Transcriber: Mia Tran Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
Hello, my name is Franca Marinelli,
and today I will be presenting to you the topic
The misrepresentation of African culture by Black Americans.
Africa, a continent with 54 fully recognized sovereign states,
1250 to 3000 languages, 3000 tribes and over 1.3 billion people.
Africa serve generations of African American descent
as a beacon of inspiration in the face of incredible odds
against their corporate survival in the United States.
It was a genuine repository of icons, discourses, languages,
and we’re out of culture forms
with which to confront and counter the efforts of dominant groups
to decimate a culturally exterminate Americans of African descent.
Africa is a continent that has often been thought to be represented
by Black Americans to the rest of the world.
But these appropriations by African-Americans
have not always been positive.
Africa’s suffered time to time to present, as an object of fear and loathing
even for some African Americans,
their anti-American racism is sometimes no less rabid
than those of other groups in American society.
This can be credited to internalized racism
formed by white counterparts through generations.
The display of Africa is most commonly pointed towards
cultures that can be found in Western and Southern countries,
with disregards the broad spectrum of differences
that are not shared by the whole continent.
From Libya and Morocco in the North Africa
to Ethiopia and Somalia in East Africa,
and Zambia and Zimbabwe in West and South Africa.
This generalization of Africa is a misrepresentation to its verticality,
as there is a theory
that no singular culture on the continent can be described as African culture
that’s a black American film and music.
There’s hardly a topic of discussion of this.
Prime examples such as the famous ‘Coming to America’,
which is a poster boy back in the day
for how to make a film about Africa with 101 African stereotypes.
As well as Black Panther, which had Wakanda,
which was praised by African Americans but criticized by Africans.
While it was a fictional capital city, Wakanda was a sci-fi fanatics dream.
An almost utopia.
Outside this bubble, there was poverty and disease,
and with themes that are commonly seem to be associated with Africa
by the white gaze.
It was disturbing, because one of the only specific African territories
praised by Black Americans is a fictional city
of illustrious success, an overgeneralized stereotype.
There has rarely ever been a praise for a city,
a tribe or a specific country in the continent that exists.
When you generalize a continent which contains over 54 countries
with 3000 tribes and cultures
and claim them all as your own, as African culture,
the message of praise loses its significance
because of the ignorance it shows,
of the message it communicates, which is Africa is only beautiful,
and its wealth and success, and not its struggles.
There has been no praise for women who still walk fields
and carry water from the wells,
the villages that are ridiculed as being backward and uncivilized,
and so as the perseverance of tradition and history.
There is no praise or appreciation for the reality of Africa as its stands.
Only the fictional collage
that has been created through years of generalization,
and is somewhat delusional greenness.
In the present time, most black Americans will always hold their American identity,
the red and white stripes, ahead of their assumed African heritage,
because of the strength and power that it undeniably holds,
thus allowing the Eurocentric view of Africa to cloud their perspective,
then from time to time completely define it.
And this can be dangerous because of this Eurocentric view, however,
mixed in with the delusional view of greatness of what Africa should be
spreads the message to actual Africans that what they are seeing is wrong.
They do not understand it to their own surroundings.
The most prominent issue that has taken up this debate
was the release of Beyoncé’s visual album Black is King.
Beyoncé’s fame and status allowed her to tap into her roots,
with or without the permission of the actual African people.
Much of the criticism comes from whether or not she knows
the balance between simply idealizing pre-colonial Africa
and dehumanizing what it really meant to be African in an older era.
Not having any shows or performances in West Africa,
a place she seems to base a lot of her work off,
a blatant inspiration is what many Africans see as the problem.
She’s only handpicking a part of its culture that she sees fit,
which is not wrong, but can be dangerous to African history and culture at present.
This argument is in no way meant to downplay
the struggles of African-Americans that have been cultured in America,
but simply to present the issue that this generalization needs to stop.
There has been personal applications,
as I remember as a child watching television
or listening to music containing Africa as a theme by Black Americans,
such as the film ‘Coming to America’ where I could relate nothing
from the film to my country or my surroundings.
These depictions, but African-Americans’, held no African authenticity.
And yet it was what a generation or a substantial amount
of what African-Americans idealize Africa to be.
However, this ignorance is not an excuse in the modern era of knowledge
such as we are in today.
This viewpoint should not exist.
There is enough resources to further understand Africa and all its cultures,
its difference in culture, its difference in countries, the cities, the tribes.
More research can be done to better understand it
and represent it, if one is to call it their own.
To be African is to respect it and all of it,
to find beauty in its different cultures and recognize them,
as well as understand the wrongs that are held
within the continent and each country,
but to find beauty in it, to love it all the same
as you would do to your own home.
To sum it all up, I believe Olisa Tassi-Amandhi has expressed his best
in nation’s identity, expressing a piece to their day-to-day existence.
Without it, they simply become a faceless book.
Thank you very much.