Father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old, severed as a punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota. Belgian Congo, 1904.
Father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old, severed as a punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota. Belgian Congo, 1904.
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I don’t understand how someone could do this to a defenseless child and sleep at night.
It’s because they convinced themselves that people who aren’t the same color as them aren’t actually people
They didn't convince themselves. They were convinced of it. By the people in power who had the most money to make based off of the exploitation of the Congolese people and their natural resources. Once they were convinced, they had to keep believing it, so that they could sleep at night.
I'm convinced my dog isn't a person, my chickens aren't people and even the worms in my garden aren't people. But I would never treat any of those as brutally as the Belgians treated the Congolese. It is absolutely bey9nf my comprehensionsl.
A better statement would be the Belgians dehumanized the Congolese.
It's the opposite of what you do right now with animals, treating them as a pet and something that can suffer is humanizing them.
It's why we say we cannot tolerate intolerance - to allow any dehumanization allows for this stuff to happen.
Many of these atrocities were carried out by their 'fellow' Africans in the employ of the Belgians, though the atrocities were generally ordered (or, gruesomely, regulated) by the Europeans. Sadly, people can seemingly dehumanize anyone, regardless of how they look.