Media Representation and the break down between Africans and African Americans

The John Fiske article 'Act Globally, Think Locally' is timely for me as I think about bridging the divide between Africans and African Americans. Fiske mentions Edward Said's Orientalism work in which Said discusses the articulations of the other and the simultaneous self articulations of the West in its representations. Africa has always been represented as uncivilized, over run with animals, primitive, disease infested, poor and lacking any type of industrialization. Because of these colonialized images Blacks in the West often come to think of Africa in these terms. We never see for example pictures like this one:

The picture above is of Johannesburg --the richest city in Africa. There is a facebook group dedicated to breaking down this 'Orientalism' by presenting new types of representations of Africa. Because of the power differential as mentioned by Fiske, only one culture's articulation is being presented. As such what we 'know' about Africa is through a fractured lens. See the racist cartoon clips above. Pay particular attention to the lyrics in 'Civilization' the song that says 'bingo bango bongo I'm so happy in the congo..."etc. This compilation shows the blackness diasporically in contrast to whiteness with blackness being uncivilized. The cartoon spells out a particular definition of Civilization that is Western and drenched in ideological baggage. Even if we were to accept the definition of 'civilization' as presented, Africa is never shown as living up to that definition even as they have cities like the one presented above.

Fiske often makes mention to the third world within the US (african americans) in his discussion of Rodney King. News media frequently portrays blacks as violent, lazy welfare queens, hung up on bling culture. Because of power difference in media ownership etc. these stories of African Americans seem to travel further than African Americans self representations which tend to stay more localized. The same occurs with Africans. Equally important is the fact that African American passport ownership is low, so the likelyhood of African Americans having the opportunity to self represent in person is low. The result of all of this is that the diaspora sees itself through otherized notions and fails to be able to see the oppressor's hand or the similarities in each other. When Africans come to see Africans as 'rich' it is through the lens of hip hop and thus the 'third world' in the US becomes the 1st world in Africa....To them we are just simply Americans.

What follows is that African Americans will start to present Africans according to these See Coming to America. The only full clip I could find is not in english. See also the intro scene where music that has a Kenyan influence interlaced with the sounds of Animals near the palace. Other scenes in the movie borrow from other regions to construct the fictitious country Zamunda. Africans in Black cinema have been shown through binaries of uncivilized or Regal. Monarchy is a common representation though the countries of allusion are mostly republics etc. Neither the common experience nor the contemporary one is presented. The presentation of regality should be noted that it is not always rooted in historically accurate accounts but more closely linked to purity myths and romanticized 'authenticity'. These types of representations have been purposed to empower African Americans in the face of white supremacy and a denial of cultural history and heritage. Meanwhile many Africans find these representations to be offensive and off base. Africans in a similar way will present African Americans as they see them on hip hop music videos. As I show in my picture posted below from my trip to Ghana, the image of 50 cent and other billboard topping rap artists are more accessible than other forms of African American expression.

From my conversations, many Africans believe African Americans to be rich, violent, promiscuous etc. Just as much as African Am

ericans (especially pan africanists) perform Africans, Africans perform African Americans. Terms like Nigger, however have unstable meanings as they circulate. From one interview with a Rawandan the term Nigger is a positive thing which they might relate to someone who has big muscles or a lot of money. Nigger has become a way of identifying with African American culture but is detached from its historical roots. They believe after all that it is African Americans that are representing themselves in the ways that they see them all too often.The picture above is of a shop in Malawi that sells their local version of Hip Hop attire. The N word has been connected with Hip Hop in other regions as well as with the lampooning in Tokyo Breakfast seen here .Tourism advertisements also show instances where Africa articulates itself through the lens of exoticism and otherization as the West has identified it. See the Tanzanian Tourist Board's commercial here. It is no surprise then that in the year of the census few 'Africans' who have lived here for years will see any relevance in the label African American and likewise few 'African Americans' who historically are Africans will see any relevance in the label 'African'. The tensions that divide the diaspora are in many ways are because of the issues Fiske raises. "Repre

sentation is control. The power to represent the world is the power to represent us in it or it in us, for the final stage of representing merges the representor and the represented into one" (Fiske 285).