Shasha Damilola Alesh better known by his stage name Dice Ailes has come under heavy criticism by his fans and Twitter users for using the picture of Sarah Baartman as art cover for his new song.
A lot of us won’t even have even heard of Sarah Baartman, yet her story bears a troubling resemblance to the experiences of generations of black women down the line.
Sarah Baartman was one of many Khoi women who were visited by European scientists and coerced into undressing and displaying themselves to satisfy Europeans’ perverse curiosities. These scientists carried back with them the image of these women as primitive and sexually insatiable.
This misconception has managed to trickle right down to the mouth-breathing creep at the bar who leers at us with suggestive confessions of “never having been with a black girl before,’’ then adopts this picture of our sexuality as primal, serving to further dehumanize and assign us the role of entertainer.
