What comes to mind when you hear "Africa"? This class I am taking at Michigan State Univ. has met 3 times thus far, and the major theme of the first few classes has been centered around a negative portrayal of the continent and its inhabitants. So far as a class, we've discussed the history of Africa and exploration into Africa by European explorers. A major point that has been asserted by explorers of Africa is that they are unequal and "uncivilized" when compared the the white man's civilization. Despite things like the Pyramids in Egypt and The Great Zimbabwe site featuring massive ruins and structures dating back thousands of years. Many if not most people could not fathom these structures were built by Africans; people whom European explores claimed were "heathenistic and barbaric".
People are people. A person is a person. No one is the same as anyone else. Recently our world has been about equality and everyone is equal. That sounds simple enough to accept but back hundreds of years ago, when people began exploring the world, it wasn't. Everyone KNEW what a person was SUPPOSED to look like and they KNEW how a person was SUPPOSED to act. So when their boats crashed onto the African coast, all these dark skinned people and white skinned people met... and I wonder, what if they were the ones with muskets and canons instead of the Europeans?
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