Africa 2050 & Skin Color Variation in the Continent
I often publish articles, share content explaining what Africa 2050 is and feverishly use the hashtag #Africa2050 on Social Media platforms to explain how vast the continent is. Africa is no longer a sleeping giant, African come in all sizes, shapes and color. My aim is to dispel some of the myths about Africa and the people of the motherland having there for most of my lifetime.
In an article released by Amajuoritse Omatseye on her Penn State University blog, she explains how Africans come in all shades of black, we have the light skin dark people and medium dark skin people (brown), then the deep dark people, and surprisingly we also have white people of African Heritage.
Dark skin, flat noses, big lips and woolly hair, the women are fat, but that is how their men like them. The true Africans are portrayed wearing face paint and animal print and all nearly pitch-black skin. If you think I’m wrong just type, ‘Africans’ on google and search for images. It’s a common misconception that most people never truly discover until they visit Africa and discover the diverse individuals within this continent. Luckily, I have lived in Africa and visited many countries with the continent, therefore I feel responsible to feed you with the facts.
A majority of us categorize in the brown skin category but it really depends on the part of the country where you originate.
A survey with random American schoolkids let them guess the population and land area of their country. Not entirely unexpected, but still rather unsettling, the majority chose “1–2 billion” and “largest in the world”, respectively. Even with Asian and European college students, geographical estimates were often off by factors of 2–3. This is partly due to the highly distorted nature of the predominantly used mapping projections (such as Mercator).
Modern stereotypical images of black Africans are the starving kids with flies swarming all over them, probably in a hospital. Other deceptions are of bare-breasted women and enormous buttocks, some with plates in their mouths.The African continent is home to people of all sizes, both big and small and devoid of any special feature worth looking at. Nowhere in the world is one likely to come across people of the same size and this hold true even for Africa.
A vast majority of stereotypes about Africa are a result of biased media coverage and a lack of research on the part of individuals. Ignorance can only be cured through a pursuit of knowledge and until people begin to pursue facts, they will have closed minds and never know the true beauty of African people, culture and the socio-economic path it is on.
SOURCES
Skin color variation in Africa
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6365/867/tab-figures-data
The varying skin colors of Africa: light, dark, and all in between
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/varying-skin-colors-africa-light-dark-and-all-between
A Different Perception — All Africans Look the Same? https://sites.psu.edu/amajuoma/2014/09/26/all-africans-look-the-same
[PDF] The True Size Of Africa — A small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy, by Kai Krause
http://kai.sub.blue/images/True-Size-of-Africa-kk-v3.pdf
