Claire Johanson
Mrs. Johnson
English IV AP
5/21/14
America’s Perception of Africa
Through media, literature, and what a monumental amount of America has learned in grade school, the perception of Africa is immensely exaggerated (The African Executive | Africa: The Beautiful). Over time, images of famine and extreme poverty has shaped America’s idea of all that Africa entails (American Perceptions of Africa Based on Media Representations). Due to the fact that modern America heavily relies on what the media chooses to feed it, it is truly up to these newspapers, magazines, and evening news channels to be responsible in choosing what they portray Africa as. Unfortunately, this has been going on for a vast amount of time, and some cannot see the end to the misconceptions, even with Africa begging to be represented in the correct manner (Africa In The Western Media).
“It should be elementary to say that Africa is neither a country nor a language. Unfortunately, a huge portion of the population in the United States considers Africa to be a single country or a language. I have actually had Americans ask me to speak African”, states Alhaji G.V. Kromah, a former Assistant Professor of International Communication & Media Law at the University of Liberia. How is it that students take twelve years of history and cultural studies, and yet, a mass amount of Americans refer to Africa as if it were it’s own country, and spoke one singular language? If teachers have a mindset in which they stereotype Africa, and the people who reside there, then by default, the students will have the same stereotypes and mindsets. Although an immense amount of curriculums teach Africa to be a certain way, there are also programs and curriculums out there that...
... middle of paper ...
...o is trying to say that everything can be fixed by simply starting to refer to individual countries, it is completely hypocritical of them to write long and elaborate essays, journal entries, and an immense amount of other things, but not inform the reader of what cities, countries, and areas are actually as poor as America depicts it to be, and areas that are exactly the opposite. Do these websites and books not see that this is ironic and wrong? They are only hurting themselves.
This topic is such a controversial and complex. Unfortunately, it would seem as if the same people that are fighting for this cause are also holding themselves back. Africa is an extremely diverse continent, and it truly does deserve to be represented in the correct way. In fact, every continent deserves this. These individual countries deserve to be named and talked about with detail.
It all started when Europeans ventured into an unknown Africa. At first, Europeans knew very little about Africa, traded frequently for African slaves, and they were also prone to diseases from there. The trans-Atlantic slave trade banned slavery, making it so Europeans wanted to seize countries with force. For the first time, they explored. King leopard of Belgium buying the Conga free state is an example of what was starting. The countries noticed that the claiming of Africa may lead to a war. They held a conference to peacefully divvy up Africa. No Africans were invited to this conference. The driving forces behind imperialism in Africa are helping the natives, power/nationalism, and natural resources/money.
In the 21st century, slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade are viewed as immoral and quite possibly the most horrifying treatment known to man by society and foreign leaders but, was the same view regarded in the 17th century? The short primary sources, “Nzinga Mbemba: Appeal to the King of Portugal”, and “Captain Thomas Phillips: Buying Slaves in 1639”, enables individuals to identify how foreign leaders, specifically the kings of African nations, conducted the issue of slavery and the slave trade. In the words of Nzinga Mbemba and Captain Phillips, the kings of Congo and Ouidah both knowingly accepted slavery in their country but, had strikingly opposing views concerning the Atlantic Slave Trade; King Mbemba prohibited the trading of slaves whereas the King of Ouidah welcomed slave trading.
The African culture was great and thriving even before European settlement. They had art, architecture, trade, and a thriving military to protect their great civilization. All of these things contributed to a civilization that no one could say was not thriving.
Imperialism in Africa took root in the late 19th century when European nations divided up the continent for their own benefit. Each nation practiced a certain type of rule over the Africans of which they conquered. For example, the Germans, the Dutch, and the French used the practice of Direct Rule over their colonies in Africa. This system is characterized by the colonizers need for the colonized to become assimilated into their culture. The purpose of this was to make the African people “civilized” and act like Europeans. The governing administrations forced on the native inhabitants by the colonial power were meant to undermine those institutions set in place by the indigenous people. By taking over the community’s government on all levels,
Groleau, Rick, Linda Mizzel, and Catherine Benedict, comps. Africans in America. PBS.org. WGBH Interactive, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.
The African empires, kingdoms, and cities had many achievements before the arrival of the Europeans. Some of these achievements had influences many other places in the world. Three major achievements were the trading systems, their military forces and strengths of its people, and the wealth and success.
In the first segment of his film series, Different but Equal, Basil Davidson sets out to disprove the fictitious and degrading assumptions about African civilization made by various Western scholars and explorers. Whether it is the notion that Africans are “savage and crude in nature” or the presumed inability of Africans to advance technologically, these stereotypes are damaging to the image and history of Africa. Although European Renaissance art depicts the races of white and black in equal dignity, there was a drastic shift of European attitudes toward Africa that placed Africans in a much lower standing than people of any other culture. The continent of Africa quickly became ravished by the inhuman slave trade and any traditional civilization
Prior to the arrival of European traders, the continent of Africa had developed sophisticated society as it demonstrated its ability to maintain advanced civilizations, withhold three major empires, and gain wealth through trade. Although European traders did advance organized society in Africa, it would be false to say that prior to their arrival Africa was underdeveloped.
An Image of Africa Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad has been depicted as “among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language.” Chinua Achebe believes otherwise. In Chinua Achebe’s An Image of Africa: Racism is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness he simply states that, “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist” [pg.5]. Achebe argues that the racist observed in the Heart of Darkness is expressed due to the western psychology or as Achebe states “desire,” this being to show Africa as an antithesis to Europe.
In the Western world European colonialism is hailed as an accomplishment. It is the time where Europeans flourished economically after finding and taking control of the lands of the New World. Because of European colonialism and the need for free labor, millions of Africans were forced from their homeland and were forced into slavery. Years later the Europeans came back to colonize and take the rich resources of Africa without any regard to the native people who lived there. Though colonialism ended in the United Stated in the 1700’s and other parts of the Americas in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, many of its racial and injustices are still an ingrained in society today There have been many instances where groups of people within African
Bohannan, Paul, and Philip Curtin. Africa & Africans . Long Grove: Waveland Press, Inc. , 1995.
(a) Africans and Europeans have relations that date all the way back to the origins of humans and human migrations. Scholars have hypothesized that Homo erectus found in Europe about 800,000 years ago originated and migrated from Africa Europeans and Africans also had religious relations; which is evident from the spread of Christianity, introduced by the Byzantines, throughout Africa specifically in North Africa, the Nile Valley, and the Horn of Africa. Aside from religious relations, Africans and Europeans also had economic and political relations as a result of European colonization and conquest of the African regions. Economic relations were a result of Europeans coming into Africa and taking natural resources to benefit from in the production of goods and trade. Another specific example of economic relations between Europeans and Africans is the practice of mercantilism, in which European nations were the mother countries and countries of Africa were the colonies. As the mother country, Europeans, would take natural resources from the colony, African regions, to produce goods, which would then be sold back to the colony. This also attributed to the political relations between Africans and Europeans because the economic desires of the Europeans often led to them controlling the Africans to maximize profit and their own personal benefits; which is directly related to slavery, one of the biggest relations between Africans and Europeans. Slavery and the slave trade in turn created social relations because slaves were considered to be a class of their own. Another social relation that resulted from slavery was the creation a “new race” known as the...
Africa’s struggle to maintain their sovereignty amidst the encroaching Europeans is as much a psychological battle as it is an economic and political one. The spillover effects the system of racial superiority had on the African continent fractured ...
There is no doubt that European colonialism has left a grave impact on Africa. Many of Africa’s current and recent issues can trace their roots back to the poor decisions made during the European colonial era. Some good has resulted however, like modern medicine, education, and infrastructure. Africa’s history and culture have also been transformed. It will take many years for the scars left by colonization to fade, but some things may never truly disappear. The fate of the continent may be unclear, but its past provides us with information on why the present is the way it is.
The craftiness of colonialism on Africa changed its history forever but there were good and bad effects because they built schools and improved medical care but they also had segregated benefits and resource drainage.