CONTEMPT: SEEING AFRICA BEYOND THE GAZE

A deep contempt for Africa runs through conversations in many corners of the world, a profound absence of respect that presumes inferiority and denies Africans equal dignity.

It is subtle at times, to such a degree that one would be forgiven for not noticing it at all.

The contempt masquerades in language that appears perfectly reasonable, intended to be helpful even, like the backhanded compliment about Africans’ resourcefulness considering “the little” we have to work with in our communities.

But there is a more unmistakable kind, too.
This contempt wears no disguise, but speaks in language that openly demeans, like the audacious claim that Africa’s intrinsic value is greatly diminished because nature and man have combined to make it “the most tragic of the continents” and that Africa has “too often and in too many places” [been] “a hell on Earth” (Sowell, 2005).

Derisive rhetoric such as this incredulously asks that we suspend logic and ignore the enduring legacies of slavery, colonialism, and foreign interference, among the impediments challenging us, to accept that our failure to keep pace with the rest of the world stems from a lack of grace, both divine favor and the human capacity to flourish.

Our geography—not having navigable waterways for commercial transport, the claim goes, makes us perpetually poor, as does our isolation from the wider cultural universe, our proclivity to live in small tribal societies vulnerable to invasion or manipulation, and our leaders being both incompetent and corrupt.

The contempt is vile; its effects, hard to overstate, for it diminishes our sense of worth and corrodes the bonds of our common humanity.

Among its most insidious manifestations is the reduction of a diverse people to a caricature.
We are pigeonholed as a homogeneous collective, treated as though we were a single, undifferentiated group.

This conflating erases our extraordinary diversity—our nations, ethnicities, and cultures, each numbering in the thousands, and the vast historical realities that have shaped both people and societies.

Modern history alone, for instance, can change the way we talk about our continent.

Africa is home to Indigenous languages as well as Francophone, Anglophone, Arabic-, Spanish-, and Portuguese-speaking communities, each shaped by different ideological, social and cultural experiences.

Those differences influence how we see politics and society, because the languages we speak and the histories we have lived through inevitably dictate the way we interact with the world.

But our collective labeling does something else, something many would say is far more egregious.

It ignores the specific circumstances that affect the experiences of different African communities, making it easier to mistake the challenges of one society for a reflection of Africans generally.

No…

Xenophobic violence in South Africa is not reflective of a general South African or African disposition toward foreigners.

Financial fraud schemes infamous in Nigeria do not mean that Nigerians are inherently dishonest or that fraud is somehow characteristic of Nigerian culture or the cultures of other African communities.

Libya’s political conflict and civil war do not make ordinary Libyans intrinsically violent or unstable.

The actions of pariah regimes in Eritrea and Sudan, and of armed groups in Mali, Niger, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), do not define the people they claim to represent.

And strong French influence in Tunisia does not mean that Tunisians are somehow less African or less connected to the continent’s broader histories and cultures.

In fact, the need to make that very distinction speaks to the larger concern about the way Africa and Africans are spoken about in the world.

Consider the common practice of treating North Africa as though it were entirely separate from the rest of the continent, as if its history, cultures, and people existed outside of the larger African experience.

At the root of this blatant disregard for the truth is the bigoted idea that the Sahara desert, until sustained European contact beginning in the 1400s, had disconnected Africans who lived below the desert from civilization.

The claim, inspired by racial politics, is made to denigrate so-called “Black” Africans, despite historical evidence of the Empires of Mali, Kongo, Ghana, and Songhai engaging in commerce with the peoples of the Maghreb, Asia, and Europe in the territories of present-day Portugal and Spain as far back as the 1300s.

Differences in lived experiences certainly exist, including North Africans’ Arabic and Mediterranean orientations, but they are still deeply connected to the broader African experience, particularly in the ways we have fashioned ourselves and our communities to survive the onslaught of European interference and achieve social mobility.

The peoples of Algeria and Tunisia are as African as the peoples of Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is so because Algerians, Tunisians, Kenyans, and Congolese, much like their brothers and sisters elsewhere on the continent, share the spirit of humanity, one bonded on African soil by a shared experience of struggle and triumph through togetherness.

Being African is, therefore, not determined by artificial borders, skin color, religion, or politics, but a historic willingness to persevere through community.

That, however, does not make us homogeneous, nor does it render us fodder for the kind of contempt that parts of the world hurl at us as a collective.

Words matter because of the meaning they convey, the values they express, and the dignity and respect they affirm.

There is no better expression of this truth than the events which led us to where we are today.

In American Slavery, American Freedom, Edmund S. Morgan explains that the Europeans, including the English who invaded the Americas and started the Transatlantic slave trade displayed ferocious contempt toward Indigenous people and Africans because they believed these peoples were inferior, uncivilized, and outside the community of European people entitled to freedom.

Their contempt wasn't merely dislike; it expressed a worldview in which Europeans considered themselves civilized and superior, while Indigenous and African peoples were portrayed as “savage,” inferior, and undeserving of the same freedoms.

That contempt produced a narrative justifying and making possible the genocide and enslavement of Indigenous and African peoples that followed.

Centuries later, well after the world’s growing moral reckoning with the deprivations of genocide and slavery, the same contempt now fuels a different kind of narrative, one more insidious than the contempt itself. And that is the persistent suggestion that Africa and Africans have little to contribute to the advancement of modern human civilization.

Repeated often enough, as it is over and over again, the narrative ceases to look like contempt and begins to masquerade as fact.

The world must check its gaze on Africa, both the language of its contempt and the assumptions underlying it.

But we all know the chances of this happening are slim to none.

Such language reflects deeply embedded assumptions in the global vernacular.

Even Presidents describe our nations as “shithole countries.” They characterize Somalia as “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime,” and make disparaging remarks about their intelligence.

They disparage South Africa through claims of extreme violence and the persecution of a racial minority, and they chastise African leadership as “ungrateful,” like the French President who complained that African leaders had failed to appreciate France’s military intervention in the Sahel and said “I think someone forgot to say thank you.”

How do you change the way the world looks at you when you cannot change the world?

You change the way you see yourself.

Africa and Africans must wise up to our reality.

We have to see ourselves clearly, refuse the diminished image imposed upon us, and recognize that our future cannot be built on the world’s estimation of our worth, but on the work we undertake to heal and transform our communities.

Baimba Yilla, Ed.D

References

Dawsey, J. (2018, January 12). Trump derides protections for immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries. The Washington Post. Trump derides protections for immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries

French, H. W. (2021). Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the making of the modern world. Liveright Publishing.

Morgan, E. S. (1975). American slavery, American freedom: The ordeal of colonial Virginia. W. W. Norton.

Sowell, T. (2005, July 14). Geography and man have all but killed Africa. Deseret News.

Reuters. (2025, January 6). Still awaiting thanks for stopping Islamists in Sahel, Macron says. 

Reuters. Still awaiting thanks for stopping Islamists in Sahel, Macron says

Reuters. (2025, May 22). Trump confronts South Africa's Ramaphosa with false claims of white genocide. Reuters. Trump confronts South Africas Ramaphosa with false claims of white genocide

Reuters. (2025, December 11). Somali defence minister rejects latest Trump insults. Reuters. Somali defence minister rejects latest Trump insults