Written by LIE Guest Contributor Lisa Wade; Originally published at Sociological Images
The West has a long history in which Black and African people were stereotyped as more in touch with nature and more like animals than White and European people. This elision still haunts us, and Sasha H. sent in a link to an example. To be fair, I went through several pages of Google search results and found only two instances of this particular mistake, but I thought it was worth pointing out as a cautionary tale.
Sasha’s link was to an amusement-focused website called Silly Village. They posted a series of photographs of a little girl, named Tippi Degré, who was born to wildlife photographers in Namibia, where she grew up. The photos are of her with lots of animals and the set of photos is titled “Young Girl Life with Wild Animals.” The thing is, though, two of the photos do not include animals, but include only her and local Africans, no animals at all:
I found this same mistake at a more serious source, one that should have editors who are more careful than this, The Telegraph. The story, titled “The Real-Life Mowgli who Grew Up with Africa’s Wild Animals,” includes a slideshow introduced with this language:
A remarkable range of pictures in a new book show Tippi Degre — a French girl labelled the ‘real-life Mowgli’ — growing up with wild animals.
But the slideshow includes the following three images, again conflating African animals with African people:
If this happened rarely, it could be chocked up to a random mistake, but this conflation is actually rather ubiquitous. We’ve posted on this many times. Here are three choice posts: animalizing women of color, Africa is wild and you can be too, and choosing girls of color for animal costumes.
Also, OMG riding an ostrich.
In addition to labeling the African people as scenery/wildlife, they are erasing the lives they share with the actual animals around them. The “child growing up with wild animals, WOW!” narrative is extraordinary largely because the child is white. There’s at least one young child in addition to Tippi in photo 2 of 3 above, and presumably all the adults there were children at one point as well; they all grew up with the same wildlife…
I am honestly having a little bit of trouble processing this, though — browsing through the Silly Village just left me with, “is that young child seriously STANDING on a CROCODILE?”
Interesting stuff! The association of “the natives” as being “more in touch” with nature is an old one- shades of the well-known “noble savage” meme of Western lore. I don’t see the 3 pics displayed though as conflating African people with animals. Rather it points to the standard “going native” fantasy of whites, and of obtaining a special place amongst “the natives.” The girl with the elephants and ostrich plays upon Kipling’s Mowgli theme, and touch upon the “Tarzan” meme as well. She is special, because she is white.
I think also you have to be careful to look at African peoples in context, even in the well-meaning task of attacking white supremacy. The San tribesmen on pic#2 are not associated with animals in any meaningful sense. It is the girl “going native” and thus “natives” have to be in the picture. It should be noted however than the San are hunters par excellance. The make their living primarily by hunting and gathering, although the modern “civilized” world has reduced this way of life. Associating with animals is part and parcel of the San heritage. There is nothing “romantic” about it. For example upon killing an antelope they beg forgiveness of the animal, affirming that they extinguished its life to provide food, and honoring the animal. This is a part of their religious outlook. Now, assorted Europeans have transformed this into a stereotypical type of noble savage theme, but to the San this has little relevance. Their heritage is not defined by what Europeans think., whether they be racists or liberal activists.
Too often assorted white activists in turn impose their own stereotypical models upon African peoples rather than understanding what is actually going on, and what is important to said peoples. Thus white feminists have sometimes condemned allegedly “lazy” and “oppressive structures” on observing how African women bear the burden of most agriculture and marketing in some African cultures. But in fact, as one female African historian notes, in these tribes their agricultural activities are a source of power and pride to women. They may do heavy work (nothing unusual by the way in historical European agriculture before mechanization), but they also control the marketing of the harvest, essentially controlling most of the dollars that flow into the household as a result, dollars that they apply towards their own well-being and that of their children. Their husbands by the way are also dependent on female earnings during hard times. See E.O Collins “Problems in African History,” 1981 where this is discussed and simpistic white activist models dismantled.
Other than that, interesting.
>The San tribesmen on pic#2 are not associated with animals in any meaningful sense.
The point remains, though, that the LABELING of these images can definitely be critiqued. The labels for the picture group did not say, “Tippi with San tribespeople and wild animals,” it says, “Young Girl Life with Wild Animals.” Problems include 1) Young Girl (as noted, there’s at least 1 other small child there – but the viewer isn’t supposed to care about brown people, obviously) and 2) Wild Animals (there are PEOPLE in those photos too, dammit).
I’m w/ Lyonside. ‘Tribespeople’ have long been equated with animals, Africans doubly so (thanks disney). Those pictures make me wanna barf despite how ‘pretty’ they are. Human beings are not accessories. Neither is their homeland.