As I'm continuing my journey at Howard University, I wanted to just share a short thought. We had freshman seminar and watched a documentary called "Ethnic Notions" (I thought it was really informative, you should watch it if you have the time). The thing I find recurring when racist people would talk about Africans and people of African descent is that Africa was a place of "savages". It was a place of no culture, no civilization, and no contributions to the rest of the world. Even smart people, like David Hume, pronounced these viewpoints. The thing is however that these things are not true, Africa is as important place as anywhere else in contributing culture. It's when people in academic music world deem Western Classical music the only music worth analysis and listening to. I think the first step of correcting these views of Africa, and other places that are treated with similar dismal, is to teach and learn about the culture and its value. As many people hear know, no culture is perfect (religion is an easy way to show that) and all cultures have their strengths and flaws, but we should treat all cultures with respect. This is coming from someone who will focus more on Western and East Asian culture anyway. Just a random thought.
You want culture in Africa? And I'm not talking about Arab "culture" that's part of North Africa. Shaka. Ask most white history teachers in the US who Shaka was, and they'll give you a blank stare. (I'm white, I'm not a history major, and I know who he was, so there's no excuse.)
To many people, "culture" means white, western and Christian. But China had more civilization earlier than Europe, so did the Middle East. (No, Hammurabi wasn't Christian OR western.) It's cultural blindness.
And one of these days, when the public starts realizing exactly what, and when, Gobekli Tepe was, they're going to have to accept that Christianity was a latecomer, and grew up in an already existing "culture" - that was really very young. We had organized religion for thousands of years before Christianity, Judaism or the Vedic religion.
Its true. Egypt was the most famous example, but there were many great African civilizations. I actually read about this recently in an old National Geographic. Hey TripleNine, you should try to find the article if this is of particular interest to you. You won't be disappointed if you can find it.
Quote from: "Triple Nine"The thing I find recurring when racist people would talk about Africans and people of African descent is that Africa was a place of "savages". It was a place of no culture, no civilization, and no contributions to the rest of the world. Even smart people, like David Hume, pronounced these viewpoints. The thing is however that these things are not true, Africa is as important place as anywhere else in contributing culture.
Well, at the time, not a whole lot was known about Subsaharan Africa. And anyone making such a statement about North Africa would be idiot indeed (Egyptians, Nubians, Carthaginians, etc). But Islamic/European conquest, seriously disrupting the previous social order (not to mention the severe post-colonial problems of the modern era) combined with a general lack of written records from prior ages certainly lends itself to the presumption, erroneous though it obviously is.
The thing is, the US is culturally descended from Europe so thats the history that tends to be emphasized in schools. Its a pity though, there's other interesting stuff out there.