Lilian Thuram
November 29, 2011 by staff · Comments Off on Lilian Thuram
Lilian Thuram, It’s a queasy experience, viewing chained tribal dancers do a white man’s bidding, or African women stripped and photographed to feed European curiosity.
Until just a few generations ago, this is how most white people learned about those with skin of a different shade.
A new Paris exhibit examines how for centuries, colonisers plucked villagers from Africa, the Americas or the South Pacific and put them on display half a world away.
The demeaning tradition shaped racist attitudes that linger today.
Curator Lilian Thuram, a former soccer star and now anti-racism advocate, hopes the exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris makes people question deep-held beliefs about the “other”.
“You have to have the courage to say that each of us has prejudices, and these prejudices have a history,” he said.
Thuram is an ideal public face for this unusual exhibit. A pensive black man with a ready smile, he has suffered racist insults on and off the field.