Often, a loss of human dignity is centered around the belief in the inferiority of a person or group of people. Because the public and people close to Sara Baartman saw her as inferior, they equated her to an animal and treated and her as such. She lost her human dignity when those around her no longer believed her capable of having any, if they ever believed that to begin with. They cared less about her person than they cared about her body. The readings also mentioned how people would question the “authenticity” of the “exotic” people – as if they weren’t human beings but rather some commodity that could be faked. The comparison of the two versions of Sojourner Truth’s speeches touches on human dignity when looking at how differently she is portrayed through her language in the two versions. The later one gives her a false slave dialect in order to make her seem less smart and, similar to Baartman’s situation, inferior. That rendering, written by Gage, uses wording and dialect against Truth in order to misrepresent her and her body. The human zoos also dealt with inferiority of black and “exotic” people, equating them to animals as well. By not considering the people in the zoos to be equally as human as those not in cages, or as those of another race, they lost some perceived human dignity from those around them, therefore often losing the belief in their own human dignity.
