Posted on 03/21/2016 9:26:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
ONE HUNDRED years ago yesterday, Ota Benga killed himself.
His story is beyond horrific. In early 1906, eugenicists and racial anthropologists at the Bronx Zoological Gardens encouraged Ota—an African Pygmy—to play in a cage with a monkey. The thousands witnessing the display did not see a man. They saw “the missing link.”
A black minister, James H. Gordon, protested: “Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes …We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.”
The New York Times disagreed, insisting that Ota Benga was a lesser human:
“It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies…are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place…from which he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.”
Unable to cope with his treatment at the hands of racists, Ota Benga ended his life ten years later on March 20, 1916.
Sadly, we have a long history of defining people out of existence who don’t look like us. A little over a century ago, many Whites thought it unthinkable that anyone would consider Blacks human beings. Consider this example from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where Huck contrives a story to explain to Aunt Sally his late arrival by boat:
“We blowed out a cylinder head.”
“Good gracious! Anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”
Notice it’s simply assumed the Black man is not one of us.
We're still assuming, only the victim class has changed. In her recent book Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, feminist Katha Pollitt writes that abortion “is a good thing for society” because it’s “good for everyone” if women only have the children they want. Are the unborn members of that society? And does “everyone” include the unborn? Notice Pollitt simply assumes the unborn are not included in the human family.
Though dismissive of embryos as “pea-sized,” “lentil-sized,” and “shrimp-like,” Pollitt eventually concedes their humanity on pg.68: “Obviously, a fertilized egg is human—it isn’t a feline or canine—and it’s alive and it is a being in the sense that it exists.” But, like The New York Times of yesteryear, she does not think all humans are equal. Embryos fail to qualify because they are too small (“the size of a pea”), too undeveloped, can’t think or feel, can’t communicate, aren’t conscious, aren’t self-aware, don’t look like children, and don’t function like the rest of us.
But why is self-awareness, the ability to communicate, or body size value-giving to Pollitt any more than white skin was value-giving to Ota Benga’s critics? Suppose we pick self-awareness as decisive. Why shouldn’t those with more of that characteristic have a greater right to life than those with less—born or unborn? After all, development does not end at birth. As for appearance, human value does not turn on what an entity looks like, but what it is. John Merrick (Elephant Man) didn’t look human but undoubtedly was, while mannequins may look human but aren’t remotely so. Admittedly, an early embryo doesn’t look like an adult, but it does look exactly as a developing human should look like at that stage of development. Put simply, our intuitions can be mistaken. We must examine them in light of reason.
Philosopher Richard Stith suggests a thought experiment for rethinking our intuitions about the early embryo. Imagine you are on a Mexican safari in pre-digital days and you’ve got a Polaroid Camera. For those of you under 50, a Polaroid Camera was an awkward looking device that, once you shot a picture, would spit it out allowing you to watch it develop before your eyes—usually in about 90 seconds. At just the right moment, you captured a picture of a Black Jaguar leaping across the trail in front of you. Black Jags are almost never photographed, but you got it! While you are waiting for the picture to emerge, I rip the camera from your hands and tear up the emerging picture. Will you be angry? Suppose I replied, “That’s not a picture. It’s just a brown smudge on a piece of paper!” Will that satisfy you? Never! You’d rightly point out, “The picture of the jaguar was already there. We just couldn’t see it yet!”
Likewise, you were already there from the beginning. We just couldn’t see you.
Ota Benga, RIP.
Townhall has to go back 100 years to find an example supporting its thesis?
These people would be known as Evolutionists, Darwinists and Southern DemocRATS.
No, I don’t think they “had” to go back 100 years. The news hook was just that it was 100 years since this unfortunate man’s death.
You would prefer that they posit that M&M commercials enjoin sentients consuming other sentients? /sarcasm
But at any rate I think I can see what may be the specific inspiration: a specific pigmy, a small black person, whose humanity was (in recorded American history) despised by Americans, is being held out as someone who suffered prejudice compared to attitudes about the unborn.
But this is not just about prejudice suffered by little people, but about black persons. Recall that abortion has been a particular scourge of the black community, in ways the old KKK could never contemplate simply for being voluntary.
Crafting a presentation towards the black community, without vilifying those black persons who have not valued their own posterity and have as a consequence killed them, seems to have been a goal, something reinforced by the use of a literary example of not valuing black lives.
As for going back a century, it is likely that reading about that event led to writing this article. IOW we should consider it likely that someone read about this pigmy and from that made a connection with a modern phenomenon they were actively concerned about.
If that seems reasonable then why not go back a hundred years to find an example supporting this thesis?
Or would you rather it be used as a preface to decrying how pigmies are sometimes preyed upon by some superstitious pagans in Africa?
(yes, I actually did manage to tie in the first sarcastic comment because, sadly, there is actually crazy **** going on in the Congo and maybe it occasionally needs mentioning too)
Foul ball. The author is quoting without explanation one of Mark Twain's more incisive criticisms of American attitudes of those times, cast in raised relief. The quoted character is a foil.
It would be fair use of Twain had the author squared up with us first; but not squaring with people is a hallmark of 21st-century political discourse, isn't it?
I would prefer that early 20th Century behavior be judged by early 20th Century standards. I would prefer that 21st Century standards be applied to 21st Century behavior. Where this understanding first came to my consciousness involved the use of 7th Century Christian behavior to justify 21st Century Islamic Terrorism.
This caused me to realize that mixing eras is a common propagandist tool, used innocently or ignorantly nearly as often as intentionally, but a tool just the same, and therefore to be viewed suspiciously.
I’m not suggesting that mixing eras should not be used as a contrast, but its use must be widely advertised and used openly.
Sorry, but if you judge your society in light of your society you end up with no functioning reference standard at all, just a slippery slope.
It’s how the looney left of the 70s and 80s now dares call itself mainstream so that the only thing left of the old extreme left are the few proud Communist and other nutters.
What it means to be Man does not change.
Which is precisely why things said even thousands of years ago are often not only valid in their meaning but are frequently far more humane and true than any the post-modern slop shoveled out in schools these days.
That is why it is so important that a contrast be clearly noted and outlined, with no confusion. Recent events (very recent) in Brussels bear this out, where many would like to confuse 7th Century standards with 21st Century behavior.
Contrary to what many seem to imagine those really calling the shots for the terrorists are actually entirely lucid as they wage Jihad to advance Islamic Law. They are just lucid about adherence to a belief system that is of Satanic origin, and which apes the genuine to prosper the false (an intentionally broken clock will still be correct every once and a while).
(Ironically, if the legend sometimes asserted about Mohammad and his angel is more than just a story spread about Islam by those outside of Islam, the very first abrogation might be said to be when he listened to his wife and went back to give what he'd previously run from as a demon a second hearing)
In the meantime in the genteel West, at least where plagued by political correctness and all things post modern, we find folks who are not simply and predictably unsure of what, if anything, their civilization stands for (there being no truth in the minds of many) that it might effectively fight back against the Jihadis off of the battlefield — aside from some amorphous defense of all that is licentious, libertine and even perverted.
So as one wages Civilization Jihad from the battlefield to the courthouse the other essentially disarms itself under the influence of some within it.
So what are we honestly going to contrast with the Jihadist to rally the troops around? Murdering tens of millions of our own children? Economic theory or notions of governmental responsibility as expressed by ever more bat **** crazy lunatics? A hazy vague sense of entitlement as we pat ourselves on the back that we are okay chaps by the measure of the okay chaps we see around us ... who don't get all prudish, homophobic, islamophobic, or stuff like that there? A culture that get nervous about any Christ more demanding than Buddy Christ or any God more holy than a grandfather in his senile dotage?
I fully realize that you probably don't fall in with that crowd I just described but at least admit it that those nut-burgers are out trying to rule the culture and they aren't gonna stop just because Jihadis are running amuck too.
This lot I'm talking about has, through culture war, been remarkably successful in shaming down by their flapgumable emotive whining what they cannot outmaneuver through either rhetorical abuses or appeals to entitlement, spattering rhetoric and entitlement to side line what they cannot arrogate or get people to dumb down, all the while nullifying and dumbing down whatever they can truly get their hands on (there's a reason why Bill Ayers went into teaching teachers).
The core Jihadists know all about those sorts of folks, they count on them, and it plays no small part of why they can advance Islamic Law off the battlefield on their backs.
Yes, they probably don't think that they're working to disarming anyone who might effectively resist the Jihadis, but because anyone who truly can, or rather who would actually try, will very likely to be seen as intolerant, even if just by presuming to fight for a civilization (that's nothing special) against others (that, generically speaking, are equally valid) ... that such (the intolerant) are to be opposed by them, that is why they exactly what they end up as undeclared allies of their worst possible enemies.
In their presence you have to labor to maintain even a We vs They, never mind an actual contrast between what a culture may be rooted in.
Let us begin by not confusing 7th Century behavior with 21st Century behavior and pretending both may be judged by the same standards. The contrast you seem to be seeking will not be served by any such judgments.
I must confess, however, that I did not understand the values that you hold so dear as you do.
Obviously, you oppose the same forces as do I. I am sorry for your pain, and I apologize for my failure of understanding.
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