Famous and Racist (1): Christopher Columbus, Victor Hugo, King Leopold II.

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Hi, welcome to The Woke Way, I hope you are all doing well! Today I present to you my first article, the first one of a series named “Famous and Racist”. As you might’ve guessed, or not, today I will be “denouncing” some famous figures that you probably never thought were racist.

I will post this series with three famous figures each time, or sometimes books, paintings, movies etc.. that are famous and racist.

Let’s get right into it, shall we?

Ah the irony though! How paradoxical it is that we (sometimes) learn how bad racism is yet our whole educational system is based on racist texts, authors, artists, politicians etc…? The only time you’ll hear about people of color is when slavery or colonization is mentioned. So when we (people of color) were being persecuted, white Europeans were going on “thrilling” adventures. Thrilling indeed! I mean how can you not see the fun in learning about the men/women who mistreated, abused mentally and physically, raped, humiliated, stole (from) your ancestors?! They were so passionate in their bigotry that they got statues, monuments, buildings, streets, and avenues in their names. Of course that happened ages ago, but the repercussions are visible right now, as you are reading this, one the main reason of why BLM protests all over the world are continuing by the way. NOTHING HAS CHANGED; it just has another name now, not slavery it's the institutional and judiciary system. Not colonialism but neocolonialism.

But oh well, let’s focus on our brave “heroes” that surely “changed” and that "discovered" the world !

If you couldn’t tell by now I am being sarcastic, because I mean, discover what exactly? So unless a white man hasn’t seen something for the first time it didn’t exist? *sigh*

We’ll start with one of my all-time favorite racist, Christopher Columbus. Whew chile, just writing his name gave me chills; could it be the thrill of the New World running through my veins?!

Wikipedia tells us that Columbus was “an Italian explorer and colonizer who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that opened the New World for conquest and permanent European colonization of the Americas. His expeditions, sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, were the first European contact with the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.” (Wikipedia). Re-read it again and focus on “colonizer”, because that’s the only thing this man was. Colonizer for unfortunately many of us means something great, the definition itself doesn’t sound too bad: “a person who settles among and establishes political control over the indigenous people of an area.” (Bing). I for one, would define It more as : a bored a*s child of Satan who decided to get out of his country for God knows what reasons and went kill innocent people while stealing from them. Better no? Darn right it is, because that’s literally Columbus’ biography in a nutshell. Whether you want to admit it or not, millions of Natives were already living in northern America and southern America before he showed up. And what did he do? ENSLAVE THEM. Whew chile chile chileeeee! But in history books this man is well known because he discovered America. Are you not revolted? If not listen to this, “When someone brought him gold, he gave the person a little pendant to wear around his or her neck, which exempted that person from needing to bring him more gold—at least for a little while. The freedom granted by that pendant would eventually expire and, if a native didn’t bring Columbus more gold, he’d cut off a hand and make the native wore it around his or her neck.” (The Daily Dot). Oh but there’s more! “Columbus also hunted natives for sport”. Did any of your history teachers teach you that? Because no one certainly taught me that and thankfully I did my own research, and you should too, it’s never too late to get educated.

I would like to end this paragraph by saying F*CK COLOMBUS, HIS STUPID A*S BOAT, HIS GREASY A*S HAIR PIECE, HIS BLOOD-STAINED SHOES, HIS FRIENDS, AND ANYONE THAT LOVED/LOVES HIM AND SUPPORTED/SUPPORTS HIM.

INDIGENOUS DAY FOR THE WIN.

(it’s on the second Monday of October by the way.)

His statue looks great like this. No? Really emphasizes his adventurous features !

( it's in Boston)

Alright moving on! Our next racist is, please fasten your seatbelts: VICTOR HUGO.

Did you scream or gasp? Because I know I sure did when I found out. I mean what? The same man that was recognized worldwide as a defender of peace, as a voice for the unheard?! YIKES. Apparently his militancy only involved white people. Anyways, so how do I know Mr. Hugo was racist? I came across this petition:

“My name is Alexane Ozier-Lafontaine, I live in Martinique (a French island of the West Indies), and I'm currently an 11th grade student. Because of the baccalaureat (a very important exam in France), I had to study this year many authors, and one of them was Victor Hugo. I was told by my French teacher that Victor Hugo was a man of faith, who loved all humans, no matter their wealth, their age, or their social environment. But by doing rummage, I learned that his love for humans had limits”.

The limit she’s referring to is a speech he held on the 18 of May 1879, and please before we get more into it, secure the premises, your souls, wigs, eyebrows and whatever you got on! Because in that speech, Mister Hugo declared that the Mediterranean Sea formed a natural divide between, I quote: " ultimate civilization and […] utter barbarism", oh but that’s not all folks, "God offers Africa to Europe. Take it; to civilize its indigenous inhabitants", “Africa has no history”. When I read that, I threw my “Les Miserables” out of the window (ha-ha no I actually just gave it back to my school). It doesn’t end there, he was aware of the atrocities committed by the French Army during the French conquest of Algeria and never denounced them publicly, instead he said on the 17th chapter of his book Le Rhin that “France lacks in Algiers is a little barbarity.", "The Turks [...] knew how to cut heads better than we do. The first thing that strikes savages is not reason but strength.”

If I could advise you all anything: STOP READING HIS BOOKS AND BOYCOTT THE RACISM OUT OF HIM. Here’s the link to the petition, you can sign it so that we don’t have to deal with his texts at school anymore: https://www.change.org/p/in-order-for-french-teachers-to-learn-that-victor-hugo-was-also-a-racist

When you click on the link scroll down to see the English version of the petition.

Last but not least, ladies and gentleman, non-binary people, I present to you THE GOAT (greatest of all time) regarding racism, or should I say one of the greatest racists of all time, indeed the GROAT, the one and only: his majesty king Leopold II of Belgium!

Again, chills.

I heard he was a really powerful monarch who helped his country be a very powerful empire; yeah well in other words homeboy is an impulsive and heartless colonizer, just like all colonizers really, but him? Chile he probably won the championship! Not only did he enslave Africans, Caribbean people BUT ALSO CHINESE PEOPLE? Not only was he good at being a racist moron but he was moving like an international franchise with it? You know adding a lil diversity to the mix. CHILE! During his reign, which lasted from 1885 to 1909, 10-15 million Africans died, 3600 Caribbean people and more than a hundreds of Chinese people. Among all the mistreatment he inflicted, the most unforgettable one (in my opinion) is hand mutilation, indeed, “Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the “Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves. There were even small wars where villages attacked neighboring villages to gather hands, since their rubber quotas were too unrealistic to fill. A Catholic priest quotes a man, Tswambe, speaking of the hated state official Léon Fiévez, who ran a district along the river 500 kilometers (300 mi) north of Stanley Pool:

All blacks saw this man as the devil of the Equator ... From all the bodies killed in the field, you had to cut off the hands. He wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier, who had to bring them in baskets ... A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As a young man, I saw [Fiévez's] soldier Molili, then guarding the village of Boyeka, take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river ... Rubber causes these torments; that's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters.” (Wikipedia)

Well dear readers, that was it for today. But before you leave, say it with me, INSTITUTIONAL AND SYSTEMIC RACISM IS REAL AND IS WRONG. I am more than fed up to learn about racists at school, BOYCOTT THE SYSTEM.

Overall, I hope you learned something new, don’t hesitate to repost my article(s) and tag me on Instagram (@wokeway).

Click here to see where you can sign petitions or/and donate or read more articles.