It is well known that American kids traditionally score
well below their foreign counterparts in geographic knowledge,
and Africa seems to be perennially at the bottom of what they
know. The reasons for this shameful lack of interest or
insight are many and varied, especially given the US’
current position in the world, but a few problem areas are
easy to explain.
It is unlikely in any society, for example, that kids would
outpace their teachers, parents, reporters, history texts and
authority figures in exploring and accurately obtaining
knowledge about the rest of the world. And our kids face an
uphill battle through a fog of distortion, ignorance,
smugness, disinterest and flat out racism. Bad press, yellow
press, sloppy and ignorant press—these are all as old as the
hills. But there is often a palpable resistance, a sort of
willful ignorance—almost a vehemence—against knowing too
much about the continent in whose exploitation we share such a
disturbing complicity.
From our parents’ generation, there is an understandable,
if a bit ugly, fuzziness about The Dark Continent. There were
no "countries" in Africa, after all—just chunks of
colonial possessions on puzzle maps laid out by European
imperial powers: French West Africa, the Belgian Congo. Lines
were often drawn across traditional kingdoms, homelands and
territories of long-established societies; the point was
effective administration and exploitation of vast natural
resources, not stability or respect for the people living
there. The fact that these artificial divisions were creating
unavoidable tensions that would haunt the continent for
generations was of no concern whatsoever, and the resulting
violence is perversely used as "evidence" that such
people cannot govern themselves.
Popular culture sustained and deepened the official myths,
if African managed to register at all on the cultural radar.
"I'd be just as sassy as Haile Salassie" was a
throwaway rhyme in a popular song. Much later, Bob Marley
balanced the scale by setting to music the salient parts of
Salasse’s challenge to the League of Nations: "Until
the philosophy that holds one race superior and another
inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned,
everywhere is war." Did Marley know about the song
"Shantytown?" Who knows? But sometimes culture
surpasses history in setting the record straight.
At the time of independence, press reports were routinely
and unabashedly pro-imperialist—-that is, if they had any
clue what was going on at all. Jonathan Kwitny, a former Wall
Street Journal reporter, recalls this phenomenon in his book
Endless Enemies. He remembers the repeating phrase
"rioting Congolese" from his youth, and then goes on
to document that footage in almost every case shows crowds of
Africans running from Belgian troops.
The sad thing is how little times seem to have changed. We
are still shockingly ignorant about the world in which we play
so dominant a role, and our children's future may rest on
ending the cycle. Teachers, schools, reporters and opinion
shapers are still too often in the grip of the colonial
mindset. Some even still use the embarrassingly outdated
lexicon of imperialism: tribe, clan, dialect, and the works,
all constructs of deliberate or dismissive attempts to
delegitimize conquered peoples. Even the myth of journalistic
"balance" should require the abandonment of such
sloppiness-—or invoke standards that are patently absurd.
Are the Serbs a "tribe?" The Czechs? Even
Liechtenstein and Monaco get the respect that seems to elude
Africans. No one refers to the Windsors as a "clan."
Hell, even a few Superbowl wins in a row qualifies as a
"Dynasty." And the French, Spanish, Portuguese and
Italians don’t speak "dialects," even though their
languages are far more interrelated than the hundreds of
complex and varied African languages.
In arranging a recent visit to our school by the Queen of
Buganda [see greenhouseschool.org
], we were shocked to find one reporter actually question the
fact of the monarchy, a bit of retro cavethink I thought went
out at the turn of the century. No one uses qualifiers when
writing that Lucy was female, or that dinosaurs once roamed
the earth. But when it concerns Africa, suddenly there's no
such thing as carbon dating or forensic anthropology, oral
history is not "real" history, and written western
history is sacrosanct (like, say, the ride of Paul Revere, or
Betsy Ross' flag?) Even when the accurate references are
presented to reporters, some will often simply ignore the
press release and revert to type, like playing old tapes in
one’s head.
Americans are too often insulated and isolated from the
rest of the world. But an ostrich only feels comfortable,
blissfully and dangerously unaware of the reality he is hiding
from. The way we think, feel, talk and teach about our past
sets the tone for our present and our future. If we keep
making the same mistakes in a sort of Groundhog Day time
bounce, we are depriving our children of the very tools they
will need to join the greater community as citizens of the
world.
© 2005 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted
with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com. Writer,
singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and
writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia
Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School.
Translations of articles are available in up to 20 languages.
Links to the website are appreciated at danielpwelch.com.
© 2005 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to
danielpwelch.com.
