Stereotyping Africa: Surprising Answers to Surprising Questions

Characteristically Africans in any Western country are asked so many different questions about Africa as Westerners love to refer to the many countries that make up that huge continent as if Africa were a single nation state. So one begins wondering why it is that Africans on the other hand do not refer to individual European countries as Europe simply then the trends and consequences of stereotyping begin setting in just as one is getting used to being asked if Africa has a president or if one can say something in African. It is some of these questions that Emmanuel Fm Doh has collected over the years and has attempted answering them in an effort to shed some light on a continent that is in many ways like the rest of the world when not better but which so many love to paint as dark backward chaotic and pathetic.. This book deals with an interesting but also painful topic: the stereotyping of Africa in the West notably in the United States of America. This is a laudable initiative.. a timely and courageous effort to deal with long-standing stereoxypes in the West-Dr Piet Konings Sociologist African Studies Centre Leiden. This book is a must read as it addresses questions too often thought of but afraid to ask by so many. Emmanuel Fru Dohs writing is riveting as it opens the minds and hearts of and women who truly are seeking an understanding of what is African as interpreted by Africans. This work is honest authentic and forth right in all of accounts on how stereotypes of Africa have been applied; moreover misapplied through excessive and purposeful distortions by the West-Dr Alvin L. Killough Cultural Ecological Psychologist University Of Minnesota. Stereotyping û the production and consumption of frozen and often negative images and representations of others û are a feature of every society and encounter. This meticulous and well documented compilation of Western stereotypes about Africa brings to the fore the element of power that gives life visibility and legitimacy to the prejudices of some over those of others.-Francis B. Nyamnjoh Professor Of Social Anthropology University Of Cape Town