Chinua Achebe, in his essay “Africa’s Tarnished Name” (1998), talks about why Europeans put Africans in a bad light: it is because they fail to see Africans as fully human, a side effect of the slave trade and colonialism. You see it in many (but not all) Europeans who work in news, film and anthropology – even in those who are in Africa helping people.
Despite how close they are to Africa, Europeans tend to see Africans as being “not like us”, as being so different that maybe they are not completely human. It has nothing to do with skin colour or looks. We know that because before the 1700s European descriptions of Africans were almost indifferent and matter-of-fact.
Africa as a strange land of cannibals and savages is an invention of the 1700s. It was pushed hard by defenders of the slave trade. It made the slave trade – and the colonialism that followed – seem like an act of mercy: Europeans were merely saving Africans from themselves.
This view reached its fullest flower in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” (1902). He tells of a journey down the Congo river in the 1890s:
We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on the earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first men taking possession of an accursed inheritance.
Only it was not like that. Men had been living there for thousands of years and even Europeans had been there for hundreds. In the early 1500s it already had a black Christian king, Nzinga Mbemba, who could speak Portuguese and whose son spoke to the pope in Latin. It was hardly the stone age land of near-humans that Conrad imagined.
Here is Conrad’s description of an African who looked after the boiler on the riverboat:
And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hindlegs.
Achebe calls this “poisonous”.
Some say Conrad was merely “of the times”. Yet here is David Livingstone, one of Conrad’s very own heroes, talking about the character of Africans:
After long observation, I came to the conclusion that they are just a strange mixture of good and evil as men are everywhere else.
Achebe:
Without doubt, the times in which we live influence our behavior, but the best or merely the better among us, like Livingstone, are never held hostage by their times.
It is one thing to talk about the troubles of Africa – genocide, poverty, disease and misrule – which in fact must be talked about and quite another not to see Africans as fully human:
Perhaps this difference can best be put into one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.
See also:
- stereotypes about Africa
- Zora Neale Hurston: What White Publishers Won’t Print
- racism is unnatural
- “It was the times!”
- How racism helps and hurts white people
- Ota Benga – an African put in the Bronx Zoo in 1906
- history
Ahhh Chinua Achebe, I love his work. 🙂
Another must read is ‘Things Fall Apart’
Probably one of the very few renowned African writers that explains so intrinsically the impact colonization has had on Africa. It’s impossible to read any of his books and not relate to them as human. That’s ridiculous.
Give me Chinua, over say Alexander McCall Smith, a very I presume liberal white Scottish academic who taught at the University of Botswana who tends to dabble too much in stereotypes of esp African women. To his credit his characters are quite relatable.
His work is light and palatable enough to be adapted into a widely consumed and successful television series in the UK.
Chinua Achebe is too ‘deep’ to have his work given the same notoriety.
Huge fan!
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MerriMay,
I agree–Things Fall Apart is a great book, though I was (pleasantly) surprised to read it in my Honors English class in high school.
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Achebe…*nods*…good man.
I was hoping you would write more, like about what Africa was really like, like in your “Mali” post.
Merci nonetheless, Abagond.
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Conrad is also a perv, his description of an African woman in Hearts of Darkness really reflects the thinking of those who raped the land and our ancestors. I had to read Hearts of Darkness for a class, after reading I dropped the class. There was no way I could see this slander the way the teacher did.
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My mother and grandmother claimed that because Africa had no tall builings and other examples of houses, bridges etc, that that was the reason for disrespect from the Europeans. ie. castles. moats, palaces etc.
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interesting. Ive often felt it’s so weird how we Europeans look at Africa as so exotic and an almost “timeless” place but obviously it has a beauty to it too, that sentimentality. Deep inside we probably want Africa to stay like it was before the colonial times just so that we can something to call the Womb of The Peoples/civilisation/Agriculture or something, something pure and almost tribal. Still the non-globalized/exploited culture there is very vulnerable if eveyrthing would start to change much faster. I saw this documentary about a princess in Senegal, with a very distinct culture, it was so beautiful how it was so untouched by the industrialization. She went to Paris and then back again and decided to stay in that world ’cause the big city wasnt substantial her own town were bigger world for her. I mean its important to have those places all over the world, but nothing should hold Africa back from being postmodern either.
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“My mother and grandmother claimed that because Africa had no tall builings and other examples of houses, bridges etc, that that was the reason for disrespect from the Europeans. ie. castles. moats, palaces etc.”
Well everything must have a expensive power fallos to it to prove it or it isnt there? 😉
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“My mother and grandmother claimed that because Africa had no tall builings and other examples of houses, bridges etc, that that was the reason for disrespect from the Europeans.”
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What Darwin said about blacks didn’t help either BUT TELL THAT TO THESE COLLEGE PROFESSORS …..sigh…..Didn’t they know that Moses wife and father in law were black?! uh…no…they didn’t read the bible good enough or thorough enough..Although the shulamith was ‘said’ to be black, but I believe they were talking about women working outside getting dark…real men of all cultures, even African ones, had women, inside. and THEY worked outside if they had a family
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I might add:since Moses wife (he only had one like Joseph) was black, I think that could be one of the reasons we are getting picked on worldwide. She was with him when he wrote the TORAH. Jesus quoted from the TORAH as well. I think it ‘could be’ spiritual from the ‘dark side of the force’.When people tell me Moses was black, its incorrect unless you use the ‘one drop’ law but that doesn’t last long when your kids look like Pacific Islanders Phillipinos, samoans, tongans, etc.
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One more thing: the people who enslaved blacks exclusively were the Arab Muslims first. Although every ethnic group were slaves at one point..Christianity went to Ethiopia through the Ethopian eunich 600 years BEFORE Islam. I didn’t know that until I read the ‘timeline’
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[…] Chinua Achebe: Africa’s Tarnished Name […]
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[…] Here’s a link to another blog post that elaborates on the above essay. […]
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Reblogged this on IBHE Collaborative University.
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With all due respect, I thoroughly studied Conrad in Critical Theory in university, wrote papers’ on Heart of Darkness etc. etc. Conrad’s personal point of view is NOT that of viewing the African as a ‘subhuman’! or ‘inferior’ being!! IT IS NOT CONRAD’S personal view, belief or HIS character; Conrad is writing through the voice of KURTZ and other European characters the utter depravity of the European ‘colonial/imperialists’ agenda and mandate. In matter of fact, the brutal, absolutely devastating critique that Conrad delivers and puts forth in the book, THROUGH THE VOICE OF HIS CHARACTERS, is that of the complete moral, ethical and ‘backward’ primitive thinking and utter moral decay of the so-called ‘advanced EUROPEAN societies…not the African people’s and societies that the Europeans exploit for their own ends. Is that not obvious in the reading???
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