"I'm just trying to earn a living with growing cocoa. They make good food from them, but I've never seen that. I do not know if that's true."
(Cocoa farmers experience chocolate for the first time.)
MEANWHILE, on Vagina Mountain, none of that sweet first-world chocolate... "I want you to feel liquid chocolate for the first time. You can totally let go":
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The Ivory Coast video is utterly charming. No stupid race, class, or other politics injected--even subtly--into it. Well, not that I saw. And the workers were delightful. I feared the worst and was very pleasantly surprised. "The Whites"! So funny.
I'm reading about the end of slavery, in America, and this video reminds me of the slaves, selling to rich whites, after the war. The whites, just like today, considered horrible arrangements, between themselves and "their fellow citizens" (who they demanded "loyalty") fair. The blacks thought (and think) whites were insane.
The blacks barely got by, but they could enjoy the fact that whites after the war - by no longer being around 24 hours a day - now had little control over them or (especially) their children.
That may be why so many blacks are described as "happy" in those days.
Think about it - it's 2014 and they're just tasting chocolate, the production of which they've been involved in forever, for the very first time.
White people are so great - and they really made a great place to grow up - for themselves.
You'd have to be blind not to see it.
But, then, they did also gouge out a lot of people's eyes,...
They wonder if the chocolate made his skin lighter! Hilarious.
Thanks, white people!
There's something fishy, and borderline racist, in the notion that cacao growers would be so incurious that they never learned what kind of food their crop is turned into. That they may not have tasted chocolate is believable. That they knew the word but were unaware of the fact that it's made from cacao is much less so. It all seems contrived to me.
In Aztec society only the nobility, priests, and warrior class had access to cocoa.......Perhaps it's just as well those workers don't consume chocolate. If those workers think chocolate is expensive, they should check out the price list for dental care.
I only watched the second video because I thought I would be treated to the sight of people swimming in liquid chocolate.
"The magic of chocolate"
People are crazy. And why TV insists on letting them be our exclusive tour guides, I don't know. What's next?
"The mystery of candied Lifesavers"
And what was up with the middle eighth from "Everyone's A Winner" playing in the background? Very weird choice.
Religion, mostly, has held civilization approx. 2,000 years behind where it should be, so it'll probably be centuries before we can get anywhere close to where we should be. Then, maybe, something simple - like watching television - won't be a constant reminder of such mass cultural and intellectual failure. I hate throwing things at the screen.
"The magic of chocolate" - it somehow escapes those sleeping on the sidewalk,...
TML,
"No stupid race, class, or other politics injected--even subtly--into it."
You're blind.
Did the chocolate - which was made by whites - make the skin light?
The impoverished blacks working to make luxuries for whites?
Whites will miss everything - everything - but the opportunity to exploit someone. Turn them into their field animals? No problem.
They ALWAYS seem to know how that works,...
Rob,
"There's something fishy, and borderline racist, in the notion that cacao growers would be so incurious that they never learned what kind of food their crop is turned into."
I don't see it. Ignorance is built into the Western system of exploitation - it's certainly not based on any education of equals.
"That they may not have tasted chocolate is believable. That they knew the word but were unaware of the fact that it's made from cacao is much less so. It all seems contrived to me."
Not me - there's lots of stuff whites have never clued the world into - but take for granted everybody knows. Ann has a term for the way I write (I forget what it is now - something about formatting paragraphs or something) but I'd never heard of it, when she admonished me, like it was common knowledge. I've had to explain taxes to blacks. Insurance is complicated for many. How the street lights come on can still fascinate some in ghettos. Face it:
Whites have been lying about the level of education blacks have been getting - and whites have been lying about it for a long, loooooong time.
If I was white - and normal - I'd be pissed the West left me with just this to work with. I'd feel betrayed. By racist whites who made it this way.
Just like I do every time I see George Jetson whizzing by on the tube,...
Most impressive id 15 family members and 4 workers are supported on 7 euros a day.
"The Ivory Coast video is utterly charming. No stupid race, class, or other politics injected--even subtly--into it. Well, not that I saw. And the workers were delightful."
Is your finding it delightful not class politics and race consciousness?
Note that I tagged the post with both class politics and race consciousness.
"Ann has a term for the way I write (I forget what it is now - something about formatting paragraphs or something) but I'd never heard of it, when she admonished me, like it was common knowledge."
I've got to admonish you for the way you wrote that.
FullMoon,
"Most impressive id 15 family members and 4 workers are supported on 7 euros a day. "
Is that why conservatives are pissed those with an EBT card are living on $6.00 a day?
Such extravagance,...
Ann Althouse,
"Is your finding it delightful not class politics and race consciousness?"
Sure is - good catch - like, if it had been overtly about class politics and race consciousness, there would've been something wrong with it because whites wouldn't like it.
I swear - they know not what they do - but, thank goodness, they sometimes do it publicly.
Ann Althouse,
"I've got to admonish you for the way you wrote that."
LOL!
I hear ya, Teach - I'll try to do better,...
Whites have been lying about the level of education blacks have been getting - and whites have been lying about it for a long, loooooong time.
Really? I've been complaining about it for at least twenty years. Of course I point out two unpleasant facts: the two biggest reasons why Black people receive substandard education today is the concept of "acting White" which causes Black people to reject education, and the corrupt Black politicians who run their school systems deprive them of an education.
The impoverished blacks working to make luxuries for whites?
Because Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Indians never eat the White man's chocolate!
When you start working for Pfizer or Novartis they make you take all the drugs because it's only fair.
Bob and Ray, I think in The Two and Only, had the cranberry grower who was surprised that the berries were used with turkey.
He only knew that the cranberry shortcake idea hadn't been working.
What else can they be used for? "Can you make glass out of them?"
Lindt's 90% chocolate takes getting used to.
Mike Munger, on the topic of fair trade coffee, suspects the movement is about keeping the native coffee growers in zoos that you can visit, instead of developing economically.
I would wager there was a time Chinese factory workers didn't understand the use of the cell phones they were constructing. But with steady work and wealth accumulation they ultimately learned and purchased cell phones.
I wonder if this farmer is trying to figure out how to grow and expand his business. Or maybe how to set up a chocolate shop?
The Ivory Coast video struck me as very genuine. I've been there, done that, and it's totally believable. They didn't say exactly where in Ivory Coast the video was made but if it was in a village far from the coast and far from any city then it's no surprise chocolate isn't available or well known. Most of the roads aren't paved, there are no phones, no electricity, limited educational opportunity and getting around is much harder and more expensive. And since cacao trees are an import, there's no native chocolate history or industry there. They grow it and sell it and make money, which is helpful to them. No doubt the original cacao plantations were started by foreigners (i.e. the French) and the cultivation spread out to small growers later who saw there was an existing market. Rubber is the same way in that region. It reminds me of the story I read about corn farmers here who were selling their corn for ethanol but showed no interest in actually consuming it.
What really struck me as genuine though was the conversational banter between them. That was totally real.
"there's lots of stuff whites have never clued the world into"
And who clued whites into it?
"The cacao tree is native to the Americas.
...
Nearly 70% of the world crop is grown in West Africa.
...
[Spaniards] also introduced the cacao tree into the West Indies and the Philippines. It was also introduced into the rest of Asia and into West Africa by Europeans. In the Gold Coast, modern Ghana, cacao was introduced by an African, Tetteh Quarshie."
The relationship between Crack and Ann is utterly charming.
I just wanted to know why it was called "Vagina Mountain." Does it maintain an environment hostile to seamen for all but four days of the month? Has it been well ploughed? Very disappointed this meaning wasn't conveyed.
Gahrie,
"Of course I point out two unpleasant facts: the two biggest reasons why Black people receive substandard education today is the concept of "acting White"…"
Oh, Gahrie, "of course" you're going to step up with a right-wing racist theory from slavery days - because some black kids do it, too, in this former slave country you've also said has no effect on the present.
Why do you bother? You know I'm not only going to prove you wrong but - because it's the famous Gahrie up to pontificate again - I'm going to call you embarrassing names, too.
First, before the humiliation, let's set the record straight on what "facts" you "of course" had to add, like you're Moses with the commandments instead of a racist loser with no interest in anything but white supremacist theory - from the 2005 study "'It's Not a Black thing: Understanding the burden of acting white and other dilemmas of high achievement'" - bold emphasis mine:
"The 'empirical foundation underlying the burden of acting white thesis is fragile at best.'
The study showed black students, some in predominantly black schools, and others in predominantly white schools, negotiating peer pressure and class selection in much the same way that their white peers did. The study suggests a common strain that sometimes has poor white kids dealing with the burden of being seen as 'uppity' and 'snobbish,' and black kids in predominantly white school settings, on occasion grappling with that same notion, with a racialized overlay. It's essentially nerds versus jocks, yet it plays out in very nuanced ways depending on the school setting and is complicated by class, race and in-group versus out- group pressures. . . ."
You know, Gahrie, if you were a thinker - and not just a Right-Wing Parrot of other's uselessly uninformed ideas - you'd do some reading of black lit yourself and challenge your wrong-headed beliefs. But - alas - you're a moron (and a white one at that) so there may be little hope for you, education-wise.
Nothing gets through, no matter how many times you're wrong. I mean, "the corrupt Black politicians who run their school systems deprive them of an education"?
That makes total sense, considering you're talking about their own kids - depriving black kids of an education has always been high on black's agenda.
"Of course," in order to believe that (and, "of course," blame blacks) you have to turn what history we have - documented fact and not white supremacist whining theory - on it's head. Starting with whites killing blacks for learning to read.
You also have to forget whites have had any agency or control in America, or any history of rampant rabid racism here. Racist systems of government also have to be ignored, considering most of our society is based in slavery's past - because slavery was most of our history.
I'm sure you're more-than-up to the job,...
kcom,
"It reminds me of the story I read about corn farmers here who were selling their corn for ethanol but showed no interest in actually consuming it."
In France, they say corn is for chickens, and consider eating it outrageous.
Oh to live on
Vagina Mountain
With the chocolate
And the visions everywhere
You can't go hungry
On Vagina Mountain
Although it won't be
Cunnilingus that you eat...
"It all seems contrived to me."
It could be the multiple layers of translation that makes the dialogue comes across as poorly scripted morality play.
A chocolate bar doesn't cost two euros. The taxes on a chocolate bar cost two euros......Maybe the taxes on the chocolate bar go for a higher spiritual purpose like keeping up the maintenance on that basilca for the dead Ivory Coast President that is larger than St Peter's in Rome.
Video's like this really make me appreciate living and growing up in the United States.
Most of us can't imagine living a life like this. We work for a living and we have our tv, home, air conditioning, heat, cell phones, and chocolate. And for fun we get to write to complete strangers on a complete strangers website.
These guys don't know any of this. And when they are given chocolate, they are happy. Such a simple pleasure.
But some of us are angry all the time. All we see around us is things to complain about. We don't appreciate what we have. We blame others. Imagine being put in their shoes for a week. A month. A year.
You wouldn't make it. And if you did, you'd learn to appreciate the life you have here, even if you didn't have as much as the next guy.
On Facebook, a friend of a friend was complaining about not having a living wage. He wanted the government to force his employer to give him a raise. He complained that he didn't have enough money to live on working 40 hours a week at Walmart in Texas. He said he had a laptop computer, a cell phone, and an xbox. But this was a complaint, because these were his only entertainments in his otherwise drab and miserable life.
I look at a video like this and I'm disgusted by the privilege of this guy down in Texas.
Need more money? Get a second job. And you still won't be working as hard as these guys in this video.
Our decadence can only survive so long. The more we have, the better off we are, the more Crack's we will get, until they destroy us all and bring the whole system down. Then we will all be equal in wealth after the revolution. That is, equal with the cocoa farmers.
kcom,
"there's lots of stuff whites have never clued the world into"
And who clued whites into it?
That's the wrong question - the character issue is what do you do with it? - consider this from a white journalist who recently discovered his family's roots in slavery::
"These white Southerners who will inevitably say, yes, I had ancestors who had slaves. But we were the good slaveholders - that our slaves loved us. Our slaves cried when they had to leave the plantation. I've not met a descendent of slaveholders yet, who will say, you know what, my great-great-grandfather was like the character in "12 Years A Slave." He was a sadistic, brutal master, who tortured people. You just don't hear that."
So whites have a problem with the truth. Their talk of happy slaves is shown to be false by emancipation itself - and the fact many of the nation's cities are now black with folks from slave country.
But O.K., who clued whites into it?:
It appears they figured out some, stole others, and - by making it a crime worthy of death, say, to keep blacks from reading - kept it to themselves. Then, after slavery, they just kept on stepping', criminals, always considering how that enforced ignorance can be plundered:
The sharecroppers, who kept the books and always found the blacks broke even, or were in their debt. Try 100 years of that shit and tell me how whites wrap it in glory.
The fake real estate agents working government red-lined areas (what we now call "ghettos") selling blacks homes under scandalous conditions and outrageously inflated prices. Partially made by possible by the whites who were determined to keep blacks "out of our neighborhoods". They just fed us to the wolves.
Cont'd.
See, that's just what whites - explicitly - have done with their fellow citizens, in America:
Held us back for centuries, specifically to serve their every need (work, sex, casual abuse, murder even - didn't matter) and then, when we clawed our way to freedom, they angrily made us play "Catch Up!", criticizing and laughing at our every effort based on their so-called "standards" (which blacks got to know, intimately, as their "bed warmers" during slavery - giggle).
It would be really hard to take whites seriously if they weren't so psychotically deadly - Klan robes being Exhibit A.
And before them:
"July 25, 1853 - Negroes,...must know when you speak they have to obey. And to do this you have to stand square up to them and show yourself master. You cannot coax a Negro to do his duty. You have to force him. And if they only like you and not fear you, they will soon hate you and get tired of you. That is the nature of Negros. But to make them fear you and like you both, you can do anything you want with them."
Partially, whites do stuff, still, because black's freedom means, both, self-reflection (on white's part) about how they've behaved, how they've looked at us, and at the world - younger whites, especially, rarely consider whites haven't had to contend with that under total white supremacy - including the right of blacks to finally tell whites to kiss our ass. We're still in the age of "firsts."
If white patriots were as repentant, today, as they claim - or are even merely the "country's" disinterested white "individuals" some claim - they would settle the reparations claim because what was done in the country's name with blacks and education, alone, is worthy of it. Not as an act of spite, on black's part, or charity on white's, but because it's the right thing.
A crime was committed. We're Americans. The government was involved. If any of that boilerplate conservative keep-the-government-out-of-our-lives bullshit means anything, it does so here. But, instead, we get push-back.
From so-called We-Freed-The-Slaves "Republicans" who now think, with that history, we - who have played by the rules - should be told to "pull yourselves up by our bootstraps."
It's like they just want to bury the truth - or keep telling two stories - which keeps the whole thing going for as long as possible.
Just as the white supremacist's always planned,...
Having done a fair bit of high school tutoring in my time, normally in libraries, surrounded by knowledge available to anyone just by reaching out ones hand, I don't see why anyone in the US can complain of being ignorant. If they are it is their own fault. Knowledge is there, available at no cost other than the personal labor of educating yourself. And there is a tremendous amount of help available, to the willing, outside of the normal school structures. If the teachers are incompetent there are many others who can help.
I have been in countries, where in some places it was indeed hard to get an education because there were few books and very few educated people. But this is not true of anywhere in the US.
None of those ladies look Mayan or Zapotec.
Also there are a lot of other things they may have been adding to the coco. There are lots more psychoactive plants in Mexico than marijuana.
As I said yesterday, "Reparations for Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson!"
Harvard
UT-Austin
Columbia
Damn White People!
The Philippines, 1898. But repeat across all East Asia, it was universal. One could say that in most places it was even worse, like most of rural China and Korea.
Most people were illiterate subsistence farmers. There may have been a bad primary school in the local town, but most people didn't live there, they were in the villages. There may have been a very bad high school in a provincial capital, but in most cases no. There were a few universities in the capital of the colony, but they were small, non technical, and too expensive for nearly anyone. Travel was physically difficult, the roads mainly being carabao tracks through mountains, or if by sea very expensive for the typical person.
In what way was this situation substantially better than for people in the US South ? The US had a universal railroad system, cheap and well used, and even for black people a large number of, by comparison, excellently established and accessible primary education and even universities. Just comparing the material conditions I don't see why this historical state of affairs explains anything today.
A vagina is negative space.
You could anatomically cut it out and display a tube but vagina usually works in situ, where it is an absence.
Its rhetorical use is being both the inside and the outside of woman at once, while, by wiring, remaining interesting to nonpossessors.
The first video reminds me of the Mike Daisy story on Apple manufacturing in China, which I heard on "This American Life." Daisy invented a factory worker with mangled hands who is astonished by "a kind of magic" he sees in a functioning iPad - an item the worker was supposed to have manufactured but never to that point laid eyes upon.
Daisy delivered an apology to listeners as he put it "if they feel betrayed," but now we see there really are stories like the one he concocted.
William said...
... The taxes on a chocolate bar cost two euros...
"Local investment is hampered by high taxes on farmers, with around 40% of the money paid by commodity buyers going to the government. Since most cocoa producers are small-scale, this has led some farmers to rely on child labour to make a living."
+
"Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job.
He has never tasted chocolate.
During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative - an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast - a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands."
eric,
"The more we have, the better off we are, the more Crack's we will get,.."
I knew reading all that was going to come back to bite me - but me, specifically? Nope, wasn't expecting that.
Tell me, eric, how easily you've sussed out those guys' inner worlds. "When they are given chocolate, they are happy"?
Man, you can't get much more racist/slave owner mentality than that,...
buwaya putt,
"I don't see why anyone in the US can complain of being ignorant. If they are it is their own fault."
You're not as bright as you think. As a matter of fact, you lack so much imagination, you might as well re-register with science as something other than human.
People die because of your level of stupidity,...
jacksonjay,
"As I said yesterday, "Reparations for Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson!"
Harvard
UT-Austin
Columbia
Damn White People!"
Wow, jacksonjay just solved the race problem - rather than "white" and "colored" drinking fountains, now whites can place signs everywhere that say:
"No black who is employed, or who makes it to school, can ever claim something wrong was ever done to them."
It never happened. Because Harvard, UT-Austin, Columbia. Nothing bad happens to anyone who goes, or gets, to those places.
Of course, the fact Tyson and others (like me) couldn't get into those schools without calling out the National Guard never occurs to Jacksonjay as a penalty of any kind.
He thinks all that was normal.
We're blacks, right?
Shit, whites said during slavery we don't feel pain.
That's how smart they are.
It's why they don't care if they insult us today (or our intelligence - which they also deny) over and over again, as their normal behavior. Deep down inside, whites have convinced themselves blacks don't feel pain, and whites are bigger and better people if they can inflict some. Whites seem to get a little thrill out of trying.
We call it a "pathology".
Damn White People!
All third world farming involves "child labor". It has to. It used to here also..up until about 60 years ago.
Thanks for ruining the video.
Crack, Ann, I took the video as presented. I enjoyed it and thought it was charming. I have no agenda to enjoying it or not enjoying it. It simply was there and I consumed it. Like a tasty bar of chocolate made by I give not one shit.
You both know what I mean.
Let's not conflate "awareness" with "consciousness"
Sheesh.
My own eyes and my own experience say that you are wrong. Newly in the US I was poor. My only entertainment were the Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco public libraries, open to anyone for free. I usually walked to them as I did not like paying bus fare. Usually there was a local branch very close by. As in "West Side Story", " Everything free in America". What was there?
Any book anyone could want. Any periodical. You could special order if it was something oddball, even from great university libraries. There were classes and tutoring in all subjects, by humanitarian volunteers. There were English classes for foreigners. There was everything anyone could want to educate themselves, to a very high degree, no matter if the schools were bad. There were even tours from the schools, showing the kids all this. A horse to water and all that. I saw this, everyday almost, for years. There were some takers, for tutoring and classes, and you could tell there were a few people taking self education very seriously. But these were nearly all immigrants.
I have been to many other parts of the US since, and everywhere I go I try to have a look at the library. What I had in SF/Oakland I have seen nearly everywhere. Atlanta, Dallas, Buffalo NY, Seattle, Olathe Kansas, anywhere, big and small, you have this.
My eyes are bad now, but they weren't then, and they didn't lie.
This is the diamond-hard truth, incontrovertible.
The internet of course has changed many things with respect to self education. It is now even easier, as the great libraries I love so much are now largely available on my couch. I no longer need to tutor math, really, a bright and motivated student can get help online faster and more conveniently. He can even get free lectures on everything useful, up to the graduate level in most technical disciplines. You no longer need to bring the horses to water, they have sippy tubes, and all they need to do is suck. But still they don't drink.
Buwaya Puti:
I agree. There are those who want to learn and there are those who want to be taught. Only the former can make any headway regardless of the quality of the schools.
I spent many hundreds of hours wandering the aisles of libraries, pulling down wondrous books at random on every possible subject. In the old days the libraries assumed those who roamed the stacks were honest and so books of extreme value were there to be examined.
I believe there is still a great need for person to person tutoring despite the resources of the internet. There is no substitute for another human to see and understand the gap that needs to be filled.
thank you for posting.
" buwaya puti said...
Having done a fair bit of high school tutoring in my time, normally in libraries, surrounded by knowledge available to anyone just by reaching out ones hand, I don't see why anyone in the US can complain of being ignorant."
The ignorant of the United States never complain that they are being kept ignorant. They are proud of their ignorance. They complain that they aren't given enough.
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