Africa — Overcome Our Misconceptions
I think most of us are guilty of applying stereotypes and misconceptions to the continent of Africa. On the surface, we assume that Africa is just a poor, less-fortunate continent with a modern disadvantage. However, there is way more to it that has been overlooked. Do we have an ethical responsibility to learn about the African past in an effort to correct these misconceptions? I do believe we have an ethical responsibility to properly understand Africa and try to fix those common misconceptions that WE have created.
Throughout the public school system and through most educational systems, the curriculum prioritizes the development of Eurasian societies. The main reason why we do not know about Africa on a smaller scale. We look at the big picture and jump to our own conclusions. For example, the development of Ironworking has been linked to European societies. However, we have found out that it can also be traced back to Africa around the same time. This proves that Africa was quite advanced for the time period.
Premodern Africa is a topic of focus because they were able to keep up. Some may call Africa a “parallel world” but what does it mean? It is rather self-explanatory, basically suggesting that it was very similar to the societies that we typically learn about. Such as those Eurasian societies, yet Africa is still different in it’s own way. Both “worlds” had the emergence of Iron, art, architecture, trade, and religion. This idea comes with some complications. It was not a continent just sitting there all by itself, it did have contact to the rest of the world through trade routes and such. The leading factor to how Africa adopted Christianity and the creation of churches, like the Lalibela. Other places, like the City of Marrakesh and the Swahili Coast show us that Africa thrives in trade. According to the PBS video talking about the Swahili Coast, “Between 800 and 600 AD, East Africa exported an estimated 500 tons of gold at a value today of 25 Billion dollars.” Now that is quite impressive.
In order to understand and appreciate Africa for what it is and it’s past, we must clear up our misconceptions. It is not ethical to assume negative things on a group of people because of their modern appearance. Taking the time to analyze the past allows us to understand all of the important things that are typically overlooked. We are all humans and we all have our differences, so why can’t we just accept Africa in the same way?
