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]
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.[6] 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".[7]
Anti-African sentiment is prejudice or discrimination towards any of the various traditions and peoples of Africa for their perceived Africanness.[8] [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.[9] The term Afrophobia may be used to describe both anti-Black racism and anti-African sentiment more broadly.[10] [11]
The opposite of Afrophobia is Afrophilia, which is a love for all things pertaining to Africa.
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.[12] [13] [14] Afroscepticism may include embracing Afropessimism, and rejecting traditional African practices or "African Indigenous Knowledge Systems".[15] [16] [17] 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.[18]
It has been observed that writing and terminology about racism, including about Afrophobia, has been somewhat centered on the US. 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.[19]
See main article: articles 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.[20] 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.[21] 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.[22] 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.[23]
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. 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.[24]
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.
In 2016, Tess Asplund made a viral protest against Neo-Nazism as part of her activism against Afrophobia.[25]
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.[26] [27]
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.[28]