I recently was asked to participate in conducting survey research on the imaginings of the American public on Africa. I am not an American, but was asked through one of my research working groups to participate as imagining the other is one of my research interests.
I think a survey that will consider and assess what Americans think when they think of Africa is a good idea. It reminds me of the imaginations of Mel Lastman, then Mayor of Toronto. Before a trip to Kenya to promote Toronto’s bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, he said, “I’m sort of scared about going, but the wife is really nervous. I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me”. Most Canadians, upon hearing this news, just rolled their eyes. There was no public debate on the not-so-implicit racist and essentialist comments, because few people understood them. In my own imagination about how Americans perceive cultures other than their own, I can only guess that Americans writ large would support Lastman’s view. At a minimum, they would be unable to contradict Lastman because their world view is so narrow, and the American (and international) media tends to characterise Africa as a monolithic blob of inter-ethnic and/or primordial strife, not as a continent of great promise, and even greater diversity.
There is another side to the ignorance of Americans (and Canadians) to the past and lived realities of life across Africa. In my own travels in Africa (mostly Kenya and Rwanda, some South Africa and Madagascar, and a bit of DRC, Uganda, Tanzania and once to Mozambique), I’ve often wondered what Africans imagine about life abroad in countries like Canada or the US. I have met many young men and women in a number of African countries who imagine that life in Canada will be one of luxury. They will have their own home, be able to buy a car, get a good education for themselves and their kids, be able to enjoy spare time, and so on and so on. The reality of life in Canada is often living from pay cheque to pay cheque in a basement apartment in minimum-wage jobs as the government places road block after road block in the process to gain landed residency status, which is required before the application for citizenship can even me made. And these individuals are the lucky ones. I met the other day in downtown Ottawa an Ethiopian taxi driver who was a medical doctor in his own country, his family was unable to join him in Canada as he could raise enough money to pay for their plane tickets to Canada, nor the restrictive costs of applying to land in Canada. I’ve met newly arrived immigrants to Canada from Lebanon who are well educated, have family ties in Canada, and who are unable to find a supportive environment in which to settle. Statistics Canada reports that the higher the level of education of an immigrant, the lower his or her chances of finding employment in his or her field of expertise. That means that lawyers, doctors, architects, and the like are unlikely to take up those professions in Canada. They are more likely to work as paralegals, nurses, CAD designers, and so on.
I think it would be a useful exercise to also undertake a survey of African’s perceptions of the West. The two surveys together might be able to help us build up a picture of what it means to be the other - Westerners can learn about Africa through the voices of Africans, and Africans can learn about the West as it real is, rather than as it appears to be.
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