What Is Curtis Keim´s Mistaking Africa?

When I began reading Chapter 1 of “Mistaking Africa,” it reminded me of our first class meeting. Professor Crowley asked us to do the same exercise Curtis Keim talks about in the text. Professor Crowley asked us what comes to mind when we think about Africa. It is a great exercise and allow us to express our perceptions of Africa. Even in class, it took me time to think about what comes to mind when I hear the word Africa, because I have not really heard much about it besides the common misconceptions: “Africa is a primitive place, full of trouble and wild animals, and in need of our help” (5). I frequently see the UNICEF commercial with Alyssa Milano, who asks her viewers how it would feel to be able to save a child’s life for fifty cents a day. The commercial precedes to play really depressing music and shows a slideshow of undernourished children, who fend for themselves in

The United States is known for the “American Dream”, the material items, our breakthroughs in medicine, our employment opportunities, etc. These are just some of the things the United States has to offer, but the United States also has a downfall to all of the “good” things in life: we think our way of life is better than everyone else’s, and we often judge other countries, especially Africa, for their way of living. We often ask the questions, “What if we go to help them?” or “How can we help them?” when the real question is: “What can we learn from them”?

It is unfortunate how often we hear about a disaster occurring in Africa. From civil wars in Somalia and Congo, famine in Yemen and viruses spreading through Liberia, people associate Africa as being chaotic, violent, corrupt, and incredibly poor to the point many Americans still believe animals freely roam in the cities. Naturally, many people and organizations feel the need to bring order and peace to the continent, by policing it, spreading the word of God among the natives, or provide resources such as food, water, or money. However, most people never take the time to learn of African culture and traditions, or understand that some Africans are content with what they have and how things work. We label them as being poor because they do not match our preconceptions of happiness, as we believe living comfortably with others leads to happiness.

The Challenge for Africa. New York, Random House, 2009. Print. Maathai believes there is much more to Africa than what is gleaned in a headline. The headline often provides information of poverty and debt in Africa as well as disease; which some has no context.

There are many misconceptions that have been universally accepted mentioned in Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, many of which are based on biased and incorrect accounts and are extremely offensive. Three important myths are that Africa is a land of cannibals, it is backward and very uncivilized, and that it is one country where everyone and the climate are the same all over. These will be explained, refuted, and the detriment to the people of Africa will be discussed.

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.

There are many myths and stereotypes of how the media portrays Africa to be. The media has stereotyped Africa to be poor, hazardous, hot, underdeveloped nation, violent and spiritual country (p, 37). In the chapter “How We Learn”, Curtis Keim focuses on the specific sources that stereotypes Africa to be over populated country with exotic animals. Also stereotypes the people to be illiterate and not well educated people. People take negativity from different sources of media and base their opinion upon the information given and that is how people learn about Africa.

The author takes the stereotypes personally because he believes that people only admire Africa because they feel pity for the poor communities that they encountered. People fail to acknowledge to successful parts of Africa, instead they dwell on the negative aspects and

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 is a continent plagued by misinformed and false stereotypes, rarely being seen or portrayed as what it really is. Countless amounts of myths and ideas are formulated based off of single stories or one-sided stories from the region, often without a second thought. These stereotypes give Africa an overall negative image to the rest of the world and suppress the reality that is hidden behind the slew of stereotypes. The belief that all of Africa is poor and undeveloped is an uninformed statement that harms the reality and worsens the image of the continent by perpetuating an incomplete idea into the world.

Her college roommate felt sorry for her even before she came because she knew that she was coming from Africa. Her roommate had a single story of Africa and that was poverty. Her roommate was surprised when she met Adichie and learned that she came from a middle class family and that she could speak English very well. Adichie informed her that English was the official language of Nigeria. I remember finding this information both new and surprising. After watching the video and hearing Adichie’s story, I realized how easy it is for us all to be exposed to single stories. I began to think about the ways in which we are exposed to these stories such as the media, books, people, and society. When I flip on the television, there are commercials of African children living in poverty and begging for donations to have food to eat. Much like the roommate, I too thought Africa was a place of

Your sitting in front of the Television watching the season finale of your favorite show, it goes to a commercial break and instead of getting up to refill the snack bowl you stay. In the arms of an Angel by Sarah McLachlan begins to pay and the screens is covered by videos and pictures of starving kids in Africa; Softly, an emphatic voice begins to talk about why you should donate to their nonprofit organization. Guilt swells in you and you feel an urgent pull to help those in need especially if your finically capable. Surprisingly, the media portraying Africa incorrectly happens all the time. Africa and it’s citizens are a country wrongly painted to be largely poor, broke, and ultimately a third world continent y in western media. The wrongful representation of Africa through

Africa has had some atrocities occur in its history. One of those was the tyranny of King Leopold. In order to gain control of Congo King Leopold would use violent force and control economic monopolies. His violence was fairly unknown by the rest of the world until some missionaries and other Europeans came into Africa and witnessed the horrors. The missionaries would go on to write about what they experienced and spread the word to inform society of what is occurring.

The myth and stereotypes about Africa are not anything new and they are very present in our daily lives and the way Africa is portrayed. For example the reason why many people today think that Africa is bleak land of poverty and diseases is because early writers, historians, and geographers talked about Africa in that way. Because these stereotypes are so readily available, they infiltrate people’s daily thinking. Furthermore this makes people less likely to actually seek to really learn about Africa because they feel that their [inaccurate] suffice for their worldview of Africa. This is in turn leads people completely ignoring anything that contract their already established ideas.

Western media has been, in part, portraying Africa as a chaotic and messy place. It has overlooked the progress that has been made by Africa. Despite being 60% subsidized farming, it has built many Industries and factories that boost the economy. The reason why people fail to understand Africa and its conditions is mostly due to the first impression colonists had before it's original non-westernized culture.