A Brief History of African Stereotypes: Part 1: Broken, Helpless Africa

Everything you know about Africa is wrong. No, no, not you in particular.  I’m thinking about a more general “you”—the American “you,” the Western “you,” and even the 18-to-22-year-old “you” who enrolls in my introductory African history classes.

When I allow myself to think about it, it seems as though I spend as much time un-teaching African history as teaching it.  This reason is simple.  Most students come into my classes knowing next to nothing about the continent, and what little they know is wrong.

It’s not their fault.  They’re very bright, they graduated from good high schools, and they’re (usually) eager to learn.  But the culture that surrounds them has filled their heads with images of Africa that blend myth with distortion.  Many of them, like most people in the West, imagine that Africa is: an unspoiled paradise of people and wild animals, living in harmony with nature; a primitive backwater trapped in a timeless, tribal past; a place where dangerous diseases and even more dangerous men wreak havoc;  an exotic wonderland of bizarre and outlandish people; and a broken place of collapse, death, and decay.

Some of these stereotypes are contradictory, yet all of them are pervasive—so much so that Erik Gilbert and Jonathan Reynolds’ Africa in World History, a widely used university textbook, devotes its preface to unpacking them.  Anyone reading this post can undoubtedly come up with examples from American culture that reproduce and reinforce these stereotypes, from Disney’s The Lion King to last night’s report on CNN.

I’m devoting Part 1 of this series on African stereotypes to “Broken Africa,” to tracing the geneology of stereotypical images—especially photographs—of African suffering, victimhood, and brutality, from the anti-slavery movement of 200 years ago to the blindspots and hubris of Invisible Children.

(Source: sunrec)

livelovelearndiee:

MODERNIDAD Y COLORIDO by espe_caballa on Flickr.

tastemyexotic:

I want those earrings !

(Source: leesharuehle)

adeleelizabeth:

My babies.

beautifulbreastfeeding:

Hamer mother and child, Ethiopia, by Izla Kaya Bardavid, Flickr

jpedroaa:

“I have a DREAM…”

cosaan:

She is beautiful. 

cosaan:

That dress! And her hair of course :)

(Source: worldofafrica)

iheartsudan:

The tomb of Mahdi.

iheartsudan:

Some beautiful Sudanese artwork that my friend and I found at some hotel in Sudan.

Women like these farmers in Zambezia are at the heart of Mozambique’s strategy to build agricultural potential and reduce rural poverty. Credit: David Corcoran/IRIN

(via peopleofthesouth)