pain. E. g. feeling a compassion for a beggar doesn’t mean I should become a beggar myself. Moreover; becoming a beggar myself, I could hardly help any beggar at all.”
Since when does sharing solidarity mean you have to become something different than what you are? That’s just silly.
If you were at all compassionate, you would stop whitesplaining on this thread. That’s all it would take.
You don’t even know enough about these artists to have an informed opinion. You originally thought the reason Gro Jo said the Asterix comics were racist was because they didn’t include any black people and went off on a diatribe about ahistorical representations. You kept insisting there were no black characters in Asterix until finally given visual evidence. You made a stupid mistake about there being a gorilla in Asterix. You didn’t know the context of Tintin vis-a-vis the atrocities of Belgian-ruled Congo, and when informed of it you dismissed it as unimportant to anyone living today. But your ignorance hasn’t stopped you from whitesplaining right and left.
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@ Solitaire
Well said!
ARN has been an interesting study in Whitesplaining, gaslighting and deflecting.
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@Solitaire.
Understanding is not perception, so there is no contradiction. Because the following insults you and Afrofem write about me are based on your wrong understanding (not on erroneous perception, mind you, but on erroneous understanding, as well as on your inability to distinguish a sporadic picturing from a regular picturing), I feel no need or intention to further communicate with anyone of you two on this blog.
Regards,
A.
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@ ARN
Where did I insult you? I provided my assessment of your behavior on this thread, backed with examples. If you think my assessment is wrong, you are free to explain why.
Now if I said you were a crybaby and a coward running away with his tail between his legs because he got his little feelings hurt, that would be an insult.
See the difference?
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@nagpo i will rephrase that in a minute, there, then. Damn words cannot keep up with my thoughts.
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So it was a wrong sigil then…
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I remember that Tintin had an animated series that came on HBO which was moved to Nickelodeon. I think the series was produced by a French-Canadian animated studio. I loved the cartoon, but was ignorant of the comics. I don’t know when or how, but I found out more about the character and the comics and discovered the volume about the Congo. Needless to say, I was a shocked, but not entirely surprised.
White people everywhere have this unanimous concept on how to portray black people to support white supremacy and European colonialism.
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@abagond
First I thought that Uncanny Valley was a reference to another pop culture work, but then I wikied it.
The phenomenon explains why you think that being a white racist excludes interest in women of other races, and this belief of yours proves you are not a racist, either.
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@gro jo
Black sailors had served in the US navy since 1798.
Again, I wikied the Portuguese sailors in Japan in 1500s and 1595 (as long as wikipedia is still legal in Russia) and interesting facts there were:
‘After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[6][7] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571[8][9]
Japanese slave women were sold as concubines to black African crewmembers, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, as mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[10] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where some of them not only ended up being enslaved to Portuguese, but as slaves to other slaves, with the Portuguese owning Malay and African slaves, who in turn owned Japanese slaves of their own.[11][12]’
So because the state of black slaves varied from a household to a houshold, and because at some periods and in some place the state of Black slaves was better as compared to that of the Japanese or Korean ones, it was quite possible for an African to be a ‘relatively free slave sailor’.
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“So because the state of black slaves varied from a household to a houshold, and because at some periods and in some place the state of Black slaves was better as compared to that of the Japanese or Korean ones, it was quite possible for an African to be a ‘relatively free slave sailor’.”
You’re funny. The kind of slavery practiced in the USA makes your ‘relatively free slave sailor’ an impossibility. You seem to confuse black and slave as synonyms, they are not. The black population of the Americas always included people who were free.
Benjamin Bradley purchased his freedom by inventing a steam engine capable of powering a “…sloop-of-war (a small warship carrying guns on one deck) at the rate of 16 knots an hour.” He worked as a slave hired out by his master to the navy prior to that event, he wasn’t a ‘relatively free slave sailor’.
What’s a Nagpo?
It wasn’t only in Russia that blacks occupied prominent places. You might want to read or reread the post on Malik Ambar. https://abagond.wordpress.com/?s=malik+ambar
Admiral Yakut Khan and Janjira State.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janjira_State
Your argument regarding the depiction of blacks by Hergé is refuted by Indian depictions of African nobles in various Indian courts. Take a look at Ikhlas Khan
and tell me what he has in common it Hergé’s nonsense.
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“it Hergé’s nonsense.” should be “with Hergé’s nonsense.”
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@gro jo
Now seems you are addessing an imaginary Russian Nagpo in your head. Did I say anything about the USA slavery? Or ‘being black means to be a slave’?
I’ve repeated several times here that there was no race-based slavery in Russia, which means that there is no reason for me thinking of Blacks as of people inferior to Whites.
My comment was about the Portuguese slavery, where the black slaves also had Japanese or Korean slaves in their possession and, supposedly, could in some circumstances have ‘a state of a relatively free slave slailor’ even having some slaves of their own.
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This links to Google Books, which will not let me copy and paste. But according to this source (A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441-1555 by A. Saunders) there were free blacks in Portugal during the 1500s, including some who went to sea on the trade routes.
https://books.google.com/books?id=g0TCPWGGVqgC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=free+blacks+portugal&source=bl&ots=C4ACeM4zAX&sig=gtIbOMciKUtbfGWvWKSQ5nKXypI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTg8uOs8zVAhUDxYMKHcTcCmsQ6AEIIjAD#v=onepage&q=free%20blacks%20portugal&f=false
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https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21572175-new-show-asks-why-16th-century-european-artists-were-fascinated-africans-hue-were
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From what I’m seeing, an African person on a Portuguese trading voyage to Japan during the 1500s could have been a slave or a freedman, a sailor or a merchant.
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“Now seems you are addessing an imaginary Russian Nagpo in your head. Did I say anything about the USA slavery? Or ‘being black means to be a slave’?”
You’re right, I did misread you. Since you started your comment with my statement I thought you were making a point that pertained to it. I now see that what followed was disconnected to it.
So, what’s a Nagpo?
I see that you haven’t tried to maintain the absurd claim that Hergé’s nonsense is, somehow, a legitimate depiction of Africans. Good.
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@gro jo
The word ‘Nagpo’ has several meanings in Tibetan language, the primary of it is ‘black [man]’.
The word is a part of names of such protection deities as universally known Nagpo Chenpa (The Great Black One aka Mahakala) and less known Damchen mGarba’i Nagpo, The Oathbound Blacksmith.
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Another article on Renaissance depictions of people of African descent, with images.
http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/africans-in-the-renaissance.html
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If the golliwog style can be explained by lack of exposure to Africans, then why in 1500s Europe do we see this:
…but in the 20th century, after hundreds of years of contact and diaspora, we see this?
Even if Hergé had never seen a black person in real life, he had access to photographs that he could have used to depict the characters more accurately and respectfully.
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(https://udso-a.akamaihd.net/1153191510001/1153191510001_2255581690001_20130326-africans-renaissance.mp4)
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42038801
“Rare Tintin art fetches $500,000 at Paris auction”
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