Misconceptions at Large: Africa
The African past and present are widely misunderstood and misrepresented. Do we have an ethical responsibility to learn about Africa’s history to correct our misconceptions? Historians have not done a great job researching Africa and representing the history involved in this continent. Most of historians concentrate their time on Eurasia. In our opening idea we had some images we saw that should languages that were prevalent in Europe and Asia. There were so many languages that it overwhelmed me. However when it came to Africa there were few written languages before precolonial times. This makes it harder to study Africa and the lack of historians studying Africa has led to some misconceptions of the continent.
One being that Africa hadn’t contributed to the development of civilization. However after watching the video from PBS labeled “Africa’s Great Civilizations” these misconceptions were proved “far off.” Starting with the accomplishment of discovering Ironworking and how it had increased hunting, agriculture, and mining. There was a misconception that Turkey was where ironworking originated, but knowing that it came around the same time in Africa shows the consequence of missing vital information.
The second misconception was that Africa was filled with nomads that lived off hunting and were generally poor. However after watching the video mentioned earlier, I learned that the Swahili coast, east Africa was one of the biggest markets. First of all they sold over 500 tons of gold a profit now days that would be estimated 25 billion dollars (Gates, 2021). Also selling spices, fish, seeds, and iron. Boats would travel sometimes as far as China to come for these things. Africa had great civilizations such as: Chad, Mali, and Somalia. These civilizations were large and to support these civilizations the people would use agriculture and fish depending on where they were in Africa.
How often it is that people think of Africa as a smaller place the size of North America. These misconceptions are because of single stories. Single stories are stories that are told by someone about something over and over again until it becomes true whether or not it is (Adichie, 2009). For example in North America we often think of Africa as a place of beautiful landscapes and of small towns that lack clean water. We talk about the struggle that Africa has gone through in history but not nessiciarily the achievements. Single stories are dangerous because they flatten the experience of something and don’t tell the full story of it. There is so much more that we have to discover from Africa about history.
So going back to the question is it our ethical responsibility to learn about Africa’s history to correct our misconceptions? Yes, it is our responsibility to learn about Africa’s history and correct our misconceptions. We have single stories that affect the way we view other people: Treating Africans as if they came from a place of desolation or of poverty does not help us connect; these are misconceptions that even further divide us as people. If we truly knew Africa’s history we would see the similarities of us as people and not just the color of our skin. We would see how Africans have contributed so much to history in the examples shown above: ironwork, gold, agriculture, and the spread of ideas. If we correct the misconceptions we have in our mind about a people we can repair broken dignity and see that we are more similar than we thought.
Note on Ethical dimensions:
Ethical dimensions challenge historians to make judgments on events and people based on historical accounts and present-day ethics. It is one of the steps of a historian to think critically about history and is critical to better understand history. Ethical dimensions bring attention to the questions such as are we obligated to remember World War II and the fallen soldiers of this war? Or the mistreatment of Jews? What historical crimes are we responsible for in the present-day. Germany is much known for the reign of Hitler in World War II and the death of over six million Jews. Such a historical crime should be remembered so that we won’t repeat our mistakes. However historical ethics goes further beyond remembering, but taking responsibility of a crime and making it right. Germany did apologize four decades after the war for the country’s actions and for policies created making things harder for Jews. (East Germany Apologizes, 1990)
Work Cited:
Adichie, C. N. (2009, October 07). The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg&t=641s
Ethical dimensions. (n.d.). Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://historicalthinking.ca/ethical-dimensions
Gates, H. (n.d.). Africa’s great civilizations. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/show/africas-great-civilizations/
East Germany APOLOGIZES : Message to jews Accepts Nazi Atrocity REPONSIBILITY : New GOV’T. asks Israel to forgive. (1990, April 12). Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-04-12-mn-1752-story.html