The Bolshoi Ballet (1776- ) in Moscow is one of the oldest and most famous ballet companies in all the world – and they have been doing blackface since at least 1877 in their performances of “La Bayadère”, a classic French-Austrian ballet about India. Feel the high culture!
Vladimir Urin, the director of the Bolshoi Theatre:
“The ballet ‘La Bayadère’ has been performed thousands of times in this production in Russia and abroad, and the Bolshoi Theatre will not get involved in such a discussion [about blackface] …
“Finding some sort of deep insults in this is simply ridiculous … No-one has ever complained to us or saw… an act of disrespect.”
Svetlana Zakharova, a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi:
“There is nothing strange here, it’s absolutely normal for us… this is art.”
White art. She left out the word “White”.
Misty Copeland, the top Black American ballerina in the world, has a different take:
“I get that this is a VERY sensitive subject in the ballet world. But until we can call people out and make people uncomfortable, change can’t happen.”
“It is painful to think about the fact that many prominent ballet companies refuse to hire dancers of colour and instead opt to use blackface.”
As everyone knows, Black people can’t dance. They have no natural rhythm. Or something. That is why it took till 2015 for the American Ballet Theatre to have its first Black American female principal dancer – Copeland herself. It was such a new experience for them that they forgot to give her “The Black Token Handbook”. Fifth Edition, 2009. So she never read Chapter 2, “The Happy Negro”. Or Chapter 3: “Be Seen, Not Heard”. So there she is running wild on Instagram saying things about White people that lack “nuance”.
In the US, ballet is very much the preserve of rich White people. Some of the very same people who seem to think that only working-class Whites are racist. Because racism comes from a lack of education and proper upbringing. Sneer, sneer. And yet for 142 years they never called this stuff out, going on right in front of their eyes.
Wow, okay.
The New York Times, their newspaper of record, said in 2007 of the Bolshoi’s “La Bayadère”:
“I’d like to think that the old tradition of whites in blackface might work again if it was well done (e.g. white actors as Othello, now exceptionally rare in theater), but this looked too ludicrous to be even grotesque.”
Ah yes, the old traditions! Blackface just needs to be done better.
And “La Bayadère” is hardly the only ballet that dehumanizes people of colour.
Meanwhile silly old me assumed that the Bolshoi would never dare do anything like this, not this side of 1968, not if they wanted to perform in the US and have any sort of international respectability. Wow, do I feel like a fool. I should have known better.
People tell me I see racism in everything. But time and again I find myself assuming Whites are less racist than they are.
/rant off
– Abagond, 2019.
Sources: mainly the BBC and Ballet Conrad (33-minute video).
See also:
- blackface
- why blackface is offensive
- Misty Copeland
- Black Token Handbook
- Orientalism – Western ideas about “the East'”
- The White Default
- “You see racism in everything”
- Not reporting this story:
- The New York Times
- The Root – the White Liberal press is not reporting it, so nothing to see here
559
Abagond 
The only thing I liked about ballet was watching the men in tights.
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[…] And here is another entitled American who thinks the whole world should live according to the mandates of his fussy obsessions. […]
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Yeah, at this point even I’ve stopped giving White people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to racist activity. I will always be disappointed.
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Not surprised about this. I still love the ballet though.
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“Finding some sort of deep insults in this is simply ridiculous … No-one has ever complained to us or saw… an act of disrespect.” – Ladimir Urin, the director of the Bolshoi Theatre:
Finding some sort of deep psychosis in this (blackface) is simply ridiculous. No one has ever complained to us or saw … an act of self-disrespect by displaying or mocking our own collective mental health disorder as a group.
These people do the darndest things in an attempt to uphold the tentacles of the already false presuppositions of white supremacy due merely to skin color. Sigh ….
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I followed the pingback above to “Clarissa’s Blog” and from there to a couple other blogs where Russians are writing about this issue. It’s interesting that they are all putting it in terms of entitled Americans trying to force the rest of the world to conform to their whims. One actually wrote: “Misty [Copeland] happens to be an African-American. With emphasis on the word ‘American’, who are a narcissistic, self-centered people, regardless of race or ethnicity.” Seems to be another twist on colorblind racism, with the added benefit of making themselves as non-Americans the victims of Americans.
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I also found out that a London-based choreographer, Shobana Jeyasingh, has written a retelling of La Bayadère, which premiered in 2015:
http://www.shobanajeyasingh.co.uk/works/bayadere-the-ninth-life/
She was inspired to do so in order to confront the Orientalism of the original and reimagine the work from an Indian viewpoint:
https://www.shobanajeyasingh.co.uk/explore/12-things-didnt-know-la-bayadere/
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“In 1899 a newspaper described the lynching, in Georgia, of a black farm laborer charged with killing his white employer: “In the presence of nearly 2,000 people, who sent aloft yells of defiance and shouts of joy, Sam Holt…was burned at the stake in a public road….Before the torch was applied to the pyre, the Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers, and other portions of his body with surprising fortitude. Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits and even the tree upon which the wretch met his fate were [sic] torn up and disposed of as souvenirs. The Negro’s heart was cut in small pieces, as was also his liver. Those unable to obtain the ghastly relics directly, paid more fortunate possessors extravagant sums for them. Small pieces of bone went for 25 cents and a bit of liver, crisply cooked, for 10 cents.” – Lynching as Human Sacrifife
https://harvardmagazine.com/1996/nd96/right.lynch.html
Fast forward to 2019. The assault on the Black body continues, whether it be through Blackface or the mutilating of a black body for the past three hundred years or so, the assault still continues, so does the inherent presence of psychosis in these same people, even if of Russian stock!
Vladimir Urin, the director of the Bolshoi Theatre: “The ballet ‘La Bayadère’ has been performed thousands of times in this production in Russia and abroad, and the Bolshoi Theatre will not get involved in such a discussion [about blackface] …
“Finding some sort of deep insults in this is simply ridiculous … No-one has ever complained to us or saw… an act of disrespect.”
Svetlana Zakharova, a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi: “There is nothing strange here, it’s absolutely normal for us… this is art.”
White art. She left out the word “White”.
Human flesh and Blackface are now a form of “Art”, ..?? … Really??
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While some commentors here are absolutely right about bigotism and ethnocentrism of most modern Russians, you are completely missing the point with the actual meaning of the ‘blackface’ in Russian cultural context.
Slavery comes before racism, therefore it is slavery and not the racim that is the root of the evil — as a person decending from a post-slavery state and living now in such an ablosultely racist (or, at best, nationalistic) state as China, I am absolutely entitled to say this.
I don’t know your cultural implications to the blackface, but in Russian Empire black slavery trade was declared to be a crime similar to piracy decades before white slavery was abolished. The emperial servants with black skin were, however, enjoying their personal freedom with some priviliges and getting a higher salary as compared to that of the white people and were in many ways like Europeans or Blacks in modern China.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B1_%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%B9%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0
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“I don’t know your cultural implications to the blackface,” – Dus’khor Dechen
“you are completely missing the point with the actual meaning of the ‘blackface’ in Russian cultural context.” – – Dus’khor Dechen
Contradictory much!
I’m not sure to whom your post was intended for, but in any event, you aren’t making any sense. That is to say, if you “don’t know” someone’s “cultural implications to the blackface,” as you put it, how in the world within a paragraph or two later can you also say with an abundance of certainty that, “you are completely missing the point with the actual meaning of the blackface in Russian cultural context.”
In my opinion, the Russian serfs/peasant slaves were not based on race, but on primarily on social hierarchy and absent the ever present and daily Amerikan barbarity. So, if you weren’t of Russia’s nobility class, well then, you were automatically considered to be of the peasantry class, hence, a slave.
Nonetheless, black skin, even in Russia were still considered to be as less of a people, just like their Amerikan counterpart. The parallel behavior is that black skin signified a few notches above an animal, and thus, deserved to be treated with cruelty and mocked as such.
This exported or mimicked American phenomenon or psychosis is exemplified within the two photos below. One taken in Russia a few years ago and the 1899 photo of 23-year-old Sam Hose with approximately 2,000 white showed to witness in Marlon, Indiana
In short, they may be decades apart in regards to when these incidents took place and thousands of miles of separation, however, I still see the same silly smiles, void of emotion and the usual demeanor of being unbothered by such a horrific sight!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/lynchings-sadism-white-men-why-america-must-atone#img-3
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@ Dus’khor Dechen
So you are saying that any country without much of a history of Black slavery is free to use blackface?
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@ blakksage
That image speaks volumes about the universality of White supremacist violence. It also shreds Dus’khor Dechen’s allegation that, “I don’t know your cultural implications to the blackface…” to ribbons.
The Russians in that photo are well aware of the ‘implications’ of blackface.
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@Abagond
Within its ‘internal cultural implications’? Yes, I think they are. It’s just like swastika, the usage of which would be different in Tibetan or Neo-Nazist contexts. A same symbol could bring different connotations under within different cultural contexts. . E. g. the words spelled as ‘slut’, ‘sex’ or ‘kock’ mean in Sweedish ‘end’, ‘six’ and ‘chef’. It’s just not a good idea to bring it to the table when it comes to actual Black persons around, so if there was any actual Black person around I am sure they would think thrice before making such an imitation.
The cultural symbols, be they negative or positive, are just like words spelled with Lating alphabet; to the record, the n-word and the word ‘Black’ referring to a person with an African background within Russian cultural context would be different: the former, the n-word, is a standard and absolutely non-offensive word, while the word ‘Black’ is an insult — and it’s also extended to Caucasians from actual Caucasus.
From the picture blakksage quoted there is a note that the party was held within a certain ‘Wild West’ style. If it were held as an imitation of ‘Tsarist Russia’, it could be an impersonalysed physical punishment or a trade of a White Russian slave.
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@Afrofem
the universality of White supremacist violence – LMAOL
No generalized statement, especially aspiring to be an ethical one, could be true.
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@Abagond
I’ve messed up editing my previous comment, which should be like:
It’s just like swastika, the usage of which would be different in Tibetan or Neo-Nazist contexts. A same symbol could bring different connotations within different cultural contexts. . E. g. the words spelled as ‘slut’, ‘sex’ or ‘kock’ mean in Swedish ‘end’, ‘six’ and ‘chef’.
The cultural symbols, be they negative or positive, are just like words spelled with Lating alphabet; to the record, the n-word and the word ‘Black’ referring to a person with an African background within Russian cultural context would be different: the former, the n-word, is a standard and absolutely non-offensive word, while the word ‘Black’ is an insult — and it’s also extended to Caucasians from actual Caucasus.
From the picture blakksage quoted there is a note that the party was held within a certain ‘Wild West’ style. It’s just not a good idea to bring it to the table when it comes to actual Black persons around, so if there was any actual Black person around I am sure they would think thrice before making such an imitation.
If it were held as an imitation of ‘Tsarist Russia’, it could be an impersonalysed physical punishment or a trade of a White Russian slave.
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@blakksage
No contradictiob whatsoever. That is, here is a symbol [a blackface] and I don’t know much about its meaning to Americans or Blacks, but I know what it means to Russians. ‘An exceptional employee of a special and higher rank’, that’s what it means to Russians. Perhaps with a connotation of ‘hard-working and underestimated’. Is it a racist thing to you?
In my opinion, the Russian serfs/peasant slaves were not based on race, but on primarily on social hierarchy and absent the ever present and daily Amerikan barbarity. So, if you weren’t of Russia’s nobility class, well then, you were automatically considered to be of the peasantry class, hence, a slave
Wrong. There were free peasants/serves that couldn’t be sold, totured or mutilated, and there were peasants considered as a property of their owners, plus there was a sub-classe of ‘Tsar’s serves’, formally enslaved but having more freedom than personal slaves. The Black emperial servants in the palace were not enslaved, they were free ‘honorary servants’, like persons of White gentry origin.
Nonetheless, black skin, even in Russia were still considered to be as less of a people, just like their Amerikan counterpart. The parallel behavior is that black skin signified a few notches above an animal, and thus, deserved to be treated with cruelty and mocked as such.
Wrong again. I think this Wiki article can be easily translated into English, couldn’t it?
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B1_%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%B9%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal
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Let’s try to keep simple, in this world today and throughout recent history ,white skinned people esp from Europe have a long history of pathological aggression against blackness and black people.
Russia is not exception,while not Europe their culture and phenotype are so closely linked as to be indistinguishable.
There is occuring in stages ,first is denial and a refusal to even discuss it.
Then excuses and counter acussions.
Sometime in the future you’ll have white Russians coming out ,recounting the personal experiences of how yes it is racist .
Scholars ,will then publish papers and books on this issue ,and the most prominent and palpable will be guest on media outlets.
Somewhere far into the future a token black ,will be allowed to participate in a role historically reserved for blackface.
I and most of the rest of us will be long dead by then but of course life goes on.
What will the ultimate fate be of the phenotypic conflict within our species ,same can be said of gender ,class and ultimately human to human interactions and beyond to other species and the planet.
Lot of fodder for science fiction as we will never know.
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@ Dus’khor Dechen
On the contrary, the universiality of White supremacist violence is true and verifiable. Moreover, discussing that particular type of violence is quite ethical, especially for people who have been on the receiving end of that violence.
Your denials of Russian White supremacist sentiments and your weak arguments about serf ‘slavery’ in medieval Russia being comparable to Black chattel slavery in Modern America are pure gaslighting.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/gaslighting/
The article notes:
In reality, there is no comparison. Throwing various arguments against the wall to see which ones stick is not very ethical. However, considering the source….
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@ Dus’khor Dechen
“Slavery comes before racism, therefore it is slavery and not the racim that is the root of the evil”
You made the same assertion back in September on another thread that was also about blackface. You never answered my questions about that assertion, at this link:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/09/19/justin-trudeau-and-blackface/#comment-426654
I’m going to repost those questions here, because I think they’re apropos to this thread as well:
If post-slavery is exactly the same for Russians and African Americans, then it is a very valid question to ask if Russians can identify by sight those individuals who descended from slaves. Because if they can’t, then already your statement about the exact parallels becomes questionable. If a slave-descended Russian walks into a restaurant or a store, does everyone else there immediately know that before the person says one word?
“E. g. black racism or Japanese racism, or Italian fascism under Mussolini were also racisms, but they didn’t bring too negative results because there was no slavery. Therefore, it’s the post-slavery state that is the real source of problems, not a racism, be it Black or White.”
And again I will point out that this statement totally ignores or downplays racism directed at non-black racial minorities here in the U.S. This is not “fiddling with your words” to twist your meaning but pointing out a glaring omission in your reasoning.
Racism against Native Americans has had devastating effects to the point of genocide, entire tribes wiped off the face of the earth and others barely hanging on to survival. Yet you seem to be saying that if the specific racial group wasn’t enslaved, then there shouldn’t be any extremely negative results like genocide.
“My point is that Black history is similar to Russian history in terms of slavery and post-slavery scars, and that it is the post-slavery, not the racism, that is the actual source of problems in society.”
It would be helpful if you could define what you mean by “post-slavery scars.” There seems to be a whole concept you’re referring to with the term “post-slavery,” but we Americans don’t have this concept. We would only use “post-slavery” as a historical marker (i.e., to indicate that something occurred after emancipation), whereas you’re using it as a noun to indicate a concept similar to racism. It would help if you could explain in more detail what “the post-slavery” means.
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@ Dus’khor Dechen
“That is, here is a symbol [a blackface] and I don’t know much about its meaning to Americans or Blacks, but I know what it means to Russians. ‘An exceptional employee of a special and higher rank’, that’s what it means to Russians. Perhaps with a connotation of ‘hard-working and underestimated’. Is it a racist thing to you?”
The young ballerinas wearing blackface in the photo represent enslaved concubines in a harem. That’s not “an exceptional employee” by any stretch of the imagination.
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@ Dus’khor Dechen
“It’s just like swastika, the usage of which would be different in Tibetan or Neo-Nazist contexts.”
No, there’s a crucial difference. The swastika has existed as a religious symbol in Asia (and some parts of the Americas) since ancient times. The Nazis took that established symbol and perverted it into something racist. The practice of blackface, on the other hand, has always been racist.
“It’s just not a good idea to bring it to the table when it comes to actual Black persons around, so if there was any actual Black person around I am sure they would think thrice before making such an imitation.”
And why is that? Why is it ok if no actual black people are around, but not a good idea if they are?
Also, the ballet sure as heck isn’t thinking thrice. They don’t care if there might be black people in their audience.
For that matter, a different Russian ballet company didn’t even care that there was a black American child among the performers:
https://www.dancemagazine.com/black-face-in-ballet-2641581121.html
“From the picture blakksage quoted there is a note that the party was held within a certain ‘Wild West’ style.”
The “Wild West style” lends no reason to portray the person being lynched as black. In the Wild West days, “cowboy justice” was dispensed to white lawbreakers — as can be seen in countless Hollywood westerns which have been aired all over the world. If anything, it would have been more historically accurate for the partiers to not use blackface.
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@Mbeti
Are you trying to teach me the meaning and the code of my own culture? That’s funny, at best.
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@ Afrofem
To sum it up, you are all femist about it, and you have all the right to be — just as I have all the right to nominate feminism as a form of purest and worst evil per se.
Really, this goes on like a children’s quarrel: – U R ! / I’m not! / Nom U R! — etc, etc.
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@ Dus’khor Dechen
Ducking and dodging, bobbing and weaving around the issues raised by my comment regarding the universiality of White supremacist violence is to be expected from you.
When faced with a fact-based argument, it seems your first maneuever is to gaslight the commenter. Your second maneuver is deflection, like that lame mini-screed about “feminism”, which has nothing to do with my comment to you.
Your third maneuver is to construct straw men, like unrelated bits of what you term Russian history. If that doesn’t shut down the conversation, then your fourth maneuver is a retreat into pouty silence, like you are doing with Solitaire’s interesting observations upthread.
If you don’t have the chops to carry your part of a fact-based argument, then perhaps you should do more reading and less writing. In idiomatic American English it is called ‘using your two ears more than your one mouth’.
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I’ve been digging around online, and I found an unexpected juxtaposition from years ago.
Back in 2007, at a forum called Ballet Alert, commenters were discussing blackface and Orientalism in La Bayadère:
https://balletalert.invisionzone.com/topic/25520-blackface-in-la-bayadere/
And I stumbled across this, in comment #13 by someone using the handle pj:
I am almost positive this little girl was Dana Nichols, whose essay I excerpted upthread. The Kirov is the former name of the Mariinsky Ballet Company. It all fits: the same Russian ballet company, the same ballet, the same year, the same city … and the same African American child dancing in blackface.
And pj’s conclusion that the child and her family must not have found it offensive is so indicative of white blindness to white privilege, not comprehending the ways people of color can be pressured into such behavior. Or that the parents can be sidestepped, as hers were. Nichols made it very clear in her essay that her parents were not allowed backstage and didn’t know what was happening to her, and that she was too young, confused, and powerless to refuse, although she did question it and was shut down by the adults in charge.
It makes me shudder, wondering how many other people in the audience concluded that the use of blackface must be okay because of the presence on the stage of this one hapless and manipulated little girl.
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The Guardian just ran an article in November about racism in the traditional ballet repertoire:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/nov/20/fu-manchu-moustaches-blackface-does-ballet-have-a-race-problem
And this is an excellent criticism of The Guardian’s approach, written more recently, after Copeland called out the Bolshoi:
https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwdance/article/BWW-Dance-Rebuke-to-Blackface-Orientalism-and-Racist-Equivocation-in-The-Guardian-20191220
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
“Are you trying to teach me the meaning and the code of my own culture?”
Isn’t that what you’re doing when you insist it is post-slavery, not racism, that is the root of the evil which black Americans face?
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@Solitaire
Touche’ Well played.
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@ Solitaire
Where and when did I exactly mention anything about the meaning of Black culture or codes? Pls specify, otherwise it is just the same good old attempts of yours to play shuffling tricks with my words.
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@ Solitaire
Or do you suggest that blackface is in an exclusive possession of Black culture and the blacks are the only persons to interpret its cultural meaning and symbolism?
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Anyway, first I’d like to know what academic or not-so-academic writings Mr Water had/has already read on the topic he proposes to discuss.
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This is why I read this blog ,so I know I’m not crazy and their are other people who can see it ,in spite of the firm and solid lies most white people tell.
They wouldn’t let the parents backstage ,yep should rules to hide behind.
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
Where and when exactly did Mbeti mention anything about the meaning of Russian culture or codes?
“Pls specify, otherwise it is just the same good old attempts of yours to play shuffling tricks with my words.”
I already specified that in my previous comment. It is your persistent attempts to insist that post-slavery, not racism, is the root of the evil which black Americans face.
To clarify further:
It is your persistent attempts to argue that black Americans are wrong when they identify racism as a major force negatively impacting their lives.
It is your persistent attempts to convince black Americans that they are wrong when they call out particular acts as being racist.
“Or do you suggest that blackface is in an exclusive possession of Black culture and the blacks are the only persons to interpret its cultural meaning and symbolism?”
Blackface is not a part of Black culture. It is a perversion of Black culture. It is a mockery of Black culture. As the victims of this perversion, black people should have the moral right to pass judgment on the use of blackface.
There, I’ve answered your questions. Please be so kind as to return the favor and answer the several questions I posed to you upthread. Especially the ones that have gone unanswered since September.
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@ Solitaire
Where and when? Right here: * ‘…white skinned people esp from Europe have a long history of pathological aggression against blackness and black people.
Russia is not exception,while not Europe their culture and phenotype are so closely linked as to be indistinguishable’.*
I haven’t read the rest of your assumptions, though. I think we need to clarify some terms before going on with with so far meaningless word exchange:
Dehumanisation = seing and treating other human beings as of lesser or no value as persons.
Slavery = seing and treating other human beings as property.
Racism = seing people of other races having specific physical and/or intellectual features because of their racial type.
These three don’t always come together. E. g. Portugese slavery was [mostly] not dehumanising [towards Blacks, as compared to Anglo-Saxon slavery], nor was original enslavement of war prisoners among Slavs or is modern [corporate] debt slavery; Bolshoi management is dehumanising, but not racist [because the Black danser also has to wear the blackface]; blackface or modern Chinese policy are racist, but not dehumanising or related to slavery, Russian emperial slavery was dehumanising but not racist, American slavery was bith racist and dehumanising, etc.
Therefore, we are all racists, but the problem is not a racism, the problems are slavery and dehumanisation.
As for the post-slavery, that’s easy. A post-slavery state is any state with a history of slavery with its present influenced by its slavery past. I don’t have time or intention to write a book on this topic, though.
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@ Afrofem
Your thesaurus is very impressive, but what does it have to do with real me? Anyway, I leave you further discussing the imaginary form of it.
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@ Dus’khor Dechen
The “real you” is still engaging in fallacy instead of bringing facts to the conversation.
Examples include:
“Portugese slavery was [mostly] not dehumanising [towards Blacks, as compared to Anglo-Saxon slavery]”
Really? According to whom? The African descendants of slaves in Brazil and the Cape Verde Islands describe Portugese slavery in terms as brutal as American slavery.
European travelers also found Portugese slavery brutish and dehumanizing. Among them was a French traveler, Etienne Victor Arago (1755 – 1855)
who produced numerous sketches of enslaved Africans in Brazil. Arago’s drawings centered on,
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/06/23/brazilian-slave/
“…we are all racists, but the problem is not a racism, the problems are slavery and dehumanisation.”
Doubling down on that fallacy does not make it any more true now than when you first wrote the fallacy. Dehumanization, slavery and racism are deeply linked in the European mind.
In order to enslave Africans, European colonial powers went to great lengths to dehumanize Africans. They used religion, pseudo-science and depraved levels of brutality to try to prove to themselves that Africans lacked humanity and could therefore, be morally enslaved. That dehumanization continues to this day as a lucrative cottage industry in the USA and beyond.
One of the pseudo-scientific methods Europeans used to justify the dehumanization of African people was the division of humanity into ‘races’ based on skin color and appearance. What many now call [anti-Black] ‘racism’ is merely the outgrowth of centuries of dehumanization, slavery and oppression.
Even your definition of racism is based on a fallacy:
“Racism = seing people of other races having specific physical and/or intellectual features because of their racial type.”
Racism is not just “seeing” differences in other people, it is believing those surface differences matter in a fundamental way. At the core of ‘racism’ is the belief that one group is intrinsically superior to other groups based on nothing more than skin color, etc.
It is a belief that has been debunked for many years. Yet, since the belief is central to the identity of Europeans and European-descent people, it has taken on a zombie-like life of its own in many societies throughout the globe.
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@Afrofem
Racism is not just “seeing” differences in other people—
That’s your definition, not mine. And if you imagine your words are worth more than mine, then you think too high of yourself, woman. It is me who is entitled to define and to decide who I am, not you or anybody else.
As for Portugese slavery, the facts are subject to various interpretation, and when considering the facts of adoptation of African slaves into Portugese families, they are fare greater in number than similar, if any, cases among English slave owners.
In fact, the Black Portugese slaves were even masters of their Japanese slaves.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/05/26/books/book-reviews/the-rarely-if-ever-told-story-of-japanese-sold-as-slaves-by-portuguese-traders/#.XgAT9EczbIU
https://brill.com/view/title/37924
But I think I have enough of your bs already, woman. So long.
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Oh, and yes, here’s a couple of more definitions I’ve missed:
Colonialism = building wealth of one country or region at the expense of others.
Imperialism = building a state of different nations and regions.
As above, these two doesn’t always mean the same thing. Thus, Bohai empire was not colonising, racist, slavery-based or dehumanising, while the Russian empire was slavery-based, dehumanising and colonising, yet not racist.
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
“That’s your definition, not mine. And if you imagine your words are worth more than mine, then you think too high of yourself, woman. It is me who is entitled to define and to decide who I am, not you or anybody else.”
Wrong, that’s the definition of racism in English. It’s not Afrofem’s personal definition; it’s the standard definition in English in the US, in Canada, in Great Britain, in Australia, in New Zealand, etc., etc.
You can define who you are, sure, but you cannot change the standard definition of words in our language.
As a native English speaker with an excellent education, Afrofem is in fact more informed than you are on this matter.
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“Bolshoi management is dehumanising, but not racist [because the Black danser also has to wear the blackface]”
The dehumanization here is intrinsically tied to race. Blackface is a mockery of black people and black culture, thereby dehumanizing them, causing them to feel embarrassed and ashamed because of their race. Making the young black dancer wear blackface was racist because it forced her to participate in an act that belittles her own culture and dehumanizes her own race.
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
“Where and when? Right here: ‘…white skinned people esp from Europe have a long history of pathological aggression against blackness and black people.
Russia is not exception,while not Europe their culture and phenotype are so closely linked as to be indistinguishable’.
And what is inaccurate about the above statements by Mbeti? Please explain.
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
“As for Portugese slavery, the facts are subject to various interpretation, and when considering the facts of adoptation of African slaves into Portugese families, they are fare greater in number than similar, if any, cases among English slave owners.
“In fact, the Black Portugese slaves were even masters of their Japanese slaves.”
Oh, please. This is exactly like the Americans who argue that slavery wasn’t so bad because a few black people owned black slaves.
There were a handful of black Portuguese slaves who owned Japanese slaves (all of whom apparently were women owned by men).
Meanwhile, the Portuguese transported more than 4 million African slaves to Brazil.
Portugal and Spain together destabilized much of Africa:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/transatlantic-slave-trade-voyages-ships-log-details-africa-america-atlantic-ocean-deaths-disease-a8494546.html%3famp
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@ Solitaire
What is actually wrong is your ‘wrong’, because it favors doctrinarianism and hinders independent thinking. As a fluent English speaker and a human being without a mental retardation, I am free to define the terms I use in any language I master, be it Spanish, English, Russian, French or any other language I can think in.
So, if a blackface is a mockery of black people and culture, do you imply that Black culture is a racial thing?
And, ¿what is inaccurate about the above statements by Mr Water? Well, everything. To start with, they ignore the facts about Russia and the logic behind my words.
Also, the Black lusophone owners of Japanese slaves outnumbered their English speaking peers and there were both female concubine and labour male slaves among the Japanese.
But enough is enough, this waste of my time on your conventional figures of speech with no interesting thought in it makes me really tired.
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
Still gaslighting, deflecting and strawmanning.
Are you incapable of presenting a coherent argument because of your White Denialist agenda or is it something more ordinary, like lightweight mental processes?
“…the Russian empire was slavery-based, dehumanising and colonising, yet not racist.”
The native peoples of Alaska tell another story about the Russian empire:
http://alaskaweb.org/russam/interactions.htm
In other words, Russian colonists had the same devastating effect on indigenous groups they encountered as the English, French, Spanish, Dutch and Portugese did on people they encountered globally. Disease, enslavement, looting, destruction and death.
“…I think I have enough of your bs already, woman. So long.”
LMBAO!!!
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
“As a fluent English speaker”
Don’t kid yourself; you’re conversant at best, not fluent.
“I am free to define the terms I use in any language I master, be it Spanish, English, Russian, French or any other language I can think in.”
When you make up your own definitions, it hinders communication with other people who don’t know you’re using your own unique meanings.
Really, discussing these matters with you is like listening to a genius pontificate — and please note that I define “genius” as “kindergartener” and “pontificate” as “babble.”
“So, if a blackface is a mockery of black people and culture, do you imply that Black culture is a racial thing?”
Black culture is not inherently a racial thing; no culture is. Blackface is an invention of white people. In blackface, the physical blackening of the face and the exaggeration of the size of the lips and the eyes with makeup all serve to mock the physical appearance of black people. The costumes, dances, songs, fake dialect, jokes, and so forth that are associated with blackface performances all serve to mock black culture.
“Also, the Black lusophone owners of Japanese slaves outnumbered their English speaking peers”
Provide the actual numbers and your sources for this claim, please.
Also, I will point out once again that these few owners of Japanese slaves do not prove anything about the treatment and status of the millions of African and African-descent slaves in Portugal’s colonies.
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
“And, ¿what is inaccurate about the above statements by Mr Water?”
His handle is Mbeti. Word to the wise, you’re breaking one of Abagond’s rules as stated in the comment policy.
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@ Afrofem
Seriously, take an effort to re-read my words, and pls do repeat it untill the actual meaning hits the home; I don’t have to waste my time on explaining you the meaning of what was written in your native language.
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@ Solitaire
Mbeti means water, so it is absolutely sticks the policy of this site.
And, again, it is not you, a lady uncapable of catching the meaning of what was written in her native tongue, to define the level of my linguistic competency. Not even in English.
Who is actually kidding oneself is you, a woman trying to play A White Protective Saviour_ess.
Dixi.
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
In the comment policy, Abagond says not to call commenters by the wrong name, and if I remember correctly, in the past that has included translations like “Mr. Water.”
He clarified the rule in this comment elsewhere:
“Please use a commenter’s right name or shortened version thereof.”
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/obama-retrospective/#comment-364021
“Who is actually kidding oneself is you, a woman trying to play A White Protective Saviour_ess.”
Right, protecting you by giving you a heads-up instead of letting you continue to violate a rule that could get you banned.
“And, again, it is not you, a lady uncapable of catching the meaning of what was written in her native tongue, to define the level of my linguistic competency. Not even in English.”
I used to teach ESL students at the collegiate level. I am trained in evaluating and categorizing linguistic competency in English. I could read just one paragraph of your writing and identify you as a native speaker of a Slavic language, there are so many giveaways.
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@ Solitaire
A right translation of a name is its right form, and ‘Mbeti’ equals ‘Water’.
To identify me as a native speaker of a Slavic language– With ‘so many giveaways’, haha.
OMGs. And you have been a language competency evaluator? For real? Hopefully, not for long, otherwise you could have done much more harm than you have done here.
And, since we came to ad hominem interchange, why do you have to quit that job? Or were you fired because of showing as poor judgments as you have done here so far? Also trying to play A Great White Saviour_ness, perhaps?
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@ Dus’khor Duchen
Your primary tell is your inaccurate use of articles. Not only do you drop some, but you overcompensate by adding articles where there shouldn’t be any. For example, you write “a racism” and “a blackface” instead of the correct “racism” and “blackface.” That’s a dead giveaway of a native Russian speaker.
“why do you have to quit that job?”
It was a way of paying the bills while I pursued an advanced degree in my intended field. It wasn’t challenging enough to consider staying in it as a permanent career.
“A right translation of a name is its right form, and ‘Mbeti’ equals ‘Water’.”
Then take it up with Abagond. He’s the ultimate arbitrator. I’m simply telling you in the past, when someone has complained about another commenter calling them by a translation of their handle, Abagond has sided with the person making the complaint, to the best of my memory. If Mbeti wanted his handle to be Mr. Water, he would have used that for his handle instead of Mbeti.
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@ Solitaire
What is really telling is your attempt to play A Grand White Saviour_ess. I believe if someone objects me using a translation of their user name, it would be told so.
Inacurate use of articles, LOL. Well, google conventional usage and conceptional usage then. I still believe that idiocity has no race or gender.
It wasn’t challenging enough– Yeah, sure [a big mean grin].
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Sorry ,but way too many and too long comments for me😒
But this is what I have seen time and again on this blog , white obviously pro racist commenter comes here to a black blog and repeatedly post long irrelevant comments ,many deliberately disparaging and insulting.
And unfortunately some regular long time members and commenters engage them.
I am not interested in it ,abagond’s post are by and large well researched and thought out and some commenters comments are worth reading but everything has limits.
So because I contributed ,now my name gets thrown around and uh yeah I really really need to respond ,esp to the obviously racist commenter with a thousand words ,ah nope
Got Better things to do.
I still like some of the topics on this blog and the author has always been quite talented.
Speaking of which abagond ,have you done ( cause dude’s library of posts is quite vast both in quantity as well scope) or will you do a post on Dr.Umar Johnson?
Between your in-depth review and analysis of The Root ,their contempous and dismissive review of him and actually listening to him talk, Would be interested in your take on this person.
P.S. apologizes for for being uh off topic.
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@ Mbeti
“So because I contributed ,now my name gets thrown around”
I apologize for my part in bringing your name into this. Sorry, I should have known better.
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@ Mbeti
I have not done a post on Dr Umar Johnson but want to. Excellent suggestion! Thanks.
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@Solitaire
No apologies necessary, but the fact you apologized ,is indicative of your character and status as a long time comentor on this blog ,as well as me commenting on comments you have made in regards to this topic ,which brought my name into it.
I have no problem with being referred to in others comments and I can rely on our blog host maintaining decorum and cilivity.
It is also inevitable that if you comment on a ongoing discussion in which one side or the other is adversarial, you might be the target of unwelcome or unfladdering response.
The inherent nature of public discourse.
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@ Mbeti
Thank you ☺
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Well that makes them official Americans since Trump has given Putin a cozy spot in the oval office
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