Blog #1

Yvette Abraham in the article Images of Sara Bartman talks about the point of seeing all people from one culture as identical. She used the example of Sara Bartman being sexually objectified causing everyone to see Africans in this way.

Abraham’s argument led me to realize how our assumptions of one individual can influence how we picture a whole culture. This reading made me recognize that it is crucial to have more than one source of information about a culture. It seems as though she is trying to explain before Sara Bartman was put on display publicly the audience did not have a different encounter with African people. I wonder how our opinions of a culture can be made from only being exposed to it by one individual. How can one encounter of a person from Khoisan cause us to see all people from Africa as identical? In the video, we watched in class last Wednesday the Arabic women were all portrayed as being indistinguishable. The women wore all the same clothes and had similar voices. This video made me think of how it relates to Sara because this shows how little we know about those dissimilar to us and make assumptions about who they are. …show more content…
While reading this, I assumed she was getting at the idea of othering. African people were homogenized. This led me to think of a way to justify the right to sexual analyze African Americans. It seems as Abraham is getting at the idea of gender playing a role in the exhibition of Sara. This led the audience to view African women as being sexualy deviant. Her feelings were not considered, she was only seen as a sexual object for the enjoyment of the audience. This led me to think if this has improved in today’s