This article is about negative sentiment towards African peoples and societies, and those of the African diaspora. For negative sentiment towards people because of their darker skin, 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]
In recent years, there has been a rise in Afrophobic hate speech and violence in Europe and the United States.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
Primarily a cultural phenomenon, Afrophobia pertains to the various traditions and peoples of Africa, irrespective of racial origin.[1] As such, Afrophobia is distinct from the historical racial phenomenon of negrophobia, which is specifically based on contempt for negro peoples.[2] The opposite of Afrophobia is Afrophilia, which is a love for all things pertaining to Africa.[1]
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.[3]
Afrophobia, or Anti-African sentiment, is a perceived fear and hatred of the cultures and peoples of Africa, as well as the African diaspora, which is also a social struggle about who has the right to be cared for by the state and society and a fight for the collective balance of rights and economic resource allocation by the modern state.
Hard Afroscepticism is a principled opposition to African integration and therefore can be seen in groups that think that their countries should not be part of it or whose policies towards the integration are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of African integration, as it is currently conceived and/or projected to be.
Soft Afroscepticism does not have a principled objection to African integration but has concerns on one or a number of policy areas, which lead to the expression of qualified and justified opposition to the integration, or there is a sense that national rights and interests are currently at odds with the integration's trajectory.
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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.[4] 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, meaning there was little written history, and the domination of European powers across the continent meant African history was written from an entirely European perspective under the pretence of Western Superiority.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]
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.[8]
In 2016, Tess Asplund made a viral protest against Neo-Nazism as part of her activism against Afrophobia.[9]
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.[10][11]
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.[12]
^Fanon, Frantz (December 2007). The wretched of the earth. Philcox, Richard; Sartre, Jean-Paul; Bhabha, Homi K. New York. ISBN9780802198853. OCLC1085905753.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Cooper, Frederick (2000). "Africa's Pasts and Africa's Historians". Canadian Journal of African Studies. 34 (2): 298–336. doi:10.2307/486417. JSTOR486417.
^Mays, Vickie M. (1985). "The Black American and psychotherapy: The dilemma". Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training. 22 (2S): 379–388. doi:10.1037/h0085518.
^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. S2CID149746823.
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