The Greatest (Most Racist) Show on Earth.

I learned something today!

P. T. Barnum bought an African-American slave woman named Joice Heth, fabricated a backstory for her, and exhibited her for enormous profit as an allegedly 161-year-old "freak." When she died, he sold 1500 tickets to her public dissection. Formerly a nobody shop assistant, Barnum built his reputation for putting on the "Greatest Show on Earth" on the exploitation of a black woman he owned as property, as well as other exhibits like the male slaves he claimed were "wild men from Borneo" who were actually kidnapped Africans, again, treated like possessions.

Today, we remember him as "an American showman, businessman, prankster, and entertainer," " an author, publisher, philanthropist, and a politician" -- but not as a racist. His extensively detailed Wikipedia page uses the word "racist" only once, in a passage assuring the reader that although Barnum's shoes were "replete with racist stereotypes," they ACTUALLY "satirized white racial attitudes"...by putting white men in blackface. In a Connecticut legislature debate on the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, he declared, "A human soul, ‘that God has created and Christ died for,’ is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot – it is still an immortal spirit" -- using a derogatory term for African people coined by Europeans. He later apologized only for having owned slaves, not for his unique history of human rights violations. Until his death, he continued to exhibit people of color as "living curiosities." His name is still promoted by the Ringling Brothers / Barnum & Bailey circus company.

P. T. Barnum was a piece of shit, and old-school circuses were for assholes. That's what I learned today.