Human Zoos

Indigenous performers at the Paris Exposition, 1931--a notorious "human zoo."

I don’t get the outrage about “human zoos.” It seems to me the problem is entirely a semantic one. Just call it an “ethnographic museum,” and the same displays are perfectly unobjectionable. 

Is Upper Canada Village a “human zoo”? Is Saint-Marie-among-the-Hurons? Old Fort Henry? Fort York? Black Creek Pioneer Village?

Isn't the racist thing calling it a "human zoo" if and only if the exhibitors are non-white, as if their culture could be of no legitimate interest?