I am endlessly delighted by this video:
[Transcript: "To the Western World." A couple of men saying "I am an African man." "But do you know who we are? If you've only seen us in Hollywood movies, this is what you may think of us: machine guns." Their words are intercut with scenes from Hollywood films showing what they say. "We shoot our machine guns from trucks. We shoot our machine guns from boats. When we run out of bullets, we shoot rocket launchers. We are obsessed with violence. We hate smiling. Smiling is stupid. We are fantastic role models." Black man stomping away from a black boy with a machine gun. "We only speak in one-liners, and when we speak, we sound evil. However, there is nothing more dangerous than a brave Western protagonist. We are talking to you, shirtless Matthew McConaughey. And one thing's for sure: a day without war is a day not worth living. But you don't really think of us that way, do you? We are likeable and friendly guys, and we are even on Facebook. We are more than a stereotype. Let's change the perception." Black men playing sports; text on screen tells about their studying medicine or human resources management. Text on screen: "Build a future, not a stereotype. Education gives a voice. Guarantee it. Stop the pity, unlock the potential. MamaHope." One black man teases another about having a Matthew McConaughey poster in his room.]
I think it is extremely common for marginalized men– especially poor men or men of color– to be constructed as being far more violent than privileged men. My pet theory is that this is rooted in the equation of manhood and power. Men are supposed to be powerful; privileged men are powerful, by virtue of their privilege. If men are marginalized, they are either not really men (queer men) or they express their power in less subtle ways, that is, violence.
Africa, of course, has often been torn by wars, violence, and genocides. Nevertheless, Hollywood’s simplistic depictions erase that Africa is an entire fucking continent and therefore has many people who are not violent and places that are not at war with anyone. It also ignores that a lot of African violence was directly caused by the history of Western colonialism and neo-colonialism. Maybe if white people hadn’t, say, invaded the countries, stolen everything of value, drew up illogical country boundaries, and then abandoned the place, we wouldn’t be having so many problems, hmm?
About ozyfrantz
Pfft. As if borders in general were logical anyway. Culture in its natural state exists in a continuum, where city A is like such and such, city B is slightly different from city A, C is slightly different from B, and so on, and by the time you get to city K it bears virtually no resemblance to city A. (Yes, I know cities aren’t usually arranged in a line. You know what I mean.) Borders were somewhat fuzzy and largely dependent on the aggressiveness and reach of the local power centers. It wasn’t until the arrival of nationalism and precise cartography that people started trying to forcefully and sometimes violently try to mono-culturize each other within whatever semi-arbitrary borders existed at the time. Even the US went through this at one point, getting into turf wars over disputed regions with Canada and Mexico (ignoring that people affiliated with none of the above already lived in those places). And then after winning, they basically forced children into attending culturally indoctrinating boarding schools and speaking only English.
And it’s not like this sort of thing in general is confined to Africa either; witness the Balkans war, China’s many border disputes (not to mention their continued suppression of Tibet), the Israeli-Palestine conflict (okay, fine, blame europe’s meddling for that one), France’s ongoing suppression of ancient minority cultures that originated within their borders, areas between India and Pakistan claimed by both, Kurds being outlaws merely for existing in both Iraq and Turkey (neither country wants them), Indonesia’s mishmash of a thousand micro-cultures that would often prefer to be independent, Japan’s dispute with Russia over the Kuril Islands, and so on. Again, it may be especially bad in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (not the entire continent) but border-related problems aren’t limited to there, not by a long shot.
Now that borders have become largely permanent, and nationalism has become the global norm… Regardless of who drew the border and when, things don’t become culturally stable until people learn to tolerate each other, one group successfully forces the others to adopt their ways, or some group successfully genocides everyone else out of existence.
I think you’re over simplifying things a bit, and ignoring the uniquely arbitrary ways Africa’s borders were drawn. Most of the examples you cite are issues about the people native to that land fighting to push this border a little to one side or another, or discriminating against a group of people.
Africa had many distinct groups of people. An outside group (the Europeans) plopped down lines through the middle of cooperating people, grouped together people who were at war or who had little relation to each other, nothing in common, and no history of cohabitation. It forced a whole new structure on the entire continent that no one there was familiar with. And it did so without giving any single of these new countries a single, unified people. And this in a time for a great upheaval for the entire continent.
Yes, there are tensions among groups worldwide. But these tensions were usually home grown, not manufactured from the outside. Yes, we all should work to get along and no one should be violent or discriminate and it’s never allowable. But understanding where it came from isn’t a harm that needs to be dismissed: it’s the first step in empathy, and lending the outside help to heal the problem caused by outside forces (and the home grown type of strife, too).
I think you’re forgetting just how much of the world was colonized, and subsequently broken up arbitrarily by those colonizing nations. The Hear East and South Asia, for example, were pretty arbitrarily broken into chunks too. North America too, though arguably in North America the colonizers are still in control. I’m not exactly sure how much of South America is divided by arbitrary lines on a map, and how much is by demographic and population.
“I’m not exactly sure how much of South America is divided by arbitrary lines on a map, and how much is by demographic and population.”
South America’s borders have been static since the late 19th century.
Well there ya go then, that’s colonist-created and just furthers my point, which is that huge chunks of the globe have been divided by outside forces.
Exactly where is the border between “outside forces” and “home grown”? Go back quite a bit farther in history, and you’ll see all over the world people colonizing each other all the time. Sure, empires were smaller in scale for the most part, and less spread out across the world, but transportation was fairly limited before the age of exploration. Even in Europe, kingdoms which had little in common and may even have been at war with each other were often forced together as part of an uncohesive whole when some stronger power managed to annex both. And then had parts of their conqueror’s culture imposed on them. And then later broke up in ways that may not resemble their original configuration. (The map of Europe as we know it has only existed in something resembling its current form for the past few hundred years.) So is it really a local issue when, say, Normandy annexes a large portion of Britain, just because they’re “only” across the channel? How about when the Roman Empire does it? Does it suddenly turn into a local issue when the conflict is between colonizers who have lived there for generations and the people who lived there before them? Or only during a mess that happens if/when they leave? Where is the dividing line between “outside” and “home grown” and why should it matter?
I wouldn’t call European border changes during the feudal era “colonisation”.
If it wasn’t the idea of the original inhabitants, that’s exactly what it was.
Even if you wouldn’t call it that, there’s considerable evidence that mere “border shifts” can still fuck everything up.
For example, there used to be a country running along the coast of the Mediterranean called “Occitania”. It doesn’t exist anymore, because France ate about 90% of it and the remaining slivers were absorbed by Spain and Italy. France then spent generations stamping out the Occitan language and culture, and today both are pretty much extinct there. Meanwhile the bits in Spain and Italy were mostly left alone, and now they’re a tiny culture split in half by a vast gulf. France basically took an existing “logical” border, made things illogical again, and then “re-logicized” it through force. Claiming that this is a “home-grown” issue would be essentially claiming that the Occitan people did it to themselves.
Or for a more severe (and recent) example, the Balkans War. Serbs and Croats hate each other, outsiders historically kept coming in and forcing them to share a country, eventually the place just blows up.
Oh I remember seeing this a few weeks ago and lost the link. Many thanks for finding it for me.
Weird, I feel like I’ve seen Africans in a much more positive light than many other cultures. Maybe that’s because I’ve seen more documentaries about the average, happy African than I have movies like Blawkhawk Down.
“My pet theory is that this is rooted in the equation of manhood and power. Men are supposed to be powerful; privileged men are powerful, by virtue of their privilege. If men are marginalized, they are either not really men (queer men) or they express their power in less subtle ways, that is, violence.”
I really like this idea, actually. It really resonates.
My pet theory is that this is rooted in the equation of manhood and power. Men are supposed to be powerful; privileged men are powerful, by virtue of their privilege. If men are marginalized, they are either not really men (queer men) or they express their power in less subtle ways, that is, violence.
Well now. Men assumed to be powerful simply because they are men, that’s a problem indeed.
“Maybe if white people hadn’t, say, invaded the countries, stolen everything of value, drew up illogical country boundaries, and then abandoned the place, we wouldn’t be having so many problems, hmm? ”
Homey the clown, Don’t mess around,
Even though the Man, Try to keep him down,
One day Homey will, Break all the chains,
Then he’ll fly away, But until that day,
Homey don’t play.
anyway…there is ony one stereotype i think of when i hear “black men”, and its a good thing.
I’m going to throw out some names of awesome African guys:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Whatever your thoughts on Christianity, Tutu is the epitome of what a progressive activism should be.
Ishmael Beah. A former child soldier turned advocate for child soldiers.
Woke Soyinka. Nobel Prize winning writer.
Djimon Honsou. Just because.
I think the problem is a matter of exposure monkey.
While those men you list are quite accomplished they aren’t being thrown in people’s faces constantly like the stereotypes the four guys in that video talk about.
Archbishop Tutu is pretty well known, agreed about the other three though.
Yes he’s well known but when thinking about average Jane/Joe on the street which do you think they see more often, the depictions that those guys are talking about in the video or coverage on Tutu?
I have to say, though, that the comments on the video were for the most part very depressing.
Our species is what it is.
That is to say, not very effin’ pleasant. Emminently curse worthy and so on…
So it goes. It has ever been thus.
The Wet One
I agree. I wish there was more education about Africa (present day and historically) in Western schools. Maybe then our culture at large would stop thinking about it as a homogenous mass with no separate countries (like when people refer to it the way you’d refer to a single country not a continent, or talk about the ‘African language’) or as a miserable place defined entirely by images of starving children in charity appeals (or violent men in films: I don’t watch many action films so I haven’t personally seen what you speak of but I can well believe). I know it’s a complicated subject as there’s been a lot of upheaval and the names of the countries have changed a lot, but it still seems odd that there was no attempt in my entire schooling to address it even briefly. As a Brit, colonialism is a huge and very regrettable part of my country’s history, and a relatively recent one: I have living relatives who were directly involved in colonialism in Africa. It’s funny how much education we receive about the World Wars, our own victories, and the atrocities of other countries like Germany, but so little about the nastier aspects of our own history. And we do learn about other cultures, but not African ones.
At one time I made an (admittedly somewhat limited) study of a few semi-randomly chosen cultures in different regions of sub-Saharan Africa, partially to get an idea of the scope of the differences. (There were other reasons, but off topic and too complicated to get into here.) Specifically, the Xhosa, the !Kung, the Igbọ, and the baMbuti. I can tell you that they’re virtually nothing alike.
Among other things, most countries colonized by the Brits–thanks, guys, from an American–were fortunate. Better than Spain or Germany. It wasn’t as if they took over nation-states of the Westphalian model. They were one more conqueror in a list of conquerors. Why does it make a difference if the guys in charge come from a long distance? The question is whether the locals are better off, worse off, or about the same.
You’ll note the Muslim invasion of India isn’t a “problem”, because, 60-80 million dead Hindus notwithstanding, it wasn’t done by Europeans.
The point is, everybody can see the double standard.
What, for example, was the religion of North Africa before the Arab conquest? Right. Christianity. Most of the Epistles were written to congregations in areas later conquered by Muslims. But only the Crusades are some kind of historical wrong.
The point is, everybody can see the double standard.
I don’t, as another commenter doesn’t, watch many action movies. What I know of Africa comes from the news and my studies of subSaharan Africa in the Sixties. The place is awash in violence. See, for example, Jo’burg. Or Central Africa. Now Mali. Zimbabwe. Somalia. The point is not whether people are getting along someplace or another. That’s supposed to be the norm. The question is the non-norm, the enormous violence.
As to borders, there weren’t borders in most pre-colonial days. Tribal areas faded into one another, presuming they weren’t fighting. Unwelcome geography separated peoples. What are you going to do without borders? Who gets to collect taxes–for progressive purposes, of course–and who gets the benefits?
One of the problems here is that we are gradually seeing a reluctant admission that some non-European peoples can be absolute beasts to their friends and neighbors of a different people. You have to have that admission to support the wrong of putting them within the same borders. But it’s reluctant.