Louisa Linton, a “skinny white mzungu with long angel hair”, wrote what some are calling the whitest story of the year, How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare. Go check out the Twitter hashtag #LintonLies to see all the public shaming and the multiple fabrications in her article that have been discovered.
For a longer response, my personal favorite is Franklyn Odhiambo’s White Noise and Africa’s Saviors.
“The real struggle is with the machine that manufactures and feeds this kind of rubbish; the real transformation will occur when little Zimba will read her colonial history and employ that knowledge to write a better rebuff to Linton’s ignorance than I have. Meanwhile, we who live today will hound that ignorance wherever it goes, the clap back will be swift and sure at every turn. The new African will not be a passive consumer of whitewashed images of themselves, they will be manufacturers of their own stories, and they will tell them with pride and in completeness.”
-Franklyn Odhiambo
To most Africans and anyone with a grain of consciousness, her clueless article is an ode to Binyavanga Wainaina’s brilliant satirical piece, How to Write about Africa. As an educator, I created the info-graphic below for those too lazy to read her original piece or who might still not get it. Feel free to remix this poster with other connections you made. Click here to download.