A Brief History of African Stereotypes, Part 1: Broken, Helpless Africa - John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

http://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2012/03/african-stereotypes-part-1.html
John Edwin Mason teaches African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia.

"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

--a broken place of collapse, death, and decay



Official medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society, c. 1787."

...please read the whole blog at http://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2012/03/african-stereotypes-part-1.html