"Africa has been failed by westernisation. It must cast off its subservience"

The article I found ties directly into the reading of Short Chapter 6. The article discusses exactly what we covered in class, the long-term effects of colonialism in Africa. As debated in class, it is hard to discern whether the colonization of africa can be considered detrimental to the continent or if there is some positive we can extract out of the circumstances. We concluded on the grey area that lies in between, but this article discusses how the model of being “civilized” and “modern” are directly tied to western powers and influences. The article states, “like most people today, has come to accept that the only metric for measuring modernity is through the western lens. This is the heart of the problem”. The article claims that the root of this problem was the initial pull-out of the colonizers from Africa, and how the remnants leftover in the colonies all had a distinct social, political, and economic structures of their western colonizer essentially “hollowing out” the true African culture. Coincidentally enough the article states that the most pragmatic thing to do is to look at past African civilizations that were advanced and and successful during their time in which the author singles out Mali. This article summarizes the discussion we had in class this week by identifying the negative influences the colonizers left on their African colonies and how those problems are still in effect in the 21st century.

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/12/africa-failed-by-westernisation-must-cast-off-its-subservience

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Chad?

        Does anyone else remember that one time Donald Trump enacted a travel ban? While some countries have since been redacted the newest edition to the countries banned from traveling to the United States is Chad. The article explores the possible reasons for the denial of Chadians, and there are not many. The first argument involves a statement saying that "Chad has failed to 'adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information'". This seems like a counterintuitive statement because the US has made previous statements of their excitement to "expanding the cooperation" with Chad. The article also made a point that "Chad has been one of the more effective US counter-terrorist allies in the Sub-Saharan region for several years". This reasoning seems pretty invalid because the pattern of behavior in Chad in relation to the US has not changed, the only thing that has changed is the President and in turn his interpretations of ties of l
Read more

South Africa: Does White Privilege exist in a Post-Apartheid World?

The existence of white privilege is still prevalent in post-apartheid South Africa. In the case of Oscar Pistorius, a paralympic, some claim, “ Pistorius had received preferential treatment as a wealthy, white celebrity .”. Pistorius was originally convicted with culpable homicide of his girlfriend. He was sentenced to 6 years out of the usual 15 for murder in South Africa. Not only was his sentence less than half of prescribed minimum of 15 years but he was released after just 10 months and placed under house arrest. On November 24 the Constitutional Court of South Africa gave Pistorius, who was not present, the minimum 15 year sentence. While his privilege may have earned him leniency previously, the Courts have revised their decision in light of outrage from the public as well as to establish, “...their trust in the justice system..”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/24/oscar-pistorius-prison-sentence-doubled-south-african-court-reeva-steenkamp
Read more

Madagascar Mirrors the Past

In this week's reading we took a look at how the development of a substantial food supply was an uphill battle in Africa. The poor soils left little to be desired in the sense of having a successful farming communities. Iliffe says that historically the African people adapted to their environment instead of changing their environment to fit to their needs. While the emergence of food-producing communities undoubtedly took place on the continent, we have learned little about, if any, food producing communities to exist on the island of Madagascar. In the twenty-first century Africa is a country still struggling with adequate food supply, but the children of Madagascar are not the first to come to mind when we think of the lack of food and the stability of poverty. This article was posted yesterday, and it goes into detail of the struggles the children of Madagascar face off of the mainland. While Madagascar's soil can produce a multitude of crops, the people of Malagasy are fo
Read more