Essay On Stereotypes In Africa

This scenario where two people are claiming that America is a violent, disease ridden country based on one news report is obviously false, but if you take out America and replace it with a country more “underdeveloped”, this scenario becomes very convincing. Take the same conversation and replace America with the continent of Africa, and it suddenly a much more plausible incident.

200 years ago, when European nations first started to colonize African countries, their belief was that they were civilizing the natives by repressing their culture and promoting their own Christian way of life. Back then, it was considered historically accurate to believe that because their values did not correlate with Christian ones, all natives of Africa lived backwards lives and had “uncivilized” and “savage-like” culture.

Thinking of a culture as nothing more than your own ethnocentric
The continent of Africa is the biggest victim of a single story representation because of something that is called “poverty porn.” This when the mainstream media makes the most extreme cases of poverty or famine in an area and portrays is as the most common situation in the region. Poverty porn is typically used by non-profit organizations to gain sympathy for their cause. If the media projected the bustling nightlife of Cape Town or the fast growing economy of Nairobi, Kenya, then we would all lose sympathy for Africans and these non-profits and charity organizations would be out of business.

Essentially objectifying Africa for their own corporate gain caused, the decisions and lives of Africans have become obsolete. Because the people who actually live in Africa are not accurately represented by Western media, it makes it even more difficult for them to convince the rest of the world why they matter and why we should pay attention to what happens to them and to