By: Lauren Seitz<\/p>\n
In 1906, Ota Benga, a four-foot-eleven-inch \u201cAfrican pygmy,\u201d began his nearly three-week long exhibition at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. The exhibit, which was viewed by thousands of people per day, encouraged viewers to see Benga in primitive and animalistic terms; \u00a0zoo officials clothed him in animal skins and kept him in a cage. They even introduced chimpanzees into the cage with him, leading spectators to create a connection between the chimps and the \u201cpygmy,\u201d a term which was formerly used to refer to monkeys (Newkirk, \u201cWhen the Bronx Zoo Exhibited a Man in an Iron Cage\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t the first time that Benga had been exhibited in the United States. Two years earlier, an American named S.P. Verner had bought Benga\u2019s freedom in an African slave market and convinced him and eight other pygmies to exhibit themselves at the St. Louis World\u2019s Fair because they were believed to be \u201cthe lowest rung on the evolutionary scale\u201d (Newkirk, \u201cThe Man Who was Caged in a Zoo\u201d). Benga and his fellow pygmies were taken to the Fair\u2019s anthropology exhibit and were housed next to a group of Native Americans. After his time at the fair was over, Benga was released to go back home to Africa, and, two years later, after finding life there unsatisfactory, he returned to the United States with Verner (Zielinski).<\/span><\/p>\n It was Verner who arranged for Benga to be exhibited, first at the American Museum of Natural History and, later, deciding it was too barbaric for a man to live in a museum, at the Bronx Zoo (Zielinski). Unlike many of the human exhibits at the time, Benga simply sat solemnly in his cage on a stool, glaring at the crowds\u2014an estimated 40,000 people per day\u2014that gawked at him. Even with no performative aspect to his exhibit, zoo-goers were fascinated by what they considered to be a different, and presumably \u201cinferior,\u201d race of beings, and scientists used Benga to trumpet the triumphs of Western colonization: \u201cBenga\u2019s exhibition on the hallowed grounds of the New York Zoological Gardens [Bronx Zoo] was not mere entertainment \u2013 it was educational. They [scientists] believed Benga belonged to an inferior species; putting him on display in the zoo promoted the highest ideals of modern civilization\u201d (Newkirk, \u201cThe Man Who Was Caged in a Zoo\u201d). <\/span><\/p>\n African-American ministers, along with a minority of white elites, protested his treatment, and it was these protests that eventually got him released after twenty days in the zoo\u2014but this didn\u2019t occur without a fight. The protesters hit \u201ca wall of white indifference, as New York\u2019s newspapers, scientists, public officials, and ordinary citizens reveled in the spectacle\u201d (Newkirk, \u201cThe Man Who Was Caged in a Zoo\u201d). Newspaper headlines, such as one from the <\/span>New York Times <\/span><\/i>on September 9, 1906, exclaimed: \u201cBushman Shares a Cage with Bronx Park Apes,\u201d and the article noted \u201cIt is a probably a good thing that Benga doesn\u2019t think very deeply. If he did it isn\u2019t likely that he would be produ [sic] of himself\u2026\u201d (\u201cBushman Shares a Cage with Bronx Park Apes\u201d). <\/span><\/p>\n At the beginning of Benga\u2019s captivity and display, there was a sense of public indifference to the inhumanity of the exhibit; quickly, however, spectators became more outspoken, as protests from the black community, as well as white southerners who believed that Benga\u2019s treatment was inhumane, became larger and more publicized. Newspapers from all over the country picked up the story–some in favor of Benga\u2019s exhibit and some opposed–but the opposition began to win out. Rage was ignited in African-American communities across the country, with Reverend Matthew Gilbert writing in the New York Times: \u2018\u201cOnly prejudice against the negro race made such a thing possible in this country\u201d\u2019 (Newkirk, \u201cThe Man Who Was Caged in a Zoo\u201d). Benga also began to fight back more often and more aggressively against his captors, leading him to become a liability, both physically and publicity-wise, for the zoo. Bowing to intense public pressure and even the threat of a lawsuit, Benga was finally released, twenty days after he was first put on display (Newkirk, \u201cThe Man Who Was Caged in a Zoo\u201d). Crowds around the country cheered.<\/span><\/p>\n We would like to think that we\u2019ve learned lessons, both cultural and social, from Benga\u2019s exhibition, but Stassa Edwards explains that this isn\u2019t necessarily the case. In fact, she argues, \u201chistory has effectively silenced\u201d Benga\u2019s story. Edwards asserts that it\u2019s not necessarily the story of Benga that is forgotten but the reasons it happened in the first place. When people hear Benga\u2019s story, it elicits a response that is something along the lines of \u201cOh, that poor man!\u201d We need not to pity Benga, but we should \u00a0learn from his story–lessons that have gone largely unlearned over the past century. Pamela Newkirk, who has just published a book about the trials of Ota Benga, explains, in an interview with Edwards that \u201c[t]he racial ideology that resulted in Benga\u2019s capture and captivity in the zoo was deeply embedded in science, in politics, media, and in American popular culture.\u201d Racial issues such as these continue to pervade our society, as racial discrimination remains a pillar of systematic injustice. <\/span><\/p>\n In fact, Newkirk argues, the Black Lives Matter movement has merely taken the place of Benga as the spectacle of African American suffering in America. She states that the movement has become \u201c<\/span>the prism through which white America observes the novelty of caged black life\u201d (Newkirk, \u201cThe Numbing Spectacle of Racism\u201d). <\/span>The movement is largely driven by the African- American community and aims to point out the violence suffered by black men and women at the hands of police officers; the larger conversation surrounding the hashtag has branched out to address the pervasiveness of racism that is embedded in our society today, from education and poverty issues to mass incarceration\u2014a topic which bears the most resemblance to Benga\u2019s case, as, according to the NAACP, \u201c<\/span>African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses\u2026[and] serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months)\u201d<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n A large majority of white Americans, though aware of implications of this systematic racism, don\u2019t do anything about it. Newkirk points out that \u201cOver breakfast cereal we now watch the televised spectacle of unarmed black males in custody\u2026. When faced with the most glaring evidence of malice, most good people concur that black lives matter\u2014before switching the station and going on with their day\u201d (\u201cThe Numbing Spectacle of Racism\u201d). That a large part of the white majority continue<\/span>s to overlook what\u2019s happening today just solidifies the fact that we have not learned much from the oppressive social climate during Benga\u2019s captivity and the stigma against African Americans that allowed him to be put there in 1906.<\/span><\/p>\n Though, today, most would never openly exhibit humans, the racism that caused Benga to become a human exhibit in the first place nevertheless continues. Over a century has passed since Ota Benga was treated as an animal at the Bronx Zoo. If we continue to ignore the reasons behind human exhibits such as Benga\u2019s, we cannot learn to overcome them. Are the attitudes that originated from human exhibits still present today? Yes. Do we still have a lot to learn from our shameful history of these exhibits? Yes. Should we continue to believe that society no longer operates with these motivations? \u00a0Absolutely not. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For more information on African American incarceration rates, click<\/span> here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n