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This article is about negative sentiment towards African peoples and societies, regardless of race. For negative sentiment towards Black people, see Anti-Black sentiment.

Anti-African sentiment, Afroscepticism, or Afrophobia is prejudice, hostility, discrimination, or racism towards people and cultures of Africa and of the African diaspora.[1]

Prejudice against Africans and people of African descent has a long history, dating back to ancient times, although it was especially prominent during the Atlantic slave trade and the colonial period. Following the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Africans were often portrayed as uncivilised and primitive, with colonial conquest branded civilising missions. Due to the use of oral tradition, and subsequent lack of written histories in most African cultures, African people were portrayed as having no history at all, despite having a long, complex, and varied history.[2] In the United States, Afrophobia influenced Jim Crow laws and segregated housing, schools, and public facilities.[3] In South Africa, it took the form of apartheid.[4]

In recent years, there has been a rise in Afrophobic hate speech and violence in Europe and the United States. This has been attributed to a number of factors, including the growth of the African diaspora in these regions, the increase in refugees and migrants from Africa, and the rise of far-right and populist political parties.[5][6]

In October 2017, the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD) told the Human Rights Council that the human rights situation of Africans and people of African descent remained an urgent concern, citing racist violence, police brutality and killings, and systemic racism.[7] Earlier that year, WGEPAD had recommended the term Afrophobia be used to describe "the unique and specific form of racial discrimination affecting people of African descent and African Diaspora".[8]

Terminology

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Anti-African sentiment is prejudice or discrimination towards any of the various traditions and peoples of Africa for their perceived Africanness.[9][1] It is distinct from, but may overlap with, anti-Black racism or Negrophobia, which is contempt specifically for Black people of African descent, excluding other Africans such as white Africans or North Africans.[10] The term Afrophobia may be used to describe both anti-Black racism and anti-African sentiment more broadly.[11][12][9]

Afrophobia

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This section is an excerpt from Anti-Black racism § Afrophobia.[edit]
Afrophobia, or Afriphobia, is often used to describe racism (particularly systemic racism) against Black people of African descent, such as by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR).[13][14] Others use Afrophobia to describe racism and xenophobia against all or some people of African descent, and especially indigenous Africans, for their perceived Africanness. This may also include prejudice against African traditions and culture. For example, Afrophobia is used to describe xenophobia in South Africa against people of other African nationalities for being too racially Black, too culturally African, or both.[15]

The opposite of Afrophobia is Afrophilia, which is a love for all things pertaining to Africa.[1]

Afroscepticism

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Anti-African sentiment and Afroscepticism are comparable terms to anti-Europeanism and Euroscepticism. Afroscepticism is positioned as an opposition to Africanity (the idea of a shared African culture), Africanisation, or Afrocentrism, often seen as facets of Pan-Africanism.[16][17][18] Afroscepticism may include embracing Afropessimism, and rejecting traditional African practices or "African Indigenous Knowledge Systems".[19][20][21] The Afropessimist view sees Africa in terms of "the negative traits described by AIDS, war, poverty and disease", and thus as unable to be helped.[22]

Anti-Black racism

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This section is an excerpt from Anti-Black racism § Anti-Black racism.[edit]

Anti-Black racism was a term first used by Canadian scholar Dr. Akua Benjamin in a 1992 report on Ontario race relations. It is defined as follows:

Anti-Black racism is a specific manifestation of racism rooted in European colonialism, slavery and oppression of Black people since the sixteenth century. It is a structure of iniquities in power, resources and opportunities that systematically disadvantages people of African descent.[23]

Negrophobia

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This section is an excerpt from Anti-Black racism § Negrophobia and colourphobia.[edit]

The term racism is not attested before the 20th century,[24] but negrophobia (first recorded between 1810–1820; often capitalised), and later colourphobia (first recorded in 1834),[25][26] likely originated within the abolitionist movement, where it was used as an analogy to rabies (then called hydrophobia) to describe the "mad dog" mindset behind the pro-slavery cause and its apparently contagious nature.[27][28][29][30] In 1819, the term was used in U.S. Congressional debates to refer to a "violent aversion or hatred of Negroes".[31]

The term negrophobia may also have been inspired by the word nigrophilism, itself first appearing in 1802 in Baudry des Lozières's Les égarements du nigrophilisme.[32] Noting the shift of -phobia terms to cover prejudice and hatred rather than mere fear or aversion, J. L. A. Garcia refers to negrophobia as "the granddaddy of these ‘-phobia’ terms", preceding both xenophobia and homophobia.[29]

Both at the time, and since, critics of the terms negrophobia and colourphobia have argued that, although their use of -phobia is rhetorical, if taken literally they could be used to excuse or justify the behaviour of racists as mental illness or disease. John Dick, publisher of The North Star, voiced such concerns as early as 1848 while legal scholar Jody David Armour has voiced similar concerns in the 21st century.[29][13] Nevertheless, negrophobia had a clinical and satirical edge that made it popular with abolitionists.[29][30] In 1856, abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe published Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, a novel which explored the fear of Blackness within negrophobia via the titular character Dred, a Black revolutionary Maroon.[33]

By location

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It has been observed that writing and terminology about racism, including about Afrophobia, has been somewhat centered on the US.[citation needed] In 2016, "Afrophobia" has been used as a term for racism against darker-skinned persons in China. In such usage, that is an inexact term because the racism is directed against darker-skinned persons from anywhere, without regard to any connection to Africa. Conversely, Chinese views for lighter-than-average skin are more positive, as is reflected in advertising.[34]

Scientific racism and colonial historiography

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Main articles: African historiography § Colonial historiography, and Scientific racism

The academic discipline of history arrived with the discovery and colonisation of Africa and involved the study of Africa and its history by European academics and historians.[35] Prior to colonisation in the 19th century, most African societies used oral tradition to record their history, including in cases where they had developed or had access to a writing script, resulting in there being little written history, and the domination of European powers across the continent meant African history was written entirely from a European perspective under the pretence of Western superiority supported by scientific racism.[36] This predilection stemmed from the perceived technological superiority of European nations and the decentralization of the African continent with no nation being a clear power in the region, as well as a perception of Africans as racially inferior.[37] Another factor was the lack of an established body of collective African history created in the continent, there being instead a multitude of different dialects, cultural groups and fluctuating nations as well as a diverse set of mediums that document history other than written word. This led to a perception by Europeans that Africa and its people had no recorded history and had little desire to create it.[38]

Stereotypes of Africa

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This section is an excerpt from Stereotypes of Africa.[edit]
Stereotypes about Africa, Africans, and African culture are common, especially in the Western World.[39][40] European imperialism was often justified on paternalistic grounds, portraying Africa as less civilized, and Africans as less capable of civilizing themselves.[41][42][43][44][45] As of the 2010s, these stereotypes persisted in European media.[46][47]

Activism

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To overcome any perceived "Afrophobia", writer Langston Hughes suggested that European Americans must achieve peace of mind and accommodate the uninhibited emotionality of African Americans.[citation needed] Author James Baldwin similarly recommended that White Americans could quash any "Afrophobia" on their part by getting in touch with their repressed feelings, empathizing to overcome their "emotionally stunted" lives, and thereby overcome any dislike or fear of African Americans.[48]

Originally established in 1998 by "approximately 150" organisations from across the European Union, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) aimed to combat "racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism — the accepted categories of the anti-racist struggle at that time". However, Afrophobia wasn't specifically named as a focus of the network until 2011, at the behest of Black civil rights activists.[11]

In 2016, Tess Asplund made a viral protest against Neo-Nazism as part of her activism against Afrophobia.[49]

In academia

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Some Afrophobic sentiments are based on the belief that Africans are unsophisticated. Such perceptions include the belief that Africans lack a history of civilization, and visual imagery of such stereotypes perpetuate the notion that Africans still live in mud huts and carry spears, along with other notions that indicate their primitiveness.[50][51]

Afrophobia in academia may also occur through by oversight with regards to lacking deconstruction in mediums such as African art forms, omitting historical African polities in world cartography, or promoting a eurocentric viewpoint by ignoring historic African contributions to world civilization.[52]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c Kivuto Ndeti; Kenneth R. Gray; Gerard Bennaars (1992). The second scramble for Africa: a response & a critical analysis of the challenges facing contempory [sic] sub-Saharan Africa. Professors World Peace Academy. p. 127. ISBN 9966835733. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  2. ^ Cooper, Frederick (2000). "Africa's Pasts and Africa's Historians". Canadian Journal of African Studies. 34 (2): 298–336. doi:10.2307/486417. JSTOR 486417.
  3. ^ Greene, Frederick Dennis. "Immigrants in Chains: Afrophobia in American Legal History-The Harlem Debates Part 3." Or. L. Rev. 76 (1997): 537.
  4. ^ Ochonu, Moses E. (2020-12-31). "South African Afrophobia in local and continental contexts". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 58 (4): 499–519. doi:10.1017/S0022278X20000543. ISSN 0022-278X.
  5. ^ Michael, Lucy (2017), Haynes, Amanda; Schweppe, Jennifer; Taylor, Seamus (eds.), "Anti-Black Racism: Afrophobia, Exclusion and Global Racisms", Critical Perspectives on Hate Crime, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 275–299, doi:10.1057/978-1-137-52667-0_15, ISBN 978-1-137-52666-3, retrieved 2024-10-15
  6. ^ "US racism on the rise, UN experts warn in wake of Charlottesville violence". UN Human Rights Commission. 2017-08-16. Retrieved 2024-10-15.
  7. ^ "Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent to the Human Rights Council: the Human Rights Situation of Persons of African Descent Remains an Urgent Concern". United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2022-10-02. Retrieved 2024-08-14.
  8. ^ "Statement to the media by the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, on the conclusion of its official visit to Germany, 20-27 February 2017". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2017-02-27. Retrieved 2024-08-14.
  9. ^ a b Koenane, M.L.J. and Maphunye, K.J., 2015. Afrophobia, moral and political disguises: Sepa leholo ke la moeti. Td: The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 11(4), pp.83-98.
  10. ^ The Congregational Review, Volume 2. J.M. Whittemore. 1862. p. 629. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  11. ^ a b Privot, M., 2014. Afrophobia and the ‘Fragmentation of Anti-racism.’. Visible Invisible Minority: Confronting Afrophobia and Advancing Equality for People of African Descent and Black Europeans in Europe, pp.31-38.
  12. ^ Momodou, J. and Pascoët, J., 2014. Towards a European strategy to combat Afrophobia. European Network Against Racism, Invisible visible minority: Confronting Afrophobia and advancing equality for people of African descent and Black Europeans in Europe, pp.262-272.
  13. ^ a b Privot, M., 2014. Afrophobia and the ‘Fragmentation of Anti-racism.’. Visible Invisible Minority: Confronting Afrophobia and Advancing Equality for People of African Descent and Black Europeans in Europe, pp.31-38.
  14. ^ Momodou, J. and Pascoët, J., 2014. Towards a European strategy to combat Afrophobia. European Network Against Racism, Invisible visible minority: Confronting Afrophobia and advancing equality for people of African descent and Black Europeans in Europe, pp.262-272.
  15. ^ Koenane, M.L.J. and Maphunye, K.J., 2015. Afrophobia, moral and political disguises: Sepa leholo ke la moeti. Td: The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 11(4), pp.83-98.
  16. ^ Oloruntoba-Oju, T., 2014. Location of African culture: Beyond Afroscepticism and the new cosmopolitan exotic. Culture and the Contemporary African, pp.120-53.
  17. ^ Horsthemke, K., 2006. The idea of the African university in the twenty-first century: Some reflections on Afrocentrism and Afroscepticism. South African Journal of Higher Education, 20(4), pp.449-465.
  18. ^ Nikolaidis, A.C. and Thompson, W.C., 2023. Epistemic injustice: complicity and promise in education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 57(4-5), pp.781-790.
  19. ^ Gbogi, T., 2022. Against Afropolitanism: Race and the Black migrant body in contemporary African poetry. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, p.00219894221113767.
  20. ^ Nokuzola, G.G. and Gqeba, L.M., 2023. Is Afrosceptism at the Core of the Deaths of South African Boys at Initiation Schools? The Contributory Effects of Undermining African Indigenous Knowledge Systems. African Renaissance, 20(4), p.367.
  21. ^ Endong, F.P.C., 2021. Images as Afro-positivist narratives and counter hegemonic strategy: A study of# TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou. International Journal of Modern Anthropology, 2(16), pp.601-628.
  22. ^ Bodziany, M. and Nowakowska, M., 2020. “Heart of Darkness” and “Dark Continent”: Africa and its Nations in Polish Media and Social Perception. Social Psychology & Society, 11(2).
  23. ^ Husbands, Winston; Lawson, Daeria O.; Etowa, Egbe B.; Mbuagbaw, Lawrence; Baidoobonso, Shamara; Tharao, Wangari; Yaya, Sanni; Nelson, LaRon E.; Aden, Muna; Etowa, Josephine (2022-10-01). "Black Canadians' Exposure to Everyday Racism: Implications for Health System Access and Health Promotion among Urban Black Communities". Journal of Urban Health. 99 (5): 829–841. doi:10.1007/s11524-022-00676-w. ISSN 1468-2869. PMC 9447939. PMID 36066788.
  24. ^ "Definition of RACISM". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  25. ^ "Definition of COLORPHOBIA". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  26. ^ "Colourphobia | Colorphobia, N., Etymology." Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9131678901.
  27. ^ "Negrophobia, N., Etymology." Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5704106894.
  28. ^ "Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  29. ^ a b c d Garcia, J. L .A. "Racism and the Discourse of Phobias: Negrophobia, Xenophobia and More---Dialogue with Kim and Sundstrom". SUNY Open Access Repository. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
  30. ^ a b "The Anti-Slavery Roots of Today's "-Phobia" Obsession". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  31. ^ "Negrophobia | Etymology of Negrophobia by etymonline". www.etymonline.com. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  32. ^ Une Autre Histoire (13 January 2015). "Négrophobie". une-autre-histoire.org. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  33. ^ McLaughlin, Don James (2019). "Dread: The Phobic Imagination in Antislavery Literature". J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. 7 (1): 21–48. doi:10.1353/jnc.2019.0001. ISSN 2166-7438.
  34. ^ Roberto Castillo (August 12, 2016). "Claims of "China's Afrophobia" show we need new ways to think about race and racism". (posted originally at The Conversation, with the title Of washing powder, Afrophobia and racism in China, August 11, 2016)
  35. ^ Manning, Patrick (2013). "African and World Historiography". The Journal of African History. 54 (3): 319–330. doi:10.1017/S0021853713000753. ISSN 0021-8537. JSTOR 43305130. S2CID 33615987.
  36. ^ Roberts, A.D. (1978). "The Earlier Historiography of Colonial Africa". History in Africa. 5: 153–167. doi:10.2307/3171484. ISSN 0361-5413. JSTOR 3171484. S2CID 162869454.
  37. ^ Fanon, Frantz (December 2007). The wretched of the earth. Philcox, Richard; Sartre, Jean-Paul; Bhabha, Homi K. New York. ISBN 9780802198853. OCLC 1085905753.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  38. ^ Cooper, Frederick (2000). "Africa's Pasts and Africa's Historians". Canadian Journal of African Studies. 34 (2): 298–336. doi:10.2307/486417. JSTOR 486417.
  39. ^ Grinker, Roy Richard; Lubkemann, Stephen C.; Steiner, Christopher (17 May 2010). Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation. John Wiley & Sons. p. 98. ISBN 9781444335224. Retrieved 16 May 2017 – via Google Books.
  40. ^ Tamale, Sylvia (23 June 2011). African Sexualities: A Reader. Fahamu/Pambazuka. ISBN 9780857490162. Retrieved 16 May 2017 – via Google Books.
  41. ^ "Afrophobia: Europe should confront this legacy of colonialism and the slave trade". Commissioner for Human Rights. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  42. ^ Amy Clarke (June 2012). "People of African Descent in Europe : A UKREN Briefing Paper" (PDF). Ukren.org. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  43. ^ Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (4 February 2017). "Opinion - The History the Slaveholders Wanted Us to Forget". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  44. ^ "Invisible Visible Minority" (PDF). Kisa.org. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  45. ^ Abbattista, Guido. "European Encounters in the Age of Expansion European Encounters". Ieg-ego.eu. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  46. ^ Olusoga, David (8 September 2015). "The roots of European racism lie in the slave trade, colonialism – and Edward Long - David Olusoga". Theguardian.com. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  47. ^ "Africa Stereotypes in the European media". En.ejo.ch. 26 July 2013. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  48. ^ Washington, Robert E. (2001). The Ideologies of African American Literature. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 272. ISBN 9780742509504.
  49. ^ Crouch, David (2016-05-04). "Woman who defied 300 neo-Nazis at Swedish rally speaks of anger". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  50. ^ Mays, Vickie M. (1985). "The Black American and psychotherapy: The dilemma". Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training. 22 (2S): 379–388. doi:10.1037/h0085518.
  51. ^ Marongwe, Ngonidzashe; Mawere, Munyaradzi (2016). "Violence, Identity and Politics of Belonging: The April 2015 Afrophobic Attacks in South Africa and the Emergence of Some Discourses". In Munyaradzi, Mawere; Ngonidzashe, Marongwe (eds.). Violence, Politics and Conflict Management in Africa: Envisioning Transformation, Peace and Unity in the Twenty-First Century. Langaa RPCIG. pp. 89–116. ISBN 978-9956-763-54-2.
  52. ^ Skinner, Ryan Thomas (24 April 2018). "Walking, talking, remembering: an Afro-Swedish critique of being-in-the-world". African and Black Diaspora. 12 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1080/17528631.2018.1467747. S2CID 149746823.
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