If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Africa is not a country
**helen**
Deactivated Posts: 9,235 Supreme Poster
But we all know that, right?
Vimbai challenges our perceptions of the continent:
http://www.thesite.org.uk/community/reallife/rants/africaisnotacountry
Does any of this strike a chord with you?
Vimbai challenges our perceptions of the continent:
http://www.thesite.org.uk/community/reallife/rants/africaisnotacountry
Does any of this strike a chord with you?
0
Comments
Not particularly. It might be true, but I'd suggest Sarah Palin is hardly a representitive example of the way people view Africa. But we do the same thing with everywhere else. Americans refer to Europe as a singular entity when it's convenient, and we do to America, despite also being massively varied state to state. We often talk about the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the Caribbean, South East Asia, South America, Central America, the list goes on. And I don't see the issue with labelling someone "African." If they're from a country in Africa, they're African, just like British people are European. Unless you're blatantly getting it wrong (I wonder how many people in Africa would say "English" when they mean "British, for example). But I don't see why someone should have to choose the label "African." It only becomes an issue when you attach all of this baggage to the label that doesn't need to exist, which I suspect is her real issue here. People having a homogenized view of an entire section of the world. But again, that's nothing unique to Africa.
:yes: I totally agree - still think the issues specific to how people view Africa are interesting though.
But alas. This was not so.
Xx
I would find it weird if someone refered to me as a European, and think being 'European' didn't really reflect me at all, whereas I don't care whether someone calls me Enlglish or British
The amount of times I have to remind people that Africa consists of more than just South Africa.
'Oh hey, didn't your dad live in South Africa?', or 'Does that mean your stepmum is South African?'
No. He lived in East Africa. No. She is Kenyan. South Africa is one tiny little part of a huge, huge continent that is diverse and amazing and wonderful.
I think that there is a misconception of Africa as being entirely black, war torn and impoverished.
I used to know a yank who said "that's so European!" at some things I did and said that Wales wasn't part of Britain...
In fact that does annoy me... The idea that Wales is England, or that it doesn't have its own culture, national identity or language. I have for example, heard people say that they don't think people should have Welsh language radio stations because English is spoken in Wales...
Um excuse me... Why the hell not?
Better that than "in" I suppose
European I find weird, but technically accurate. I do get pissed of when people get English and British mixed up; I'm British, I am not English...
It is kinda how the media passes it off as.
I find the need to define oneself as English, British or European, beyond banal.
Did anyone else notice this when watching the World Cup?
Those words almost echo a conversation I had during the tournament.
Sarah Palin wouldn't know how her elbow from her arse, never mind anything about basic geography.
I get what she's saying, and yes it is annoying when people lack such basic geographical knowledge, but she seems to be clumping two irritating things together, which don't have a necessary logical link.
It's annoying when people think Africa is a country, and it's annoying when people think everyone in Africa is either poor or corrupt. But I don't think the second incorrect perception is contingent upon the second. I have a friend who thought Africa was a country (she also thought Amsterdam was in Denmark and that Vietnam was fictional :rolleyes: ) but who certainly wouldn't categorise all Africans into the 'small-child-with-flies-on-face' or 'corrupt-politician-with-blood-on-hands' boxes.
I also wouldn't consider that thinking of Africa as a single entity undermines the cultural and historical value of things like the Pyramids or Kilimanjaro. It's misguided, yes, but again not predicated on the assumption that Africa is one country.
I'd like to see world history paid its due attention in schools; a programme where the histories and interconnections between African countries, and indeed between Asian countries and world continents, are taught with the same interest and rigour that children are taught (and then re-taught, and then re-taught) about the Tudors and WW2. Maybe then there would be a better understanding of the way that countries are linked, and the parts that continental identities play in politics and societies. Part of my dissertation was focused around the relationship between Rwanda and Uganda at the time of the genocide, and also on the relationships of the DRC with its neighbouring countries during its conflict. I remember sitting there devouring tons of books and articles on the subjects and thinking "this is SO interesting and SO important. Why the hell didn't I learn this in school?"
I noticed this, but I took a different tack. I think it underlined the sense that Africans have about being always percieved as "Third World", corrupt violent tribal lead idiots, incapable of running a country.
Then taking pride in the fact that this was the first time a major sporting occasion had taken place on their continent and they did it pretty damned well, thank you very much.
It actually highlighted that what they had in common was more important than national divisions. Shame Europe has never learned that, really.
To be honest, looking at many African countries it's a shame neither have they
It's basically ignorance that makes people believe that Africa is a country. Africa certainly not is a unified sovereign country.
And Adebayor was simply voicing a comment that many Africans, namely being a common African identity. This is not the same as Africa being a country though, since it comes in part from experiences of colonialism, and the fact that Africa today remains a poor part of the world (well, the poorest part).
:yeees: Unfortunately by making that comment you're doing precisely what pisses the writer of that article. off. 'Africa' is not the poorest part of the world. The ten poorest countries in the world are IN Africa.
Asia has poor countries, but it also has highly wealthy ones such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and large emerging economies such as China and India. Africa has none of these.
In a generalised sense, the living standards of Africa as a continent are lower than other parts of the world.
If you judge it against western standards...
What do you mean? Are things like life expectancy Western Standards? Child mortality? Running water? Literacy?