Belgian colonial museums erased European slavery while blaming Arab slave traders

Evidence

There are only very occasional references to slavery throughout the Museum, and where there are they are always to Arab slavers, never to Belgian slavery, Belgian or European engagement in enslavement or in the slave trade. Africans petrified; Arabs enslaving; Europeans civilized. Reinforcing at once the orientalizing sense of Arab viciousness underpinning their market cunning, entrepreneurship, and threatening competitiveness. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 900

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the ‘Africans petrified; Arabs enslaving; Europeans civilized’ triad as a formula for how imperial memory launders its own crimes.
• XREF: connects to: National museums omit annihilated groups, erasing their claim to the nation — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 135