How The Media Portrays Africans

Africans are often portrayed by the western media as "indigenous people, women with saggy naked breasts and men with bows and arrows and a piece of cloth covering their below area". The pictures you see of starving children and their swollen bellies with a description of "Poor African child extremely malnourished" is the types of pictures and labels you see of African people. African people living in misery, awaiting western help. Either that, or Africans dancing around a fireplace, all happy and shaking their bodies to their tribal music, yelling and singing a song with lack of words, just tribal sounds, their language. After they dance, they will eat animal organs, or worms and strange tree fruits. You might think I'm being sarcastic, which I am, but the person who once told me this was not. This person talked about Africa as a kind of long lost inhabited island, whose only population was tribes and animals and mosquitoes. I guess that was what this person saw on tv. When I told this person that Africa was the second most populated continent in the world, and that I didn't ride an elephant to school and that there was tv and wifi signal, and running water, and houses made of more materials than just mud and chopsticks, and that when you caught malaria you didn't die instantly, you had pills for treating it, and that I had never seen a lion or a giraffe on my way to school, and that there were schools, and supermarkets and chocolate cereal, and beautiful beaches, and all the great friends I made there, and that the tv only portrayed a very miserable Africa and that we had pizza delivery, this person just nodded and stayed quiet for 10 seconds, as if processing all the information and facts I had just delivered and then proceeding to nod, and say that I probably just lived in a developed part of Africa. The main reason this person had such a basic image of Africa is because this person only saw Africa through the media's eyes, so to this person all there was to Africa was what the media showed. And so it happens with many other people who have never stepped foot in an african country. 

What the media doesn't portray is the extremely talented singers and dancers, the smart boy in a small neighborhood in South Africa who did so well in his exams that he was top of the class, the beautiful and stylish hairdresser that cuts hair and hears her clients complaining about their husbands at least once a day, the Saturday weddings that only end on Sunday morning, the couple who just bought a house near the restaurant they own and are expecting their first child or the women and men dressed in smart attire to discuss business in a local cafe every Wednesday morning, or the woman from Nairobi who just moved to the US because she got into her first choice university and almost wants to move back home because she is tired of people constantly asking her if she can say a sentence in African. In fact, westerns have proved to be ridiculously surprised whenever they see a white african, because, according to the media, people in Africa can only be black or a mix of white and black, because africans, since they are portrayed as a tribe population, cannot be any skin color lighter than that.

What the western media almost never portrays is the africans that live in cities, have metropolitan jobs and are not starving and hunting for nutrition. Believe it or not, there are companies in Africa besides petrol and NGOs. There are quite intelligent and loving people as well. And just because you are from Africa, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to love dancing, and you don't need to have a "weird" name either. In fact, world civilization began in Africa. The Pharaonic civilization of ancient Egypt is the oldest literate civilization. According to historical records, the Egyptian state dates back to about 3300 B.C.

These stereotypes have a very big impact on Africans because, not only are they patronizing their home and fellow population, they also scare westerns, who might have thought of moving their businesses or lives to this underestimated continent. Because Africa is not an appealing continent for westerns to bring their business to it. Before making false assumptions about Africans, think about yourself as an African. How would you feel if someone told you that you lived in a tent? How would you feel if someone told you that you are not educated enough? How would feel if someone told you that your family and friends are just a whole lot of starving people? How would you feel if I told you that the answer to these questions is the feelings Africans have towards these false assumptions? Be kind, not pitiful.