DID YOU KNOW?

By Maryam Sani

Human zoos existed in the 19th and 20th century- we apparently did live like our distant cousins.

Human zoos otherwise known as ethnological expositions were exhibitions where people from different ethnic orientations namely the African, Inuit, Javanese, Indian, ceylonese and other non-european countries were displayed for the entertainment of colonizers. Colonizers on discovery of these civilizations which were very different from their’s sort to exploit, rather than understand or appreciate them leading to the creation of human zoos. The colonizers captured, bought, leased or hired natives from their “primitive” habitat and brought them to world fairs such as the ones held in France, Germany, America, Spain, England and Switzerland to be criticized and made fun of.

These world fairs are said to have gathered an audience of about two billion paying customers, who gathered to watch as the “exhibits”, as they were called, dance In their traditional attires, and go about reenacting certain aspects of their daily lives as they lived them in their native land. Their enclosures were make shift replicas of their indigenous homes, they were made to wear their primary traditional attires with no added coverings even when the weather was at freezing temperatures.

This constituted a problem because, the native wears the “exhibits” wore were mainly animal skin offering coverage to their private areas and nothing more. These people lived under different climatic conditions some more humid than others, making their traditional clothes to suit their weather. As a result, when they were moved to colder countries records of “exhibits” dying due to their systems ill welcome of the drastic change in climate were made.

Human zoos didn’t operate like museums do, the audience didn’t pay to admire the differences in human genetics, or cultural norms or dress style or life style, no! They paid to make themselves feel better. Human zoos were built purely on the backbone of the idea of white supremacy. Human zoos were built solely to propagate and encourage racist and supremacist ideologies. Organizers of these zoos cut out selected activities or techniques used in carrying out certain tasks to minimize the similarities the “exhibits” shared with the westerners, in fears that it might bring about a sense of sameness in the minds of the viewers, making their activities wrong. The idea that they were sensitizing their customers on nature’s “anomalies” made the pill of them treating humans like animals easier to swallow.

Instead of being like museums, human zoos operated just like circuses did, where paying customers came to laugh and make fun of the clowns and acts they performed. But in this case, the clowns were people of very different genetic compositions in their native attires, while their “acts” were traditional dances and reenactment of their “daily” routine.

These activities were so common that in 1906 the Bronx zoo in New York, put a teenage African boy in the same enclosure with a monkey. This was done to highlight the “candid” similarities between “less evolved” humans shared with animals. These exhibitions were created to emphasize the superiority of the western culture, rather than understanding and appreciating the diversity that characterizes the world.