No Other Continent Called Africa By Barbra Kingsolver

Between America and other European nations, stereotypes and misrepresentations have ultimately plagued the continent of Africa. To every side there is often another story, yet unfortunately for the many countries of Africa, they are ultimately victimized and suffer through further oppression. According to Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, Keim suggests that Africa is essentially under the public microscope, it tends to be scrutinized, and compared to European nations and America. Keim elaborates on human natures need to group people, places, and things, which creates the theory of superiority or dominance over races, cultures, and even religions.

“‘Why do you say Africa instead of just saying the country you mean?’…‘You don’t know America. You say Senegal and American people, they say, Where is that...’” (Adichie 15).

In this first-hand account, Blyden speaks directly to African American people encouraging them to embrace their Africa roots. He wants African Americans to feel a connection to Africa, as well as understand important information about Africa. In several places in this text he tries to dispel some myths that were commonly held in the 19th century, and even today. Myths like there was never any great society that existed in Africa, and Africa was completely uncivilized. However, even though Blyden dispelled many of these myths, he also played into them. He did this by stating that African Americans could go to Africa and help “furnish a development of civilization which this world has never seen” (201). He makes an argument that Africa is civilized, and

In her book, Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman challenges Jerry Rawlings’ notion of freedom by responding with “Had Rawlings asked, “‘Are we yet free?’ most Ghanaians would have answered with a resounding, ‘No.’ This ‘no’ resonated on both sides of the Atlantic”(pg 126). The capitalistic spirit that possessed the Europeans enabled them to disrupt the untouched country of Africa and capture its children to satiate their wealth aspirations. In the meantime, the Europeans took the land from the Native Americans through genocidal practices and claimed it as their gift from God. Although some claim that the capitalist ventures of the Europeans during the colonial period and the 19th century were beneficial for all and rooted in innocence, it ultimately caused the physical and cultural death of the Native Americans and African-origin peoples and has led to the day to day suffering of their descendants.

The history of Africa is very complex. Europeans invaded Africa and stripped them of their culture and denied future generations their history. Despite the focus on the time of enslavement in modern history, African history expands far beyond that. African history has been consistently whitewashed and many historians have attempted to put our history in a box. In order to understand and study the African experience, one must realize that the history of Africa extends far beyond the times of enslavement and colonialism.

Africa nowadays is viewed as a pretty poor continent, but if it were not for a single event, it wouldn’t be in the shape it is today. This event is best known as the scramble for Africa. The European powers had begun taking land after King Léopold the second claimed that initial piece of land. European powers gathered in 1884 to discuss which part of Africa were theirs to avoid fighting, however this was done between European countries, and the thought of even inviting a spokesperson from Africa was beyond them. The people of Africa were enslaved and forced to work the land for natural resources such as rubber and diamond. After the European powers claimed all that they could, two independent countries remained. These two countries were Liberia and Ethiopia. The “Eurocentric” perspective that the European powers had at the time allowed for them to commit these horrible acts and see nothing wrong with what they had

When most Americans think of 19th century Africa, they will probably think of the slave trade between Africa and the United State of America, but lesser known to most is that a percentage of African people were enslaved in their own country. When King Leopold II of Belgium discovered the economic potential of the colonization of Africa, he immediately jumped on the idea. He saw the profits that could be made from exploiting the rubber and ivory resources in Africa, and he took action; his forces enslaved millions of native Africans to extract these resources, which resulted in wounding and killing thousands of the natives. King Leopold and his men committed many horrible acts of against the native African population (most of which would fit the modern-day description of crimes against humanity), but they lacked any guilt or remorse; they used a twisted justification that they were doing the Africans a favor by taking over their homeland. Or how the King’s men mindlessly followed his orders, and not thinking of all the appalling things they did to the

Imagine going through life without a trajectory. Not knowing what you and your people did that did make a good impact on world history, only knowing your history as it pertains to oppression and devastation. That has been the experience of most members of the African diaspora living in the West. Knowing the reasons why our communities are dysfunctional and we are in a subservient position in society goes a long way in helping bring the change that’s necessary, but we Africans have been denied our place in history. For a long time, the perception of the history of Africa and Africa today has been through the lens of Europeans and

“Into the Heart of Africa” was an infamous exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1989 that made its way into textbooks as an example of cultural appropriation. The exhibition advertised itself as the “first major African exhibition in Toronto” and aimed to be a “critical examination of the relationship between Ontario and Africa” at the turn of the century (Burret 2004: p. 127). Through the juxtaposition of provocative colonial imagery and artifacts with critical texts and ironic captions, the exhibition challenges dominant colonial narratives regarding Africa (p. 132). Yet, within a few months of its opening, the museum made national headlines with accusations of racism, cultural appropriation, and the propagation of old colonial stereotypes

First, Africa was finally given a place in the international community because of New Imperialism. For hundreds of years, an entire fifth of the inhabited Earth was excluded from the world’s most important decisions. But because of New Imperialism, they were able to

Nelson Mandela spoke, “I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself”. Africa did have that peace, that sense of disclosure. Africans lived in a time when they did not have to worry about anyone else's religion, politics, or culture but their own; however, due to the European nation’s thirst for power, Africans now had to face those realities. Their individual countries began to turn against one another because of European influence. Some countries lost their roots and modernized to the European standards. Some countries, even lost hope in regaining the freedom they once had. Europeans wrote Africa’s single story through colonization, which left long lasting cultural, dehumanizing, and emotional effects upon each culture, furthermore changing

This chapter in Africans and Their History by Joseph Harris presents some of the roots of the stereotypes and myths about Africa in the past and for the most part are still held today. Harris discusses how the “greats” of history, geography, and literature starting a path of devaluation of Africans that writers after their time followed. Harris also denounced the language that these “greats” used to describe and talk about Africans. He asserts that this language inherently painted Africans as inferior and subhuman.

Power is a tool constantly being used as narrative to persuade people. History shows how European presence has rape Africa’s inhabitants of their language, food, and traditions. African- American are being feed the narrative that Africa is a continents with several under-developed countries,

In a recent letter to a local newspaper titled “Dream defiled,” a writer warned Americans not to vote Obama into the office of president. The writer made two errors concerning Africa and the slave trade. He wrote: “During this time in a country called Africa, a land of tribal warfare and poverty, its people were selling their children into slavery to the slave traders.”

Africa has a history of political and civil unrest dating back to the late 19th century and the start of the colonial occupation of African nations. Since independence many nations have struggled with undemocratic governments famous for corruption, embezzlement and money laundering. Within the criminalisation of state theory it is claimed that Sub-Saharan Africa has a standardised criminal model derived from dominant social groups exploiting the income gained from their insertion into the international economy as a method of dependence (Bayart, Ellis and Hibou 1999). This is an attempt to show the historical context of the criminality within the state as if it is something that has existed throughout all of the African nations importing and exporting life-span. In order to suit this argument it is easy to use few famous state leaders, such as Charles Taylor or Joseph Momoh, who are renowned for their criminal activity as examples; however to paint a whole continent with the same brush seems nonsensical and inaccurate. Botswana emerged from the colonial regime one of the poorest nations in Africa yet due to a