Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thought

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Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thought

Postby admin » Tue Oct 27, 2015 12:35 am

Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thought
Race Manners: A friend who makes this type of comment needs a lesson about the contemporary implications of an age-old racist association.
BY JENÉE DESMOND-HARRIS
May 28 2014

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Earlier in 2014, the Belgian newspaper De Morgen ran an image depicting President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
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Dear Race Manners:

Last night we had a couple over as dinner guests. The wife is an old friend of my wife’s, from Chicago. I never liked her. She moved to Australia and got married, and she and her husband were here visiting. At one point, discussing the aboriginal people of Australia, she said, “They have a very simian—a very apelike—look about their faces” (I was almost more offended that she thought I didn’t know what “simian” meant).

It was a wild moment. She saw absolutely nothing off base about it at all. Spoken in a black home! I could have come back with something really rude about her appearance, but I’m a gentleman, so I didn’t. I was speechless. Is there anything I could have said? —Mortified by Monkey Mention

Good call on not replying with an animal comparison about your guest’s looks. As I’ve said before, I don’t think that humiliating people for race-related slights of the clueless and ignorant variety is the best idea (although it’s definitely tempting).

In the moment, maybe you could have said something that both communicated your shock and encouraged her to reflect on the implications of what she said, like, “Apelike? Wow. How do aboriginal people feel about that comparison?” Or “People have said that about African Americans, too. Hopefully [insert your wife’s name] and I don’t look ‘simian’ to you—or do we?”

But it’s not too late to address this, and you should.

Despite the geographic differences, it’s no surprise that you took the comment personally. Recent findings indicate that indigenous Australians—a classification that refers to the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands and includes more than a dozen diverse groups—are believed to be descended from the first humans to migrate out of Africa. Although racial labels don’t translate perfectly from one country and culture to another, indigenous Australians have been referred to as and have called themselves black. And in any case, it make sense that hearing them (or, really, any group that suffers oppression because of its ethnic background) referred to this way would raise a red flag for you.

This whole “simian” thing has roots as old as the creation of race itself. The notion of blacks as apelike “began with the first European contact with Africans,” Phillip Atiba Goff, a UCLA psychologist who has studied the topic, says. You have to look no further than news about taunts (and tossed bananas) from the stands of soccer matches and hateful photos of Barack and Michelle Obama to realize how stubborn this association has been.

The worst part is, it’s not just old, inspired by racism or embraced by racists. It’s also potentially harmful in real life.

Take two studies that Goff worked on: In one, students who were primed with words associated with cats before seeing a video of police officers beating a man considered the beating unjustified. So did those who were primed with words associated with apes but were told the victim was white. But those who were primed with the ape words and told the victim was black weren’t as sure.

“The association between ‘black’ and ‘ape’ left our white respondents more open to the possibility that police violence might, in fact, be justified,” Goff said.

In another study—examining 183 criminal cases in which a defendant was eligible for the death penalty, as well as the language used in Philadelphia Enquirer articles about those cases—“it turned out African Americans had significantly more ape-related images ascribed to them than did whites,” said Goff. Worse: “Among African Americans, the more ape-related images you had in your press coverage, the more likely you were to be put to death.”

Let’s assume that your wife’s friend doesn’t think these are good things and doesn’t want to perpetuate theses connections, here or abroad. Given that she had dinner in your (black) home and is a longtime friend of your (black) wife, I doubt she’s coming from the same place as the people on the white supremacist website Chimpout (I won’t link to it here), or any of the other hateful places the Internet has to offer for those who put “blacks” and “monkeys” into a search engine.

Consider sending her an email to let her know why her remarks troubled you, and include a link to Goff’s research.

Hopefully she’ll scrutinize her views. But at the very least, she’ll have some information that may make her pause before behaving like a monkey by expressing those views while she’s a guest in someone else’s home.

Jenée Desmond-Harris, The Root’s associate editor of features, covers the intersection of race with news, politics and culture. She wants to talk about the complicated ways in which ethnicity, color and identity arise in your personal life—and provide perspective on the ethics and etiquette surrounding race in a changing America. Follow her on Twitter.
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Re: Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thou

Postby admin » Tue Oct 27, 2015 12:43 am

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


"You see, my boy, what coincidences occur in our Great Universe. This etherogram refers to your favorites in connection with the 'ape-beings' I just mentioned. It was sent to me from Mars and informs me, among other things, that the three-centered beings of the planet Earth are once more troubled by the 'ape question.'

"I must first tell you that on account of their abnormal being-existence, there was long ago crystallized and there is periodically intensified in the presence of those peculiar three-brained beings arising and existing on the planet Earth a strange factor, producing from time to time a 'crescendo impulse,' under the action of which they wish to find out at any cost whether they have descended from these apes or the apes have descended from them.

"Judging from the etherogram, this time the question is agitating chiefly the biped beings who breed on the continent called 'America. '

"Although this question always troubles them somewhat, every once in a while it becomes for a long time, as they express it, the 'burning question of the day. '

"I remember very well that this 'agitation of mind' over the origin of the apes occurred among them for the first time when their 'center of culture,' as they also like to express it, was the country of Tikliamish The starting point of this 'agitation of mind' was the wiseacring of a certain 'learned being of new formation' named Menitkel.

"This Menitkel became a learned being because, in the first place, his childless aunt was an excellent 'matchmaker,' and mixed a great deal with 'power-possessing beings', and because, in the second place, at the age when he was on the threshold of being a responsible being he was given as a birthday present a book entitled Manual of Bon Ton and Love-Letter Writing. As he was financially secure and therefore quite free, thanks to an inheritance from his uncle, a former pawnbroker, he compiled, out of boredom, a massive and erudite work about the origin of these apes, in which he 'cooked up' an elaborate theory supported by all kinds of 'logical proof,' but of course such 'logical proof as can be conceived and crystallized only in the Reason of those freaks who have taken your fancy.

"This Menitkel then 'proved' by his theory that their 'fellow countrymen,' the apes, were descended from none other than people who had, as they say, 'gone wild ' The other terrestrial beings of that period, as had already become proper to them, believed implicitly this Auntie's darling, without any 'essence-criticism' whatsoever, and from that time on this question, agitating the strange 'Reason' of your favorites, became the subject of disputes and fantasies, right up until what is called the seventh 'great planetary process of reciprocal destruction.'

"Thanks to this maleficent idea there was fixed in the instincts of most of the unfortunates of that period another abnormal so-called 'dictatorial factor,' which began to engender in their common presence the false feeling that these ape-beings were sacred. And this factor, which engendered such a sacrilegious impulse, passed by heredity from generation to generation and reached the instincts of many beings even of the present time.

"As for the false notion cooked up by that 'pawnshop progeny,' it held its ground for nearly two of their centuries and became an integral part of the 'Reason' of most of them. But due to various events growing out of the seventh planetary process of reciprocal destruction, which lasted nearly half a century, it gradually faded away and completely disappeared from their common presence.

"But when their so-called 'cultured existence' became concentrated on the continent of 'Europe,' and when the time again came around for that peculiar disease known as 'wiseacring' to manifest itself with maximum intensity—for this disease, by the way, had long before become subject to the fundamental cosmic law of Heptaparaparshinokh, according to which its intensity had to fluctuate with a certain periodicity—then, to the grief of three-brained beings of the whole Universe, that 'ape question,' or 'who is descended from whom,' once more arose and having become crystallized again became part of the abnormal 'Reason' of your favorites.

"In this instance also, the 'ape question' arose from the stimulus given by a learned being, of course again a 'great' one, but of an altogether 'new formation,' by the name of Darwin. This 'great' scientist, basing his theory on that same logic of theirs, set about 'proving' exactly the opposite of what Menitkel had said, that is, he 'proved' that it was they themselves who were descended from these Mister Apes.

"As for the objective reality of either of the theories of these 'great' terrestrial learned beings, I am reminded of one of the wise sayings of our esteemed Mullah Nasr Eddin:

"'Luck smiled on them both, for they both managed to find the authentic godmother of the incomparable Scheherazade on an old dunghill.'

"In any case, bear in mind that for many centuries this question, among others just as ephemeral, has provided material for the kind of thinking your favorites consider the 'highest manifestation of Reason.'

"In my opinion your favorites could get a correct answer to this question that always agitates them of how the apes arose, if only they really knew how to apply another of the maxims of our dear Mullah Nasr Eddin, who often used to say:

'The cause of every misunderstanding must be sought in woman. '

"If they had made use of this wise maxim to resolve their enigmatic question perhaps they would have finally discovered the origin of these fellow countrymen of theirs.

"As the subject of the genealogy of these apes is indeed exceedingly complicated and unusual, I shall inform your Reason about it from every possible aspect.

"The fact is that neither are your favorites descended from apes nor are apes descended from them, but the cause of the arising of these apes is in this case—as in every other misunderstanding there—their women.

"First of all I must tell you that none of those terrestrial ape-beings now arising there in various exterior forms ever existed before the second 'transapalnian perturbation', it was only after this disaster that the genealogy of their species began.

"The cause of the arising of these 'misconceived' beings —as well as that of all events more or less serious in the objective sense that occur on the surface of that ill-fated planet—stemmed from two sources totally independent of each other.

"The first, as always, was the same lack of foresight on the part of certain Most High, Most Saintly Cosmic Individuals, and the second was, once again, those abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence established by your favorites themselves.

"The point is that during the second transapalnian perturbation, besides the chief continent of Atlantis many other large and small land masses entered within the planet, and new land masses appeared in their place These displacements of various parts of the common presence of this unfortunate planet lasted several of their days, accompanied by frequent planetary tremors and manifestations that could not fail to evoke terror in the consciousness and feelings of beings of every kind.

"During that period many of your three-brained favorites who, together with one-brained and two-brained beings of other forms, had chanced to survive unexpectedly found themselves upon other newly formed land masses in places that were entirely unfamiliar to them It was just then that many of these strange 'keschapmartnian' three-brained beings of active and passive sex or, as they say, 'men' and 'women,' were compelled for a number of their years to exist apart, that is to say, without the opposite sex.

"Before continuing to relate how all this occurred, I must tell you in a little more detail about that sacred substance which is the final result of the evolving transformations of every kind of being-food and is formed in the presence of every being without distinction of 'brain system ' This sacred substance, elaborated in the presence of beings of every kind, is almost everywhere called 'exioëhary,' but your favorites on the planet Earth call it 'sperm. '

"Through the all-gracious foresight and command of our Common Father Creator and according to the actualization of Great Nature, this sacred substance arises in the presence of all beings, without distinction of brain system or exterior coating, in order that by its means they may consciously or automatically fulfill that part of their being-duty which consists in the continuation of their species But in the presence of three-brained beings it also arises in order that they may consciously transform it for coating their higher being-bodies for their own being.

"Before the second transapalnian perturbation there, which the contemporary three-brained beings refer to as the 'loss of the continent of Atlantis,' in the period when various consequences of the properties of the organ kundabuffer had already begun to be crystallized in their presence, a being-impulse was gradually formed in them which later became predominant.

"This impulse is now called 'pleasure', and in order to satisfy it they were already beginning to exist in a manner unbecoming to three-centered beings, that is to say, most of them gradually began to remove this sacred being-substance from themselves for the satisfaction of this impulse alone.

"Well, my boy, from then on most of the three-brained beings of the planet Earth were not content to carry out the process of the removal of this substance, which is continuously elaborated in them, only at those periods normally established by Great Nature for beings in accordance with their organization, for the purpose of the continuation of their species Owing to this, and also to the fact that most of them had ceased to utilize this substance consciously for coating their higher being-bodies, it came about that when they did not remove it from themselves in ways that by then had become mechanical, they naturally experienced a sensation called 'sirklinimana,' a state they describe as 'feeling out of sorts,' and which is invariably accompanied by what is called 'mechanical suffering.'

"Remind me at some opportune moment about those periods fixed by Nature for the normal process of the utilization of the exioëhary by beings of different brain-systems for the continuation of their species, and I shall explain this to you in detail.

"Well then, they like ourselves are only 'keschapmartnian' beings, and when this sacred substance, continuously and inevitably formed in them, is utilized normally for the continuation of their species by means of the sacred process 'elmooarno,' its removal from their presences must be accomplished exclusively with the opposite sex. But these three-brained beings who by chance had escaped disaster were no longer in the habit of utilizing this substance for coating their higher being-bodies and, as they were already existing in a manner unbecoming to three-brained beings, when they were obliged to exist for several of their years without beings of the opposite sex, they turned to various antinatural means for the removal from themselves of this sacred substance, exioëhary.

"The beings of the male sex had recourse to the antinatural means called 'moordoorten' and 'androperasty' or, as the contemporary beings would say, 'onanism' and 'pederasty,' and these antinatural means fully satisfied them.

"But for the three-brained beings of the 'passive sex' or, as they call them, 'women,' these antinatural means were not sufficiently satisfying, and so the poor 'women-orphans' of that time, already more cunning and inventive than the men, began to seek out beings of other forms and accustom them to be their 'partners.' Well then, it was after these 'partnerships' that there began to appear in our Great Universe those species of beings which, as our dear Mullah Nasr Eddin would say, are 'neither fish nor fowl.'

"As regards the possibility of this abnormal blending of two different kinds of exioëhary for the conception and formation of a new planetary body of a being, it is necessary to give you the following explanation:

"On the planet Earth, as on other planets of our Universe where 'keschapmartnian' beings breed and exist—that is, three-brained beings in whom the formation of the sacred exioëhary for the creation of a new being must take place exclusively in the presences of two beings of distinct, independent sexes—the fundamental difference between the sacred exioëhary formed in the presences of beings of opposite sexes, that is, in men and women, consists in this, that in the exioëhary formed in the presences of beings of the male sex, the localized 'holy affirming' or 'positive' force of the sacred Triamazikamno participates, while in the exioëhary formed in beings of the female sex there participates the localized 'holy denying' or 'negative' force of the same sacred law.

"Thanks to the all-gracious foresight and command of our Father of everything existing in the Universe, and in accordance with the actualizing power of Great Mother Nature, in certain surrounding conditions and with the participation of the third separately localized holy force of the sacred Triamazikamno, namely, with the 'holy reconciling' force, the blending of the exioëhary formed in two separate beings of distinct, independent sexes during the process of the sacred 'elmooarno' taking place between them brings about the arising of a new being.

"In the case I was speaking of, the abnormal blending of two heterogeneous kinds of exioëhary was possible only by virtue of a certain cosmic law known as the 'affinity of the numbers of the totality of vibrations,' which began to act owing to the second transapalnian perturbation on this ill-fated planet, and which then still continued to act on its common presence.

"Concerning this cosmic law, it is important to tell you that it arose and began to exist in the Universe after the fundamental sacred law of Triamazikamno had been modified by our Creator in order to render the Heropass harmless, and after its holy parts, until then entirely independent, had become dependent upon forces from outside. But, my boy, you will understand this cosmic law in all its aspects only when I shall explain in detail, as I have promised you, all the fundamental laws of world-creation and world-existence.

"Meanwhile, you should know that on normally existing planets anywhere in our Great Universe the exioëhary formed in the presence of a three-brained being having organs of perception and transformation for localizing the 'holy affirming' force of the sacred Triamazikamno, in other words, the exioëhary formed in a three-brained keschapmartnian being of the 'male' sex, can never be blended— owing to that same law—with the exioëhary formed in the presence of a two-brained keschapmartnian being of the opposite sex.

"On the other hand, when a special combination of cosmic forces occurs and this same law of the 'affinity of the numbers of the totality of vibrations' begins to act, the exioëhary formed in a three-brained keschapmartnian being of the 'female' sex can sometimes, in certain surrounding conditions, blend quite well with the exioëhary formed in two-brained keschapmartnian beings of the male sex, but only as the active factor in the actualizing process of the fundamental sacred Triamazikamno.

"In short, during those terrible years on that planet of yours, a phenomenon very rare in the Universe appeared, that is, a blending of the exioëhary of two keschapmartnian beings of different brain systems and of opposite sexes, and the result was the arising of the ancestors of these terrestrial 'misconceived' beings now called 'apes,' who give your favorites no peace, and from time to time so agitate their strange Reason.

"But when this terrible period was over, a relatively normal process of ordinary existence was reestablished on your planet, and your favorites of different sexes again began to find each other and exist together, and thereafter those 'ape-beings' actualized the continuation of their species among themselves.

"And this continuation of their species was possible because the conception for the arising of the first of these abnormal beings had taken place according to the same external conditions that in general determine the presences of future keschapmartnian beings of active or passive sex.

"The most interesting result of this highly abnormal manifestation of the three-brained beings of your planet is that there now exist a great many species of the descendants of these ape-beings, differing in exterior form, and each of these different species bears a striking resemblance to some form of two-brained quadruped being still in existence there.

"This came about because the blending of the exioëhary of the keschapmartnian three-brained beings of the female sex, which brought about the arising of the ancestors of those apes, proceeded with the active exioëhary of the various species of quadruped beings that exist there even until today.

"Indeed, my boy, during my last personal stay on the planet Earth, when I happened in the course of my travels to come across the various species of apes and, in accordance with a habit that has become second nature, I observed them, I ascertained definitely that the whole of their outer functioning and the so-called 'automatic postures' of each 'species' of these contemporary apes are exactly like those in the common presence of certain normally arisen quadruped beings there, and their 'facial features' are even exactly the same as those of particular quadrupeds As for the 'psychic features' of all the different species of these apes, they are absolutely identical, even down to minute details, with those of the psyche of the three-brained beings of the 'female sex' there. "

At this point in his tales Beelzebub became silent. After a long pause he looked at his favorite Hassein with a smile that clearly expressed a double meaning.

-- Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man, by G.I. Gurdjieff
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Re: Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thou

Postby admin » Tue Oct 27, 2015 12:58 am

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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TELOS -- THE END

My Friends, who I, in my body and soul, feel to be the children and sons of these primeval enemies of the apelings, let us hold in the highest regard the most precious heritage of our fathers -- our blood, our seed -- as something Divine! We do not wish ourselves to be regarded as angels, the blood of each and every one of us is more or less mixed with the water of Sodom. But from this point forward a halt should be called to this mixing. Mankind is unequal, and a deep moat that cannot be overwhelmed surrounds Walhalla -- a moat that no apeling must be allowed to jump over. In the struggle against the apes of Sodom each one must begin within himself, especially in the choice of his wife, then he can fight against the apes of Sodom which surround him ... Victory will be ours -- ancient, divine oracles speak in in our behalf. Among our foes is the ape, in us and for us is God -- the all-knowing, all- powerful entity of the original cosmos. It follows from many passages in the Bible that the European white man -- in short, the Germanic man -- is the Son of Heaven. He is the white stone (Rev. VI.8), the White Rider who conquers the colored people, he is the Logos (Rev. VI; XIX). Also in the Koran (VII,43) it is said that Paradise is certain for the whites. The original homeland of the white man is Germania -- kings and heroes have been coming from there since pre-history. Up to a certain time only ape- and beast-men lived outside Germany. For this reason the Germanic peoples eagerly took up an exalting doctrine, such as the teachings of Jesus. But the Sodomite spirit of Rome and Byzantium could not let the Gothic folk live. That glorious folk of the gods was ripped apart by the ancient pagutu- and udumu-brood, to the rest of the Germanic peoples a counterfeit Christianity was preached, and their powerful arm of the gods bound by the cord of the "commandment of brotherly love." Rome and Byzantium extirpated the ancient scriptures, for they would have documented our divine origins and their simian descent. For over a thousand years the "Welsh" [= Romanized French] and the Slavs, along with the rest of the mob of apemen, have been a constant danger to our culture, they are our bitter enemies for whom no act of malice or violence is too terrible to use in order to destroy us! Woe to the brood of Sodom when we settle our accounts with them! They are more dangerous now than ever before. We have ourselves bred them upward. The wheat-fields of mankind have become sallow and over-ripe. Both ''wheat'' and "weeds" have grown up (Mt. XIII.30). The linen- wick of Sodom is still glimmering, the reed of Sodom is not yet broken. From the chalice, which the adulterous "foreign" wives of our fathers' fathers mixed, from which they slurped the frothing mellow- wine of raging Sodomite lust -- from this we must now drink the bitter dregs. The time has come about which the Sibyl (II.154) spoke: "But whenever ... children are born with grey temples from birth, then affliction will overcome mankind; fools who do not notice that when the female of the species no longer gives birth, the harvest of mortal men has come. The time is here! Women cannot, or do not want to, bear healthy children! Those women who would have been suited to have been mothers lament their existences as old maids, the whore gets married and rules over our domestic and public life. The whore in the whorehouse is no sin, there she fulfills her purpose. But the whore in the marriage-bed is the downfall of peoples and states. Pleasure-apes burn down the city (Prov. XXIX.8). We must finally start to "breed humans," The experiments which the landed proprietor Rashatinov performed in Perm had surprising success. As early as the second generation he obtained persons of virtually divine beauty (pol.-anth. Revue, Eisenach). Obviously this example merely concerns Slavic material. What a race we could breed from our Frisians! The kind of force a race can be has been proven by the Boers.

The strictest pure-breeding standards are necessary. We may not cast the pearls before the swine, we have to keep the salt for ourselves (Mk. IX.49).

Obviously the Kingdom of Heaven will be reached through intervention in the sexual life of man. Those of lesser value must be exterminated in a gentle way -- by castration and sterilization (Mt. XIX.12). Origines interpreted this passage literally and castrated himself. This exegesis, proven in practice, is more authoritative to me than that of the present-day pastors. The Jesuits too hold fast to a literal exegesis in their order policies -- and history shows what a gigantic force this idea has. Also the restriction of sexual indulgence is advantageous for spiritual men. To one is given the ability to generate beautiful and good children, to the other to create immortal spiritual works. Women can only make up for the sin of Eve through reasonable love, devoid of its ape-nature. (Tim. II.15). Woman indulged in more Sodomite lust, therefore she must suffer more today -- especially at the hands of the sons of the Sodomite lovers of her mothers.

Adultery by wives and their quite strange preference for lusty, satyr-like -- so-called "interesting men" -- must be obviated as much as possible. "Abstain from lascivious beings." (I Thess. V.22). A precipitin-reaction will make clear to each and every individual how closely or distantly his blood is related to the blood of apes. Bastards are usually physically and culturally poor. Among the Persians when someone commits a crime an investigation is made as to whether he is a bastard. (Her. 1,137). He who is of God cannot sin, while he who is of the beast-men must sin (I Jn. III.8). Juvenile delinquents should be castrated without mercy, or sterilized (by radiation). The invention of a functional sterilization device or agent would be the greatest boon for mankind. I am certainly not against condoms. They should be increasingly distributed. Only noble men alone, men with a heroic way of thinking, who know what it means to raise and support a child, only men who cherish children, only they will then engender children. But those who seek out copulation only for purposes of lascivious enjoyment, the nymphomaniacal baboon she-creatures afraid of birth pains -- they will exterminate themselves, will strangle themselves with the rubber.

All that remain in Zion shall be holy, for the filth of the daughters of Zion and the blood-guiltiness of Jerusalem have been purged away by the fiery blast of judgment.

-- The Prophets of Israel and Their Place in History to the Close of the Eighth Century, B.C., by W. Robertson Smith, LL.D.


Everywhere and always we must protect the institution of marriage, for it is the secure refuge of the race, the warm nest of the young phoenix and the future God-Man. If a man and woman want to love each other without engendering children and they are free, then marriage is not necessary. Marriage is there for the sake of children. Marital fidelity must be required of all women in all circumstances, because adultery on the wife's part adulterates the family. But marital fidelity on the husband's part is also necessary. Marital infidelity by the husband is actually not a sin, but is an act of stupidity that is usually severely punished. because a strong man can barely satisfy one woman. Besides course eroticism plays a subordinate role for a racially pure Germanic husband. He only enjoys coitus when his chosen wife meets all aesthetic requirements and he enjoys it only insofar as he gives his beloved wife the highest enjoyment in this way. As regards women these men are uncommonly choosy -- a worn down shoe, a bad accent, or bad personal habits cause many men to be impotent for women who otherwise possess every possible charm. It is just this characteristic of the man of higher race -- of his being incapable of immediately servicing any and every women -- that must be further developed and expanded in a systematic way so that husbands will only be potent with their own wives, and with all other women they will be impotent in the literal sense.

For the sake of the "Kingdom of Heaven" we must become eunuches. -- As highly as we honor the wife in the family and in the home, we must just as intensely fight against the intrusion of women into public life, because the ultimate outcome of these efforts would be, and to some extent is already, unilateral women's rights, which would make the world into a big brothel in which everything revolves around penises and pussies in a silly and absurd satyrs' orgy while the proper wife, the loyal mother of the house, and the healthy strong troop of children will be mercilessly driven out of the chaste and legitimate home. No one other than those women with their lascivious ape-like natures destroyed the cultures of antiquity and they will bring down our culture as well if men do not stop and think soon.

The adulterous and sensual woman belongs in the whorehouse, the honor of motherhood is withdrawn from her and her name is blotted out of the book of life. Likewise criminals, the mentally ill, or those with hereditary diseases should be prevented from reproducing. If we only allow fit persons to reproduce, the hospitals, prisons and the giant criminal justice system will become superfluous. Pure- breeding is the priority for true disciples of the Logos, who abhor all bastardizing mongrelization as both contrary to law and Godless. (Const. ap. p. 168). Do not drink of "strange" (apeling's) water, drink from your own well (Prov. V.15)! Hold yourself back from the "stranger" (= apeling) (Sibylline Oracles II)! Avoid Sodomy and copulation with the hobgoblins of pleasure, rear your own species (Sib. III,762). Every man should avoid marrying a woman who has whored around a lot if he wants to generate descendents. The male semen has an effect on the woman such that the child, even when it comes from a legitimate father, still inherits characteristics from all those men with whom the wife has had premarital or extramarital intercourse. It is for this reason that the old laws favor marriage with virgins, the privilege of the first-born and draw a sharp distinction between the sexual rights of women and men. Just as different races of men have unequal rights, so too do men and women have unequal rights. The old custom of law which allowed the lord of the manor to sleep with every virgin first proves that the ancients knew that it is the man who is responsible for breeding the race upward.

Dear ladies, tell me honestly, whose wives would you be today if noble men, if god-like Siegfrieds, had not torn you away from the Sodomite monsters, if they had not put you in warm nests, if they had not defended you -- sword in hand -- throughout thousands and thousands of years against Slavs, Mongols, Moors and Turks? Choose between us and those sons of Sodom, have yourselves sexually serviced on the mound of corpses of your husbands who fell in battle -- as so many of your mothers' mothers did! Take them to your husbands' houses, so they can make harem slaves of you, so you can become the mother of a brood of lascivious, bloodthirsty beasts, who know no motherly or wifely love! What woman is today she has become thanks to the sword and power of man. Man wrestled woman from the apes of Sodom, and for this reason she is his property! --

The man must assume leadership in the up-breeding of humanity, the woman must follow him. The man is the head and object of woman; Christ, the future God-Man, is the head and object of man (Eph. V.23; Col. III. 18). Woman still today loves pleasure-apes and makes the effort to breed humanity downward. The so-called "modern woman" of free love finds herself depressed by melancholy and vague longings. She longs for the burning "tender Sodomite pieces of wood," for all those completely wild lascivious beasts. The chalices of Sodom are going into decline, "all have become pieces of wood in their houses," the wells of Sodom are vanquished, for a new, strong human species is growing which seeks something else in a woman other than a diversion for his sexual parts. The modern woman, however, is, fleeing the Germanic man and would rather make children with Slavs and Mediterraneans (E. Key Liebe u. Ehe, p. 468)

A nameless longing is unconsciously driving hysterical women into the churches and to the pastors -- to the one-time groves of lascivious hobgoblins and the one-time temples of the dealers in Sodomite apes. The savage and unbridled human sexual passions are harmful and unhealthy. Husband and wife must get closer to one another and love each other in a cooler way, yet in a way which is all the more spiritual and freer. In the Logia of the Lord it is said: "When you trample the garment of shame with your feet and when the two become one and man is neither man nor woman with his wife, then the kingdom of heaven will he upon us." In the Resurrection there will be no more marriage, humans will once more be angels. i.e. -- hermaphrodites (Mt. XXII.30; the state of bees and ants!). We will no longer generate men by means of carnal intercourse, but rather perhaps by means of radiation. Jesus came to abolish the work of woman (Logia). We will once more become similar to the electrical God-men physically as well -- we shall again become pure Gods. We must take off the dark pelt of the ape and put on the shining breast-plate of the God-Man (Rom. XIII.12). We come from God and to God we will return, that is the great secret of the transmigration of souls, of the process of becoming man, of the suffering, of the death and of the Resurrection, the return, and of the great Supper (Jn. VI.35) of the Gods. Christ is the original-man of the past and the evolved-man of the future, he is the A and the Ω, beginning and end. Women must have themselves "baptized" in the holy temple-well of Siloam, the "waters" of which bubble coolly and softly (Jn. IX.7; Is. VIII.6). Cold Boreas must again sweep through the withered garden of mankind and Nordic blood extinguish the southern ape-rut. (Cant IV.16).

Agape, pure love devoid of any ape-nature, yet love in an entirely sexual sense, is the innermost kernel of the doctrine of Jesus. Only in this way can the otherwise theologically inexplicable pagan portrayals of the lust-filled revels (agape-feasts, Eucharists = love between men and women), cupids, and couples embracing in love found in the catacombs be explained. Our blond-haired baby Jesus is certainly no one other than Bacchus, Cupid and Skeaf! Cupid and Psyche (Fig. 38) are even seen quite often in primitive Christian iconography and between them is usually the basket (kepos) with Sodomite bread which they have refused (while the lascivious naked woman in Fig. 37 cannot separate herself from the Sodomite basket in her lap.

So let us lay off playing the harps of Sodom and play the harps of men (Clemens Al protrept.), so that Apollo's holy swans can return and we can again become a congregation of Gods. German men, play on "human harps," love the strong loyal, Nordic woman in whom the divine electron still slumbers. Knowledge, Gnosis, is very valuable, but more valuable still is love [Ger. Minne] devoid of ape-like nature. Gnosis plants, but Agape builds the house (I. Cor. VIII.1). In Agape all the elect of God will be brought to full maturity (I Clemens Rom. ad Cor. XLIX). We must guard our bodies as temples of God. If we all love [minnen] one another among ourselves we will all come into the Kingdom of God (IT Clemens Rom. ad Cor. IX). Agape is the path that leads us to God (Ignatii ep. ad Ephes. IX). Jesus is Cupid, is Frauja, the Bridegroom of the Soul (Psyche). "God is love devoid of the ape-like nature (agape). He who abides in love devoid of the ape-like nature (Minne), abides in God. and god in him." (I Jn. IV.16).

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels
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Re: Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thou

Postby admin » Tue Oct 27, 2015 1:24 am

Neil deGrasse Tyson mocks ignorant racists: Hairy white people are more like monkeys than black people
Eric W. Dolan
04 AUG 2015 AT 12:08 ET

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Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson speaking on an Australian TV show (Screenshot)

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a science lesson for white supremacists: You and your hairy brethren are more ape-like than black people.

Monday on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Q&A program, Tyson was asked about the racist booing of Australian rules football player Adam Goodes. The vitriol directed at the 35-year-old Indigenous Australian athlete has sparked a debate over racism in the country.

“I’ve got enough race problems in the United States, you know,” Tyson remarked.

“All I could think of — well, I thought about nine things, if you allow me. And what we do in math is you separate the variables and what’s happening is all the variables are jumbled together and people are reacting but if you separate the variables, it can be revealing,” he added.

Goodes, a veteran player for the Sydney Swans, has been jeered by crowds for celebrating goals with an Indigenous dance.

“For example, he is celebrating his score at the end of a game. Correct? I mean, during the game and he does it in a way that’s different from everyone else gesturally and, to me, that’s a form of freedom of expression, a freedom of speech,” Tyson said . “If you don’t like that, at some point you have to confess to yourself you’re not a fan of freedom of speech and so if you are going to do that, that’s a different country from what I understand Australia claims to be. That’s A.”

Tyson also noted that a 13-year-old girl had called Goodes an “ape” — and the science popularizer said the girl must have learned the racist slur from her environment.

“B, it was in another occasion in response to this, a 13 year old girl engages him with a comment,” he said. “If you’re 13 you just don’t say that unless you came from an environment where that’s been said before. That’s really weird. In this, the 21st century, for people to be behaving that way, I’m highly disappointed, if I can say.”

“You know what she’s done, she’s selectively chosen things about apes that she thinks apply to him and not other things that would apply to people who are white. For example, apes have hair all over their bodies. You have never seen a black person with hair all over their bodies. Black people are some of the least hairiest people in this world! Who are the hairiest? It’s white people! With hair on the back, out of the neck. And so if you focussed on hair then you could call white people monkeys, right. It’s all racist conduct.”
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Re: Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thou

Postby admin » Tue Oct 27, 2015 2:01 am

The Coon Caricature: Blacks as Monkeys
by authentichistory.com
7/20/12

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A hateful association between Blacks and monkeys or apes was yet another way that the antebellum South justified slavery. Blacks were considered by some Whites to be more simian than human, and therefore had no self-evident rights, including freedom. After the Civil War, the emancipation of slaves, and passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15 amendments to the Constitution, White bigots used the association to justify Jim Crow laws, and the use of violence, such as the lynching of Blacks who challenged or threatened the status quo. The general acceptance of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin was easily twisted into a means of identifying further "evidence" of the primitive status of Blacks. In the 1878 cartoon to the right, for example, an organ grinder's monkey is attacking a black child. Beneath is the caption, "Southern Scenes--An incident in Richmond, VA--The Darwinian Theory Illustrated". Presumably, the monkey feels that his position is challenged by the child, and he's defending his territory. Meanwhile, a drastically caricatured black man watches with a mirthful look on his face.

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1878 Cartoon

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1900s Postcard

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1900s Postcard

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1907 Postcard

The depiction of Blacks as apes & monkeys found expression in mainstreamed popular culture around the turn of the century, especially in postcards. Often it was the zip or urban coon that was being caricatured, for the amusement of White consumers. Note the simian appearance of the Black Americans in each of the postcards to the left, and how they have been dandified. These images are intended to be ironic, and to cater to the White notion that Black coons are too stupid to understand that their efforts to assimilate into White culture only emphasize their inherent inferiority.

Throughout much of the 20th century, depictions of Blacks as apes and monkeys was only slightly more subtle. The coon caricature in film is discussed in another section, but generally Blacks were depicted in such a way as to blur the line between audience identification of them as humans and as monkeys. Direct associations were more often made in the overtly racist pop culture which targeted a niche consumer. For example, in the 1960s, a recording artist named Johnny Rebel produced a series of 45 rpm records on a Louisiana label, with lyrics like, "America for white. Africa for black. Send those apes back to the trees. Ship those niggers back." The association between Blacks and monkeys was also popular in the various "Nigger Joke" books that proliferated throughout the 1900s.

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1907: The Little Nigs of Tiny Town comic strip

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Cartoon: Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat, 1941

Much of the anti-Black ape association was directed toward Black celebrities, especially athletes, and it was often done outside of mainstream pop culture. Jackie Robinson, famous for integrating major league baseball in 1947, often was the victim of racial taunts. In one incident, visiting Cardinals manager Eddie Stanky mocked an injured Robinson by performing a limping ape routine in the visitors dug-out. He grunted, hooted and scratched his armpits. Such epithets directed against standout Black athletes were still happening late into the century. A 1983 Time magazine article describes how then Georgetown basketball standout Patrick Ewing was often confronted by fans of the opposing teams who waved ape banners and threw bananas on the floor.

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Cartoon of Michael Jordan as an Ape

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Photoshopped Image: Evolution: from peeling bananas to busting caps (using Patrick Ewing photo)

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Comparison of Patrick Ewing and a Gorilla, from totallylookslike.com website

The cartoon at left, also from the 1980s, is an ape caricature of superstar Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan, considered by many to be the greatest athlete to ever play the game. And in 2011, a fan threw a banana peel at Philadelphia Flyers' forward Wayne Simmonds during a fall preseason game. Simmonds is one of the few Blacks in the professional ranks of the predominantly White sport. The advent of the Internet has provided a new forum for the creation and distribution of racist imagery, as evidenced by the images at left.

In 2000, a children's electronic speller called V-tech Alphabert came under criticism when some parents realized the suggestive nature of the first three letters of the alphabet when played in sequence. "A" is for Ant and Ape, "B" is for black, "C" is for crack. V-tech claimed they selected the sequence for phonetic reasons. When the company received numerous complaints and negative media coverage, they changed newer versions of the toys. Those already on the market remained. The item at far right is a T-shirt showing an urban ape dressed in hip-hop clothes, with a gold chain, gold front teeth, a boom box, and a can of spray paint. The item is provocatively suggestive, yet subtle enough to pass the scrutiny of most Americans.

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This electronic speller came under criticism when some parents realized the suggestive nature of the first three letters of the alphabet when played in sequence. "A" is for Ant and Ape, "B" is for black, "C" is for crack. V-tech claimed they selected the sequence for phonetic reasons. When the company received numerous complaints and negative media coverage, they changed newer versions of the toys. Those already on the market remained. Press play to listen to the sound this item makes.
V-tech Alphabert, 2000


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Monkey Rapper T-Shirt, c.2007

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Anti-Obama T-shirt, 2008 campaign

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Anti-Obama Button, 2008 campaign

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Anti-Obama T-shirt, 2008 campaign

Anti-Black Monkey imagery came back into the open during the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama. Several T-shirts and buttons were created and openly sold on the auction website eBay depicting Obama as a banana-eating monkey. Another mocked the candidate as a lower form of evolution. And this imagery continued to proliferate on the Internet after Obama's election. Though many Americans wanted to believe his election victory was a sign that the country had entered a "post-racial" era, the racist imagery associating the President with apes, and as a chicken and watermelon eating coon suggest otherwise. In fact, several public incidents have linked the proliferation of these images to elected officials in the Republican Party. One specific episode involving anti-Black monkey imagery happened in April 2011. A Tea activist and Orange County Republican Party official Marilyn Davenport made headlines when it was revealed that she had sent out an email with the President depicted as the offspring of chimpanzees. The text of the email read, "Now you know why no birth certificate." She claimed to have not thought about the "historic implications" of the image, despite the fact that she had earlier defended a fellow Orange County Republican for having sent out an image of the White House lawn as a watermelon patch with the message, "No Easter egg hunt this year."

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Photoshopped Image: Obama as Chimpanzee

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Photoshopped Image of Michelle Obama, 2009

Unfortunately, this racist imagery has not been restricted to the president. In November 2009, a photoshopped, racist image of First Lady Michelle Obama made international news. There were, and are plenty of racist images on the Internet of Mr. and Mrs. Obama. What made this particular image such a big story was that it ranked first on Internet giant Google's image search page. Google issued an explanation that was about as complicated as the search algorithm they blamed, and banned the image's host from search results because the site violated Google's policy on spreading malicious software. When the image resurfaced on another site, Google displayed the image with a disclaimer. The image also reappeared on at least one blog, in which the author questioned why it was unacceptable to caricature the First Lady in this way, and yet it seemed to be acceptable that President George W. Bush was likewise caricatured. He re-presented numerous monkey comparisons of President Bush, including the collage of comparisons re-presented to the right. The blogger was attempting to justify racism using a variation on one of the common excuses, that it's okay to stereotype one group if others are likewise being stereotyped. The images associating President Bush with monkeys are distasteful and disrespectful. But they were not done to stereotype an entire race of human beings. Rather, they are an expression of anger toward the president's conservative policies, including having chosen a war in Iraq which many Americans ultimately came to find unwarranted and mismanaged. And they were created to express frustration and disbelief that a man who, to them, seems so obviously dimwitted, could be twice elected President. These images of President Bush are ugly and personal. But they were not used to systematically discriminate against White Americans for several hundred years. Images like the one created of Michelle Obama, who holds no elected office and has no real impact on public policy, are directed towards an entire race, and they were used to justify slavery, to solidify the de facto second class citizen status imposed on Blacks after the Civil War by Jim Crow laws, and to discriminate against Black Americans economically. To claim that the imagery is equal is to negate these hundreds of years of American history. It is not equal. Ironically, this blog quickly drew in White Supremacists, who proceeded to completely undermine the blogger's original premise by unabashedly engaging in racist, hate-filled rants about the First Family in the comments section.

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Photoshopped collage comparing President George W. Bush to Monkeys, c.2006

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Photoshopped Image: Obama as Monkey

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Photoshopped Image: Obama as Monkey

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Photoshopped Image of President Obama

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New York Post cartoon comparing President Obama, and Black victims of police shootings, to apes

In February 2009, the New York Post published a provocative political cartoon. Two officers, one with a smoking revolver in hand, stood over the corpse of an ape they had just gunned down on the street. The ape, eyes open, tongue hanging out, several bullet holes in his torso, lay on his back in a large, splattered pool of his own blood. One cop is shown saying to the other, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." While the cartoon was published in the wake of a high profile killing of a chimpanzee in Connecticut that had mauled its owner, the political nature of the caption, and common knowledge of the all-too-familiar incidents of police shootings of Black suspects, caused many to immediately recognize the old anti-Black monkey stereotype. And it seemed to be aimed squarely at President Obama. Some even wondered if the cartoon was advocating such violence against the President. To say that the paper's apology/explanation left many viewers dissatisfied is an understatement. And other examples of anti-Black monkey association continue to pop up. In 2009 a "Cuddle With Me" black doll was released, packaged with a monkey and wearing a hat that read, "Lil Monkey". These dolls were sold at Costco stores and were pulled from the shelves after the chain received complaints from consumers.

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Cuddle With Me Black Doll with Monkey & Hat that reads, "Lil' Monkey", 2009

All too often, the White perpetrators of these incidents claim to be ignorant of the history. Studies show that only about 8% of White Americans claim to be aware of the history of the association between Blacks and apes. Whether or not this is true, some disturbing research released in 2009 clearly shows a high level of subconscious engagement with this association. The research was conducted by Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford associate professor of psychology, Pennsylvania State University psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff (the lead author and a former student of Eberhardt’s) and Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J. Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively. Their studies of mostly White male undergraduates revealed that just a second of "priming" the subjects with images of the words "ape" and "gorilla" (shown too fast to consciously register) caused them to, when watching videos of police brutality, justify the level of violence used against the suspect when they were led to believe the suspect was black. When they were led to believe the suspect was White, there was much less rationalizing of the amount of force used by police. In all, six studies were included in this research. The results strongly indicate that White Americans, who aren't particularly prejudiced, subconsciously associate blacks and monkeys. The researchers believe this association is held in place through "implicit knowledge," the result of a lifetime of conditioning via the long history of stereotyped anti-Black imagery that depicts Blacks as less than human.
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Re: Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thou

Postby admin » Tue Oct 27, 2015 2:34 am

Enough with stereotyping black people as monkeys!
By Siji Jabbar
March 26, 2014

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— A Belgian newspaper portrays President Obama and his wife as apes and we are shocked. But this is not an isolated incident; it’s business as usual. Until we open our eyes, we will remain a long way from living in a “post-racial” world.

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Surprised by this? You shouldn't be. The De Morgen photoshopped image is just par for the course.

In case you haven’t heard, we live in a post-racial world, one in which we no longer even need racial discrimination laws because everyone knows employers in America, Europe, South Africa, Namibia, – basically anywhere there are white people – don’t even consider the race of applicants when hiring, not even at a sub-conscious level, and especially not at executive levels.

In this post-racial world, any white girl can introduce her black boyfriend to her parents and he’d be welcomed with open arms.

In this same post-racial world, parents of white kids don’t even notice and start to draw up a shortlist of “better” schools when they notice that the percentage of black pupils at their kid’s school has risen to 10 per cent.

Of course in such a world, no one ever suspects a black boy walking through a “white” neighbourhood of being a threat, even if he is wearing a hoodie.

Meanwhile, police forces everywhere gave up on racial profiling ages ago when they finally listened to black critics of racial profiling and understood how pointless and racist the practice was.

And newspapers are now just as likely to refuse to print photographs of dead black bodies as they are of white bodies, because as we all learned long ago that this is a dehumanising insult, regardless of race.

The best evidence of this post-racial world? A black man is the president of America, the highest office in the world!

Don’t recognise this world? Then you need to step into the world of De Morgen, the supposedly liberal Belgian newspaper that published the photoshopped image of Obama and his wife as apes. Because in apologising for posting that image, the newspaper offered the excuse that their mistake was in thinking we live in a post-racial world, one in which it’s okay to joke about racism.

I laughed the first time a white person told me we live in a post-racial world. It was just after Obama first became president and I thought the man was joking. On realising he meant what he said, I thought, Oh, God. Does this mean some of the white people celebrating now aren’t doing so because a brilliant man had become president, and the fact that he was black was the chink of light we so desperately needed to feel there was some hope for humankind after all, but rather because they were relieved they could carry on oppressing and stereotyping black people without feeling guilty? Did anyone think for a second that feminists the world over could now consider the world free of sexism and the oppression of women when Margaret Thatcher was elected UK Prime Minister? I’m sure the people who now pretend we live in a post-racial world wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it’s now open season on Jews. After all, the holocaust was such a long time ago and see how well Jewish people are doing!

Likening black people to monkeys

For any younger readers unaware of the history of racism, likening black people to apes is an old and effective way of conveying the idea that white people are higher up on the evolutionary chain than black people, who must be at the lowest rung because they are closer to apes. That most of us understand this to be a complete misunderstanding of Darwin’s theory of evolution doesn’t matter. The preposterous suggestion works on the idea that there’s no smoke without fire. It’s also effective because enough people (both black and white) really do think black people are closer to apes than white people, having been conditioned to think that way.

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The negro as just one of the monkeys

It also gives permission to supposedly smart people like Nobel Prize winner James Watson to keep trying to demonstrate that black people are inherently less intelligent than white people, an endeavour that also has a long history (see the Wikipedia page on “Scientific racism”). After all, everyone already knows black people are closer to apes, right?

Not just Belgium

This De Morgen incident happened in Belgium, but could have happened anywhere. Italy’s Roma football club fans think it’s okay to throw bananas and make monkey sounds at Milan’s star black player, Mario Balotelli, who was born to Ghanaian parents. White employers rejecting black applicants because they are black only come to light when someone slips up, as was the case when an email intended for the owner of a Dutch company was mistakenly sent to the applicant himself. The latter incident is a reminder that many instances of racism these days are buried under layers of politeness. As T. F. Pettigrew wrote already in 1999, modern racism is often characterised by an explicit rejection of stereotypes, combined with resistance to changing structures of discrimination for reasons that are ostensibly non-racial.

So rather than blame the Belgians (although we’ll come to them in a minute), the problem is with the media and their stereotypical representations of black people, including black Africans, and especially the way black people are portrayed in contrast to white people. The De Morgen picture is merely a more obvious version of what happens all the time. Their mistake was in making it that obvious.

We must remember that any stereotypes white people have of black people in general are usually multiplied when they consider black Africans. The stereotypes absolve people of the guilt of seeing and treating black people as having less intrinsic value than whites. It always has, hence its long history.

The media’s everyday stereotyping of black people

The way the media portrays people of different races influences the way we generally think of ourselves and people of other races. Same goes for the way women are portrayed in comparison to men. It’s obvious, but we easily forget. Thus representations are hugely important and very powerful.

If you happen to spend some time in Europe or America and a black face happens to pop up in a TV news story. Unless he or she is an entertainer or sportsperson, how likely is it that the story is about something positive that black person has done (bearing in mind that news isn’t what just happens but what the media chooses to report)?

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Why would newspapers choose to use the image of Idi Amin if not to reinforce the rumour of cannibalism? And who better for bloggers to use to reinforce the fried-chicken-eating stereotype than Obama?

Hollywood is the world’s most powerful disseminator of images, creating beliefs and influencing people everywhere, albeit at a sub-conscious level. Look at most mainstream Hollywood movies and observe which roles are typically played by white actors, still, and which by black actors. Don’t be blinded by the “Magical Negro” roles, such as that played by Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty or Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix Reloaded.

Traditionally, black people – especially black men – were portrayed by Hollywood as innately savage and physically strong, uncivilised, animalistic (like apes), violent, hypersexual, destructive, anti-social, a danger to white society (especially white women who black men want to rape), and criminal – deserving control, incarceration, punishment, and sometimes death.

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The black brute stereotype today. Vogue’s Lebron James cover.

Or they were portrayed as childlike, harmless, ignorant, docile and grovelling, and given roles that helped convey the ‘benevolent master-harmless and amusing servant’ relationship.

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Hattie McDaniel as the harmless black mammy in "Gone With the Wind"

Such portrayals were instrumental in justifying slavery and soothing the conscience of white people; since they are childlike, the thinking went, slavery is an act of mercy, a moral and humane act. Today, the threats-to-society portrayals help in justifying all kinds of racist and discriminatory acts, from racial profiling and the disproportionate incarceration of black people in any country where black people live with a majority white population to turning someone down for a job because they happen to be black. So when white people think of Africans, especially Africans who haven’t had the benefit of being “civilised” by living among – or at least close to – white people, we shouldn’t be surprised that they often think only of AIDS, war, barbarity, poverty, violence, etc.

These days, Hollywood has to be a bit more subtle in its portrayals, but it doesn’t even matter much anymore whether the black actor is actually playing a sympathetic character or a fool. What matters is that he looks aggressive or violent, or capable of violence, or has had his nuts cut off so he’s a harmless negro, or that he more of a slave to his emotions and less intelligent than the white “hero,” à la Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Soloman Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) in Blood Diamond.

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Michael Clarke Duncan as the “Magical Negro in "The Green Mile"

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Djimon Hounsou plays a sympathetic character in “Blood Diamond”, but his character is also written as naïve, emotionally-driven and in need of help from the white “hero” played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Hollywood is not alone

Newspapers, magazines and advertising agencies are also complicit in the portraying black people as animalistic or devil-like, and therefore less human than white people, who are pure, kind, caring, intelligent and the saviours of black people.

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Not sure what sort of “uniting” message Benetton was trying to send with this 1982 billboard ad, but one can guess what impression it left in people’s minds.

Hollywood and the media only have to chip in occasionally with a negative or loaded portrayal of a black person to stoke the fires. The white public will run with the baton every time, creating their own images to reinforce their beliefs, and some might not even understand what they are doing.

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Black people look like Apes because they have Ape DNA in them.

A larger version of the Patrick Ewing-Ape side-by-side had as its caption: “From peeling bananas to busting caps.”

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A Tea Party member (Marilyn Davenport) attached this image depicting Obama and his parents as chimpanzees to an email she sent Orange County Republicans in 2011.

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Two of the stereotypical black images used last year by North Chicago Police in one of their brochures. On the left, comedian Dave Chappelle's character Tyrone Biggums, the stumbling junkie with crack residue around his mouth.

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Is it any wonder then that some white people today are blinded by stereotypes when they think of black people, and especially black Africans?

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And should we be surprised that white people think nothing of using black Africans as backdrops to their lives, as in this image?

It is a privilege of white people to either not notice the everyday stereotyping of black people – ignorance is bliss and it helps maintain the status quo – or to pretend that it doesn’t matter because it’s all just “harmless” fun or a “joke”, but that is not a privilege black people anywhere can afford, African or otherwise.

White-approved black people

The world of entertainment (sports, music, film, dance) might be heavily populated with black people, but ask any black person in Europe or America and they will tell you not to be fooled. The white world is still only comfortable with a particular sort of “well-spoken” (by their standards), influential, preferably wealthy black person, the sort who they see as hardly black at all.

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White approved blacks
White Approved Icons -- Western House Boys and Girls


Other white-approved black people include Jay Z, Drake, Beyoncé, Halle Berry, Will Smith, Bill Cosby, Mohammed Ali in his current incarnation (but definitely not when he was in good health and defiant), Denzel Washington (although his proud bearing, the knowing look in his eye even when he chuckles and the memory of his fierce portrayal of Malcolm X in the Spike Lee joint still makes some white people nervous. Incidentally, it was a fortunate thing for Spike Lee that Malcolm’s story did not play out in an exclusively black world, because studios know that most white people do not go to “black” movies. According to Andre Seewood writing in Shadow and Act, this is because most white people lack the empathy necessary to identify with black characters, which in turn affects their ability to “suspend disbelief” and surrender to the narrative of a “black” film. It’s a real enough phenomenon to have a sociological name: the Racial Empathy Gap. It wasn’t merely for his obvious talents as a director that Hollywood picked Steven Spielberg to direct The Color Purple. With an almost exclusively black cast, Spielberg’s name acted as reassurance to the white audience. Furthermore, when a movie features a predominantly black cast, white audiences tend to automatically assume the film is about race. As Olivia Cole writing in The Huffington Post concluded, it’s hard for white audiences to “see black people as beings separate from their blackness.”).

Belgium

Belgium’s history with Africa is a horror show. If you’re not aware of this history, Google “Belgium”, “genocide” and “Congo”. It’s not for nothing that Belgium’s King II (1835-1909) is sometimes referred to as the Butcher of Congo. Not by the Belgians, obviously, who apparently still consider him some sort of hero.

If you think that all happened such a long time ago that it can’t possibly have any bearing on Belgian society and Belgian thinking today, one visit to the country’s Museum for Central Africa will disabuse you of this notion.

And, notwithstanding the racist attitudes and colonial behaviour of the Belgian peacekeepers (the “backbone” of UNAMIR) in Rwanda in 1994, the eventual betrayal of the Rwandans by the Belgians is still a fresh enough reminder that when push comes to shove, black African lives are seen as having less value than white lives. [The first chapter of A People Betrayed is online here, and Rwandan stories is here]. (The French, British, Americans and the Roman Catholic Church also have blood on their hands for what happened.)

What’s this got to do with stereotypical portrayals of black people? The images help desensitise white people to the humanity and equal intrinsic value of black people.

Of course not all Belgians are racist (just as not all white Americans, French, British, Dutch, etc. are racist), but they do live in a society that permits racism without consequence – the De Morgen incident for instance – especially racism against black people.

The multi-award winning Nigerian author Chika Unigwe lived and wrote in Belgium for years before recently emigrating to the US. It is her we have to thank for bringing this incident to the world’s attention via a tweet. Based on her experience of life in Belgium, we asked her to give us ten insights into Belgian society today to help us understand why the newspaperman could have thought it was okay to portray the Obama’s in such a racist manner. Check Chika’s Twitter conversations over the last 2 days and you’ll see that she could easily have written 20.

1. Zwarte Piet is a national treasure. Human golliwogs, aka Sinterklaas’ helpers, parade the streets on December 6th and hardly anybody thinks this is wrong.
2. There are still statues of King Leopold II – mutilator of the Congo – in different parts of Belgium.
3. The N word is an acceptable way of describing blacks because “etymologically, it means black”.
4. “We are not all n***s that all we do is nod” is an acceptable phrase in use “because it refers to the bobbing black heads which were very popular in the 60’s”.
5. N***tieten (N***tits) and N***zoenen (N***kisses) are two types of candy.
6. Race does not exist in the world of white privilege. Or rather only white race exists in the world of white privilege.
7. Racist jokes are okay because Belgium isn’t racist.
8. Nationality is tied to skin color which is why non-whites, born and raised in Belgium are “allochtonen.” You can never cross over and become “autochtoon.”
9. It is okay for a policeman to walk into a launderette where three black women are quietly doing laundry and ask for their identity cards. He can ignore all white customers because their skin color exonerates them from being harassed.
10. It is a polarised world. The newspaper editor/ columnist has probably never had a black colleague; has probably never been to a black doctor; has probably never been to a PTA meeting at his child’s school and met with a black teacher. His world is white. It does not mix with the black world. Another point of view i.e. that he might offend the sensibilities of black people does not come into play.


Maulana Karenga, African-American professor of Africana Studies, has argued that racism constitutes the destruction of culture, language, religion and human possibility, and that the effects of racism are “the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples.”

It truly does damage relations between us, which is just one of the reasons the Obama incident cannot just be dismissed as a satirical joke. And another reason why the media needs to stop this dehumanising bullshit immediately, and stop pretending it’s harmless.

But we, black people, also need to open our eyes to the everyday portrayals that convey the idea that we are in any way less than whites, because that’s where most of the damage is being done.

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Malcolm X
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