#Eurocentrism and its Africa bullshit

[lightdancer1]

Another good example of Eurocentric lies about African history is these two topics from South African history. The first is Great Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe was a Bantu empire that was the ancestral state to the Bantu 'tribes' overwhelmed by the Boers and the Britons in what's now South Africa and Zimbabwe. They did not start off with cattle kraals and semi-nomadic transhumance. They had a full-fledged empire that uniquely among African states built its legacies in stone.

This was not the common form of architecture in Africa, though it's not altogether unique (see: Khemet, aka Egypt, among others). It was, however, unique enough that like Ancient Egypt there's some straight up woo woo bullshit that sekrit white people built in stone because nobody else can. *Dismissive wanking gesture*

To be fair this isn't exactly applied to the Mayans and the Nahuatl and the Tawantinsuyu who did build in stone and in the Mesoamerican case inherited from the Olmecs a tradition contemporary to *literally Sumer and thus 6,000 years old on the whole.* That's because it would screw up multiple other narratives and so this particular element just gets skipped over.

Great Zimbabwe's history would be the more truthful version of that southern African cultural history, its collapse was largely one of demographic overextension (which was and is a problem that industrialism keeps avoiding the full consequences of but non-industrial societies hit a hard stop at points and decline. Happened in Europe, too, the Black Death was partially the Mongols and the other half was this pattern) and the depletion of some of the local mines.

Its survivors became the cultures later identified as the Zulu and the Xhosa, among others, and the Matabele.

[mad-hare]

This popped up as a recommendation to me and I gotta say, it is a really eye opening read. We often ascribe veganism as a “white rich kid” thing when it really is not. There are some things in here I don’t agree with (I don’t think there’s any real science behind “alkaline” diets), overall it’s a good message. It’s definitely true that calling things like dairy products a “dietary staple” is racist because lactose intolerance is pretty high in a majority of the world.

Food is political, and that is especially true for Black Americans. A lack of access to healthy food is a problem that disproportionately affects Black and Latino communities — a condition that the U.S. Department of Agriculture formally describes as a “food desert,” though the food justice activist Karen Washington prefers the more apt term “food apartheid” — which are defined in large part by the nearly century-long legacy of redlining.  

Decades of U.S. agricultural policies that overwhelmingly favor meat, dairy, and corn have caused many Americans to load up on a diet rich in fatty, processed, and refined foods, but the ill effects of the standard American diet (appropriately also called the SAD diet) are heightened for racial and ethnic minorities. Systemic racism within the dietetics industry has kept Black dietitians out of the field — their number has fallen by nearly 20 percent over the last two decades — while the resulting Eurocentric view of diet and nutrition has severely constrained its approach to non-Western cuisines and cultures. Not only is there a lack of knowledge about the nutritional foundation of many traditional diets, but people from non-Western cultures are pushed toward Westernized views of health and wellness even though, for instance, people of color are generally less able to process dairy products.

What was really interesting for myself, was the division between reclaiming southern soul food as a part of culture to be proud of, versus rejecting it as a recognition that is a large factor in why issues like diabetes (and amputations from it), disproportionately affect black individuals, who have less access to preventative medicine. Obviously as a white person I have no say in this argument but it’s something I wasn’t aware of before reading this.

There’s a passage in Jenné Claiborne’s 2018 cookbook Sweet Potato Soul that beautifully captures the historical thread of plant-based eating in Black culture: When Claiborne was asked by friends if it’s difficult to be a vegan from Atlanta, she reminded them that “my great-grandparents from the South — and my ancestors from West Africa — ate mostly plant-based diets.”

Bryant Terry addresses this — along with the misconception that plant-based eating started with white hipsters, wealthy Goopsters, and animal-rights activists — in Afro-Vegan, where he writes that “for thousands of years, traditional West and Central African diets were predominantly vegetarian — centered around staple foods like millet, rice, field peas, okra, hot peppers, and yams.” Before captivity, as documented in detail in the culinary historian Michael Twitty’s searching volume on African-American foodways, The Cooking Gene, the West African communities of the Igbo and Mande cooked largely with grains, legumes, leafy greens, herbs, and onions. Meat was consumed sparingly, only during harvest time or as a seasoning for vegetables.

New Black Americans saw valuable nutrients stripped from their diet. Many plantation owners fed enslaved people little more than cornmeal and salt pork, the lowliest pieces of the hog, in an effort to save money. “Pigs were so easy to grow, and there were so many other parts that wealthy people discarded; that made it very easy for enslaved people to take those parts and come up with delicacies,” Opie told me over the phone. That paved the way for the dominance of pork — especially chitterlings, hog maws, and pig’s feet — in Southern cooking.

Really recommend anyone agriculturally minded read this, and consider to stop calling veganism a “white person” thing when we speak in western context. Anyone who followed this blog for more than a minute knows I’m not going to say everyone needs to become a vegan to fix the world, but goodness, the western diet is bullshit, people are dying, and black people who are able to empower themselves through veganism to reject another part of the system they’ve been born into is amazing.

Today, there are estimated to be more than a million Black vegetarians and vegans in the United States, with Black people representing the fastest-growing vegan demographic in the country.

[modernchemical]

okay you know what pisses me off a lot as someone who wants to be an anthropologist when i grow up is how if you picture an anthropologist theyre always off in north africa or the middle east or mid america and always studying people that their eurocentric views deem as closer to the pure human condition, which is just such racist bullshit? you hardly hear of anthropologists studying any “modern” societies, the notable ones only seeking out those who are without any sugar coating wrongfully seen as uncivilized or primitive and not far removed from humanity like the people in major cities or whatever. of course theres nuance and im not trying to say anthropologists who dont research people from new york or london or whatever are bad or any worse than anthropologists who study whatever but its just that since anthro is such a western view dominated field there is something to be said...

[nylonsandlipstick]

lala my babe what are your unpopular opinions about the harry potter fandom?

omg. what aren’t they? nina, you know the right questions to ask. i’m literally so salty about everything in the books. tbh this is gonna turn more into an anti jkr post so if anyone is sensitive about rowling hate, scroll down.

jkr is such a terrible “feminist” as she calls herself, because she treats her female characters so poorly.

cho is just basically treated like shit because she’s soft and gentle? like, way to be a hypocrite, rowling (she called lewis a sexist for his treatment of susan and hasn’t even read the books and she’s literally doing the same exact shit).

she didn’t bat an eyelash when lavender brown, a explicitly described as black, was whitewashed in the films, it’s not like she treated lavender any better as she killed lavender off in the battle of hogwarts but there you go.

she hated and mistreated pansy just because she’s a nasty slytherin girl, like, that’s a child, have her grow up, have her learn from her mistakes, have her develop, who the hell hurt you so much that you can’t give a girl like pansy a redemption arc???

tonks deserved so much better but the fuck with that incest shit with her crushing on her cousin (in a pottermore story)?? like, damn, guess i know now where cc came up with her incest obsession.

the patil twins are basically ignored by rowling. they’re kind of there for woc brownie points but rowling couldn’t even be bothered to confirm whether the twins died or not at the end of the battle of hogwarts.

hermione is literally the worst. i hate hermione so much. she’s just so annoying and so high and mighty and it’s like, fuck off, nobody cares.

in the entire series there are about 15 poc characters (angelina johnson, alicia spinnet, bane the centaur, blaise zabini, cho, dean, duncan inglebee, fred weasley ii, gweong jones, kingsley shacklebolt, lavender brown, lee jordan, padma and parvati patil, and roxanne) and only a handful of them even have speaking lines. there are a total of 772 characters. only 15 have been worth being mentioned as poc, even less than that even have speaking roles. gonna let that speak for itself.

rowling literally fucking apologized for snape’s death and i’m like, the death of a white supremacist parallel, bullying, prejudiced, narrow-minded man who fucking hated kids that he worked with and didn’t give a damn about the child of the woman that he was fucking obsessed over (do not give me that “but he was james’s son so snape wasn’t obligated to like harry” bullshit, snape could totally have had harry close to him as his last tie to lily and could have tried to protect harry as that would have been lily’s wish). i understand that it’s tradition to apologize for some death on the anniversary of the war or whatever but maybe you should apologize for deaths of characters that weren’t such assholes???

also, the fact that rowling could give such a shitty guy a redemption arc (that a lot of people in the fandom fawn over!!!) yet draco, a child, was mistreated and straight up hated by rowling just because he grew up in a bigoted, close-minded household and didn’t know any better and ended up in slytherin and only continued to follow voldemort out of fear for voldie and his father and he’s such a great and three-dimensional character yet rowling constantly hates him for ????? being a slytherin???

which, like, what the fuck is up with rowling and hating on slytherins?? she acts like they’re terrible people yet gave us some pretty complex characters coming out of that house and it’s like, if your intent was to make us hate slytherin just because you do, it didn’t work.

the goblins are heavily coded as jewish and just the fact that literally the only jewish rep in the entire series are a bunch of goblins that work in banks just blows. my. fucking. mind. wow. as if jewish people haven’t experienced enough antisemitism in europe as it is now they’re gross and greedy goblins. yup. rowling is great.

how is it that draco, a child who is so very obviously suffering from depression, is seen as evil and terrible because of his mental illness (because his depression is what makes him “go crazy” and paranoia is a punchline to rowling) yet everyone who had to spend 12 years in azkaban (who all happen to be her favorite characters) and had to go through a shit ton of terrible crap somehow come out perfect and unaffected. like, not only is that a gross display of ableism but an insane lack of understanding of anything psychological. and, sirius, the only person who even displayed a small amount of mental instability was killed off so. ableism.

i am so mad about dumbledore. what the fuck, rowling, what the fuck? rowling is nowhere near being an ally as literally her only hp books character (i’ll talk about fantastic beasts in a mo) that’s confirmed as gay was confirmed so several years later in an interview (as if rita skeeter wouldn’t have figured that shit out asap??) and he’s an evil dude because of the fact that he’s gay and rowling explains his rejection of his homosexuality as being asexual and like, that’s not how it fucking works, rowling. first, you can’t turn off your sexuality like that, and second, asexuality isn’t just what you call being celibate or whatever.

the fact that werewolves are supposed to represent hiv+ gays. oh. my. g o d. wha t  t h e  f u ck???? what the fuck is that? oh my g o d. i can’t even handle this. i’m going to the next bullet point because the homophobia is destroying my soul.

gonna continue with the homophobia with the fact that rowling has a gay character in fantastic beasts that’s a fucking piece of shit and a total abuser and oh, look at that, played by an abuser. and little miss “i don’t support aggressors” literally supported an abuser playing the character. like. oh my god. look, i never gave a rat’s patootie about johnny depp or amber heard before the abuse allegations came out but olivia benson taught me better than to veer on the side of the alleged abuser just because he’s famous and the victim is bisexual and settled the court case with money.

eurocentrism is a real thing and rowling just seems to love to show that off. how the fuck are you gonna tell me that in the entire world there would be 11 wizarding schools and 3 of them would be in europe?? you know what, how the fuck are you gonna tell me that europe itself would have only 3 schools??? do you not understand that europe, the home of nationalism, would have almost one school per fucking country?? do you not understand that most of the european countries turn their nose in the air to each other because they all think that they’re better than each other and that they wouldn’t all totally have their own schools??? maybe benelux would share their own school, the uk would share their own school (although don’t doubt that the scottish would say a big fuck you to england and block all of the non-scottish kids out of hogwarts and force the rest of the uk to make their own new school at some point), and a few other places would share but literally do not tell me that spain, who cannot stand france, would share a fucking school with the french. like, i know a lot of hp fans are american but xenophobia in europe is a big thing.

but, on to the other wizarding schools. don’t tell me that latin america would have one fucking school for all of latin america. like, do you not understand that latin america is a mix of spanish, indigenous, african, and asian with different forms of ancient practices and brujeria that wouldn’t mix well with each other??? brazil doesn’t even fucking speak spanish!!!!!! brazil, with it’s large ass population of portuguese-speakers would need their own school while the caribbean would need their own school (if not two, because don’t tell me that a school full of cubans, puerto ricans, and dominicans wouldn’t be fucking insane and need to be divided), mexico would probably need their own school, and central and south american would need at least two other schools. and that’s just latin america. you can imagine how many schools asia would need what with most of southeast asia not being able to share a school (china and north korea would definitely have their own schools, don’t fight me), south asia having completely different practices than southeast, and the middle east would have to divide several schools between each other. and africa would need several schools. and australians??? jk never even mentioned them if i remember correctly????

eurocentrism mixed in with cultural appropriation and straight up racism is what i call ilvermorny. how the fuck are you gonna tell me that white racists are gonna be okay with sending their kids over to a school of native american magic. no, actually, how the fuck are you gonna tell me that native americans are gonna be okay with sharing their magic? magic that is so sacred and has so many rules and isn’t some fucking fictional fantasy to actual native americans but is complete reality to them??? and they’re going to be totally okay with a bunch of white people (people who’s ancestors committed mass genocides full of native americans because they wanted fucking land and power and gold and gave no fucks for the real human beings that were the natives because they weren’t apparently civilized and therefor weren’t real human beings) coming and putting a school where sacred native magic is taught in boston of all places??? rowling, you didn’t even try to research this shit.

boston wouldn’t even be where the new england wizarding school would be in. it would be in fucking salem, massachusetts. fight me if you disagree but i will fight back so hard on that shit. midwest would have its own school. the south would have one. texas would have its own school because fuck texas, nobody wants them. and florida would have its own school because where the fuck are we in?? the south?? north cuba?? who fucking knows. and let’s not forget louisianna would have its own school and the african americans in the north would have their own school too and asians in the u.s.??? their own schools. and the native americans would have a shit ton of smaller schools because there are different tribes with different histories and some wouldn’t be able to share a school because of those differences like in asia.

and canada would have two schools because fuck you if you think that french canadians (read: quebec) would willingly share a school with english canadians and don’t tell me that canada wouldn’t have tried pushing everyone into one school where the question of “what about french-speakers? what about us catholics? we’re magicians but we’re still good french catholics and we’re sure as hell not practicing protestantism”. and actually, i’m wrong. it would be three schools as indigenous people in canada fucking exist.

i’m done with the school shit (not done but at least on this post). like, okay, tell me how the fuck fantastic beasts takes place in harlem yet even the fucking extras are a bunch of crackers? i’m sorry jk, i didn’t realize that the jazz age wasn’t led by black people and that harlem hasn’t been hsitorically black. thank you, a white english woman, for teaching me that. thank you very much.

how the fuck is it that we have native american-based magic being used and yet not one single fucking native american in the entire movie? tell me. i want a good ass explanation for that shit because so far the only one i’m thinking of is that rowling just supports cultural appropriation.

how the fuck is it that newt schammander is seen as an angel when he literally was the one to begin werewolf oppression? oppression of the people that are supposed to be hiv+ gays??

an abuse victim is literally turned into a fucking monster and then killed. i cannot fathom this shit.

the film is supposed to be a parallel to racism yet cracker cast.

i think i’m done for now. now excuse me as i go scream because i just can’t. fight me on anything but i swear to god i am pissed and i will not be kind. i am done with jk rowling’s horseshit. absolute horseshit.