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Spectacle

the Astonishing Life of Ota Benga
Jun 30, 2018ABou1391 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Loved the style of this book. Half narrative of Obenga's incredibly tragic life half history of Leopold's genocide at the turn of the 20th century in the Congo and history of post reconstruction Jim Crow America. The book itself takes place in an interesting time and frames of shifting white supremacist values of the time more accurately than many things I've read. You see the dying of the old southern confederation racism. That is the politics of groups like the KKK, and their dream of re-enslavement and a return to the antebellum American South. This contrasts with the scientific white supremacy of the founders of modern zoological and anthropology. Men like Madison Grant (the man who internationalized the racist pseudoscience of "Eugenics" and deeply influenced the worldview of early Nazism and Hitler himself) to Henry Ford all the way to TDR had a hand in the capture and display of this man zoo's and fairs all throughout America. At a time when these politics are rearing their ugly head again this book gives a clear and disturbing picture about the world those ideas were born in.