Last year this time, there was a lot of black history month posters up. Some were printed by the Government of Ontario. One of those printed by the government listed some famous black people:
- Martin Luther King Jr
- Booker Washington
- Ghandi
- Beethoven
Hmm.
The first two go without saying.
The third is just idiotic. Ghandi's only connection to Africa was working as a lawyer in Durban for a few months.
The fourth is based on some legend that African soldiers in the pay of the Spanish Duke of Alva "impregnated" the local Flemish women, thereby producing the tawny-skinned Beethoven. Not that Beethoven considered himself anything but an aristocratic German, but who cares what he thought about himself.
