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The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the

Racist image of Africa

Milton Allimadi

2 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist image of Africa

By Milton Allimadi

While still a student at Columbia University School of Journalism in 1992, Milton Allimadi

gained access to the archives of The New York Times, where he "unearthed several racist

letters that had been exchanged between the newspaper's foreign editor and the reporters he sent

to cover Africa." His appetite whetted, Allimadi continued his research, ultimately resulting in

publication of this book.

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star News [1], based in New York City. He has

graciously given BAR permission to serialize his work.

Part One

How European Writers Created the Racist image of Africa

"I know that history will have its say some day, but it will not be history as written in Brussels,

Paris or Washington, it will be our own." - From Patrice Lumumba's last letter to his wife

Pauline

Historically the predominant image of Africans and people of African descent created by the

Western media has been that of savages. These images were created from the accounts of the

early European travelers to Africa through the journals they published; in modern times the

images were perpetuated and disseminated through newspapers, magazines and Hollywood

films.

The media's racist portrayals of Africans and Black people in general, have been so effective that

many contemporary white writers still view Black people through the prism of bigotry created by

their forefathers over several centuries. For these contemporary writers even remotely to write

balanced articles about Black people, they must first re-read many of the publications that have

formed white people's perception of Blacks.

The following are some of the pervasive stereotypes still

enduring:

* The African continent's inhabitants are barbaric.

3 | P a g e

Mau Mau freedom fighters wearing animal skins and armed with long knives in a file picture taken in Kiambu.

* Black people are morally, physically and intellectually inferior to white people.

* Blacks' contributions to world history, culture, social, artistic and scientific development are

non-existent.

* Africa is the obverse of civilization.

* The African continent itself is physically inhospitable.

The negative representations were so pervasive and effective that they diminished the self-

esteem of many Blacks and caused them to suffer greatly from inferiority complexes. Many

became convinced that indeed they were the most inferior human species.

What were the reasons for the racist representations of Africans by European writers? When the

media portray people in a particular way there are always specific reasons, generally reflecting

the political, racial, class, gender, ethnic, national, economic and religious biases of the owners

of the media and the governing class. During the era of slavery, the media owners, writers and

intellectuals - in other words, molders of public opinion and shapers of policy - represented

Black people as sub-human, in order to justify slavery.

"Europeans regarded Africa as a backward continent, inhabited by savage and abnormal human

beings."

During the period of colonial conquest and rule, Africans were represented as sub-humans at a

lesser stage of physical, mental, and social evolution, and therefore, in need of the Europeans'

civilizing governance. Then in the era after independence, some Western media represented

Africans as people incapable of governing themselves, thus justifying and exonerating slavery

and colonialism.

4 | P a g e

As early as the 5th Century BC when Herodotus wrote The Histories [2], Europeans regarded

Africa as a backward continent, inhabited by savage and abnormal human beings - using white

people to represent the epitome of creation. These representations continued throughout history,

and in the 18th

and 19th

centuries, the journals of the European so-called explorers became the

main media of disseminating the stereotypical image of Africa. In the early part of the 20th

century, negative characterizations of Africa were permeating major publications such as The

New York Times, The National Geographic, Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, The New

Yorker, and several European newspapers and magazines.

My research has unearthed evidence of some of the Western writers' personal animus toward

Africans in their personal correspondences, including those by reporters with major international

newspapers. For example, documents from the archives of The New York Times reveal disturbing

accounts in late 1959, when one of the world's leading newspapers sent Homer William Bigart to

cover events in West Africa at the start of de-colonization from European countries. Bigart was a

renowned reporter and had already won the Pulitzer Prize - American journalism's top award -

two times while he was with his previous newspaper, The Herald Tribune.

"The Times reporter's favorite terms in Africa included ‘barbaric,' ‘macabre,' ‘grotesque,' and

‘savage.'"

After a visit to Ghana and then later to Nigeria, Bigart complained bitterly in a letter from Lagos

to the Times' foreign news editor, Emanuel Freedman, about his African assignment. "I'm afraid I

cannot work up any enthusiasm for the emerging republics," Bigart wrote. "The politicians are

either crooks or mystics. Dr. Nkrumah is a Henry Wallace in burnt cork. I vastly prefer the

primitive bush people. After all, cannibalism may be the logical antidote to this population

explosion everyone talks about."

Bigart's favorite terms in Africa included "barbaric," "macabre," "grotesque," and "savage." This

reporter's contempt toward the continent was evidently shared by his editor, Freedman, who

wrote back: "This is just a note to say hello and to tell you how much your peerless prose from

the badlands is continuing to give us and your public. By now you must be American

journalism's leading expert on sorcery, witchcraft, cannibalism and all the other exotic

phenomena indigenous to darkest Africa. All this and nationalism too! Where else but in The

New York Times can you get all this for a nickel?"

Typical of the prose that Freedman found so much to his liking was an article by Bigart

published on January 31st 1960, in the Times under the headline "Barbarian Cult Feared in

Nigeria." Focusing on a reported incident of communal violence, Bigart assumed a jaunty and

derogative tone, writing:

"A pocket of barbarism still exists in eastern Nigeria despite some success by the regional

government in extending a crust of civilization over the tribe of the pagan Izi." He added, "A

momentary lapse into cannibalism marked the closing days of 1959, when two men killed in a

tribal clash were partly consumed by enemies in the Cross River country below Obubra.

Garroting was the society's favored method of execution. None of the victims was eaten, at least

not by society members. Less lurid but equally effective ways were found to dispose of them.

5 | P a g e

According to the police, about twenty-six were weighed with stones and timber and thrown into

flooded rivers.

"No trace has been found of these bodies. A few were buried in ant heaps. But most became

human fertilizer for the yam crops."

The article played on what was then a well-established impression of Africa as a continent

inhabited exclusively by cannibals, and it reflected the views Bigart had expressed earlier in his

famous letter to Freedman. The veracity of his journalistic production was highly questionable.

He was not above concocting scenarios to fulfill his - and Freedman's - morbid fantasies about

Africa.

"Dear Manny. It is nice to be in contact with you after the great Cameroun communications

black out," Bigart wrote, in another letter to Freedman from West Africa. "There's nothing more

demoralizing than to drop a story at a cable office manned by natives under French supervision.

I'll never criticize British Cable & Wireless again...These countries are all miserable and I cannot

operate efficiently because of the heat and cumulative fatigue. I hope I'll be able to survive the

six months and then take a vacation in Spain and England before coming home."

Later that year, as independence neared for what was then Belgian Congo, Bigart complained to

Freedman in a May 29th

1960 letter from Leopoldville, which is now Kinshasa: "I had hoped to

find pygmies voting and interview them on the meaning of independence but they were all in the

woods. I did see several lions, however, and from Usumbura I sent a long mailer about the

Watutsi giants."

The Belgian Congo had experienced the most bloody and brutal history of European colonial

rule and exploitation in Africa. During the rule of King Leopold II, an estimated 10 million or

more Africans were exterminated and countless more permanently maimed or disfigured, all in

the quest for wealth. The country was raped of its resources, primarily ivory and rubber at the

time. Under the Belgians, African slave laborers, who did not deliver their designated quota of

ivory and rubber to their European masters in the Congo, had their hands severed, in order to

motivate other slackers. There are remarkable and chilling photographs from that era, in history

books, showing African laborers holding up the fire-cured limbs of their colleagues.

Now, finally, at the dawn of the Congo's momentous liberation from Belgian oppression, a

reporter for The New York Times has the opportunity to get the reaction of the descendants of

slave amputees and perhaps even of some surviving victims. What did this day mean for them?

What hopes and aspirations did they have? What was their feeling towards the Belgians? These

were some of the questions Bigart could have asked. Instead, his perverted mind is focused on

finding Pygmies, one of the most maligned ethnic groups in all of history.

"The derisive headline of the article was ‘Magic of Freedom Enchants Congolese.'"

Having failed to find Pygmies for his news report, Bigart used the next best solution - he created

them, as evidenced by his article, published in The Times on June 5th

1960. After all, he was

confident that no Pygmy would ever see a copy of his article in The Times and challenge his

6 | P a g e

assertions; and how could he have known that three decades later, an African-born writer would

unearth the evidence of his fraud and bigotry from The Times' archives. The derisive headline of

the article was "Magic of Freedom Enchants Congolese." The article began: "As the hour of

freedom from Belgian rule nears, ‘In-de-pen-dence' is being chanted by Congolese all over this

immense land, even by pygmies in the forest." "Independence is an abstraction not easily grasped

by Congolese and they are seeking concrete interpretations," Bigart added, before continuing to

malign the pygmies: "To the forest pygmy independence means a little more salt, a little more

beer."

The type of racism that Bigart and Freedman expressed in their correspondences toward Africans

was by no means unique to the two. Even when other Times reporters seemed eager to explore

more serious social and political developments on the continent, Freedman steered them back to

the racist themes he craved.

Another Times reporter, Leonard Ingalls, who was based in South Africa, had sought guidance

from Freedman, as his letters revealed: "You asked me before I left New York to give you after I

had been here awhile my impression," he wrote in a letter dated June 14th

1956, to Freedman:

"Perhaps the most obvious and fundamental fact to strike the newcomer is that the Negro, by

sheer weight of numbers, will take control of Sub-Saharan Africa within the next generation or

two." (A year after this seminal observation, Ghana won its independence from Britain, and six

years later, most African countries began formal de-colonization).

"As you know, white South Africans call themselves and all other white persons Europeans.

Sometimes, in trying to defend their white supremacy policies, they will argue that South Africa

has been their home for 300 years and that they must fight - and they mean that literally - to

preserve white civilization in South Africa because they have no place to go," Ingalls' letter went

on, "I was talking with an African friend about this argument recently and his observation was:

‘They call themselves Europeans, let them go to Europe.' Usually when the question of political,

social, economic or educational opportunities for Africans is raised with white persons south of

the Sahara they reply: ‘You don't expect us to give them to savages, do you?'" Ingalls continued:

"That is fair enough in a sense. There is a big ‘but' attached though, and that there doesn't seem

to be very much enthusiasm for getting on with the job of helping the savages to better

themselves."

Ingalls pointed out in his letter that the whites in South Africa seemed not to have learned

anything from the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, where Africans were fighting against whites who

had ousted the Kikuyu people and robbed them of their fertile ancestral farmlands.

"I have talked to quite a few literate, intelligent Africans," Ingalls continued, in his letter, "My

recollection is that they have said they do not want to force the white man out of Africa. What

they do want is the help of the white man in improving the lot of their people. They do not think

they are getting that help."

Even U.S. government officials believed only more white presence in Africa could rescue the

continent, Ingalls revealed in his letter to Freedman: "A few weeks ago George V. Allen, a

United States Assistant Secretary of State, spent nineteen days touring Africa south of the

7 | P a g e

Sahara. I was told that he gave it as his private opinion that the solution to the African dilemma

was more white immigration. I wonder where all the white people are going to come from and

what they are going to do when they get here."

Were these the kind of burning issues of the day that kept foreign editor Freedman, back in New

York, awake at night? Evidently not, judging by his letter of July 25th

1956 to Ingalls in South

Africa, "We read that in Black Africa, where the principle of the wheel was scarcely known a

generation or two ago, there is now a great demand for bicycles," he wrote, "a trend is underway

toward two-bicycle families. Is there a light economic air-mail feature in the increasing mobility

of the aborigines?"

At a time when the continent stood at the crossroads of profound changes such as de-

colonization, African leadership, and the reconstitution of the relations between whites and

Africans, Freedman, foreign editor of an influential newspaper such as The New York Times,

preferred storylines, presenting Africans as buffoons and savages to Western readers. "Where do

they buy their bikes?" Freedman continued, in his letter, "What do they cost? How long does it

take a man to earn enough money to buy one? Is his status advanced? Does he have roads or

bicycle tracks, or does he ride through the bush? What is the usual biking costume-robe, breech-

cloth, animal skin or birthday suit?" the foreign editor continued, "How is the bicycle business?

Are dealers getting rich? Are there bicycle garages in the bush? What social effects is the bicycle

having?"

"Freedman preferred storylines presenting Africans as buffoons and savages."

Public relations firms inspired some of the articles preferred by Freedman. After Albert Fick, a

South African publicist, suggested a story idea to Freedman, he passed it on to Richard Hunt, a

correspondent in South Africa, in a letter dated September 12th

1957. "Albert Fick, who as you

know, now enjoys desk space in our wire room, sent me a note suggesting a feature that you

might find interesting," Freedman wrote. "It does sound like a good project for a time when you

have a chance to take it on." Fick's own correspondence to Freedman in part had read: "I have

long been fascinated by raw black men being flown from the bush, where some of them have

probably never used or maybe seen a wheel, straight into Johannesburg for work in the mines.

The Transvaal Chamber of Mines would probably give Hunt a ride on one of their airlift planes,

with these rookies. A good human story, from the middle ages into the 20th

century, by air."

During the late 1950s as the rivalry between the West and East increased, the political struggle

for allies was also played out in Africa and Western coverage of the continent reflected this

competition. One of the publications that served as a vocal cheerleader for "Western values" and

apologist for continuance of colonial rule in Africa was Time magazine. Its co-founder and

editor, Henry Robinson Luce was an avowed Christian fundamentalist who wanted to continue

the crusade he had lost in China when Mao Xedong's Communist movement had crushed his

idol, Chiang Kai-Shek.

8 | P a g e

In Kenya, as Luce saw it, the good guys were the British colonial

officials, the police and soldiers under their command. The bad guys

were the African "terrorists" and the "witch doctors" that commanded the

uprising. Time magazine devoted many articles to portray the guerrillas in

Kenya as godless savages with no credible objectives. Under the abusive

headline "Black & Red magic" in an article published on September 1st,

1952, Time magazine explained: "In recent years, the Black 97% of

Kenya's population has banded together in a dozen fanatic, anti-white secret societies run by

witch doctors and pledged to the slogan Africa for Africans." So, in one malicious paragraph,

Time was able to belittle a legitimate uprising, and at the same time, criminalize the entire five

million Black population of Kenya.

Whenever Black people resisted dispossession by white colonials seeking to conquer their land,

they were demonized as "anti-white" and allied with witchcraft. (This technique has not deviated

much even up to recent times, as evidenced by the 21st century Western coverage of Zimbabwe's

attempt to re-distribute land from the white minority who stole it in the 19th

century to the Black

majority. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was portrayed, particularly by the British media,

as "erratic," "unstable," and "racist.")

The 1952 Time magazine article perpetuated the enduring image of Africans as incapable of

fighting for just causes - they could only be inspired by irrational witchcraft and barbarism.

Another Time magazine article ridiculing the uprising was published on November 3rd

1952

under the contemptuous headline "The Meow-Meows," and it described the situation this way:

"Part land hunger, part savage revolution against the domineering white man and the bewildering

20th

century, the Mau Mau's blind fury could, if left unchecked, turn the Crown Colony of Kenya

into another Malaya." The reference was to the country now called Malaysia, which at the time

was a British colony facing serious insurrection.

Luce's Time magazine set the tone for the coverage by other American publications. On

December 7th

1952, The New York Times contributed with the following news lead: "Over the

equatorial landscape of Kenya, the British Crown Colony in East Africa, lies the frightening

shadow of Mau Mau, a secret tribal society whose campaign of murder has forced the imposition

of martial law." The article conceded that much was not known about the "terrorist" but added:

"The first aim of the Mau Mau, with its voodoo apparatus of disemboweled animals for warnings

and long machete-like knives for their killings, seems to drive the 36,000 whites out of Kenya."

9 | P a g e

"The bad guys were the African ‘terrorists' and the ‘witch doctors' that commanded the

uprising."

The article also questioned whether the insurgency was "a spontaneous native uprising" or

instigated from outside, since the organization seemed to "bear some resemblance to the cells of

a communist organization." The sentence purported to explain the communist connection read:

"Jomo Kenyatta [3], who is held for trial as the suspected leader of the Mau Mau, received part

of his education at the London School of Economics, married a white woman and thereafter

visited Moscow." The article never explained whether it was Kenyatta's education at the LSE, his

marriage to a white woman, or his trip to Moscow that confirmed his "communist connection."

The coverage of the Mau Mau uprising by American publications directly reflected British

propaganda. Even today when dealing with Africa, major U.S. publications, including The New

York Times still take their cue from and reflect the biases of British media such as The Financial

Times, The Economist and the BBC - as if the U.K. could ever be a disinterested interpreter of

events in Africa. Fifty years after Kenyatta was demonized, Zimbabwe's president Mugabe was

characterized as a devil when he instituted land re-distribution.

During the Mau Mau, American and British media were so successful in perpetuating the image

of savagery taking control over Africans in Kenya that even British officials were evidently

affected. Consider what Oliver Lyttelton, the British colonial secretary and one-time governor of

Kenya wrote in his memoirs, The Memoirs of Lord Chandos (1963). In one passage, he revealed

that he was haunted by the Mau Mau's voodoo while serving His Majesty's Government in

Kenya. "As I wrote memoranda or instructions," he recalled in his memoirs, "I would suddenly

see a shadow fall across the page - the Horned shadow of the Devil himself." The good Lord

Chandos could have benefited from some serious psychiatric counseling and treatment, even if

he was simply perpetuating British propaganda.

© Milton G. Allimadi

Next week, Part Two: Blackness As Bestiality

To purchase The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist image of

Africa, contact

Published by The Black Star Publishing Co.

www.blackstarnews.com [1]

10 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist image of Africa

Part Two

By Milton Allimadi

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star News [1], based in New York City. He has

graciously given BAR permission to serialize his work. Part One appeared in the November

24 issue [2] of BAR.

Blackness As Bestiality

"Blackness of skin was strongly associated with moral perversity and intellectual and

spiritual inferiority by whites."

By the time American and British newspapers started sending

professional journalists to write about Africa during the early part of the 20th

Century, the racist image of Africa was solidly ingrained in the Western

psyche. This was made possible by the writings of the

early Greek historians, especially Herodotus, and later by

the popular journals of European "explorers."

Herodotus (484-425 BC), who is

hailed as the "father of modern history" explained in The

Histories that Ethiopians were Black because the men

ejaculated black sperm into their women. He also

informed his contemporaries - and many

generations that followed - about the continent's peculiar

and exotic inhabitants. "There are monstrously

large snakes and lions in those parts," he wrote, referring

to the continent, "and elephants and bears and asps, and

asses that are horned, besides dog-faced beasts and

headless ones that have eyes in their chests - at

least that is how the Libyans describe them, and wild men and women and many

other wild creatures the existence of which cannot be denied." Few of Herodotus' contemporaries

must have challenged his assessment of Africa. So, the Western mind was conditioned to accept

a fantastic and grotesque image of Africa from a very early stage.

Blackness of skin was explained as an aberration that could

be resolved through scientific inquiry; it was also strongly associated with

moral perversity and intellectual and spiritual inferiority by whites. Using

white skin as their reference point of measuring "normality," physicians,

scholars, religious leaders and politicians attempted to translate the

aberration of black skin for common white people.

11 | P a g e

In Pseudodoxia Epidemica [3], (1646), Thomas Browne, a physician, attributed blackness of

skin to "black jaundice" or "mutations" or "inward use of certain waters." More than 200 years

later, the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1866), quoting a "Dr. Barrier," explained

that "the gall of negroes is black and, being mixed with their blood is deposited between their

skin and foreskin."

The good Dr. Barrier did not to have the final word on the matter. "Dr. Mitchel of Virginia," the

Encyclopedia Britannica continued, "in the philosophical transaction No. 476, has endeavoured

by many learned arguments to prove, that the influence of the sun in hot countries, and the

manner of life of their inhabitants, are the remote causes of the colour of the Negroes,

Indians, etc."

Clearly, the doctor from Virginia had struck on a novel

theory with exciting possibilities, so the Encycopledia's editors did not shy

away from extending the theory to its logical, and in this case, preposterous

conclusion: "And indeed," the Encyclopedia read, "it would be a

strong confirmation of his doctrine, if we would see any people, originally

white, become black and woolly by transplantation, or vice versa."

About 100 years before Dr. Barrier rendered his "scientific"

opinion, none other than Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the American

Republic, had shed some light on the controversy surrounding black skin, in Notes on the State of

Virginia [4] (1781): "Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between

the skin and scarf-skin [epidermis], or in the scarf-skin itself, whether it proceeds from

the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference

is fixed in nature, and it is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us." Jefferson

wanted to explain the differences between Blacks and whites in order to justify why he

advocated that freed Blacks were better off being resettled "beyond the realm of mixture with

whites."

"The more ‘Negroid' an African appeared, he was portrayed as more backward."

"Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a

difference of race," he wrote, "They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the

kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and

disagreeable odour." Had Jefferson paused to reflect upon the fact that all the Black people he

associated with worked on his plantations, he would have discerned the origin

of their profuse sweating. Even then, his reservations about the hygienic

conditions of Blacks did not prevent him from deriving sexual pleasure from an

underaged Sally Heming, one of his slaves, with whom he fathered a child.

Some white historians have argued that whites who first

encountered Africans were not racist towards them and that the pervasive

stereotypical representations of Africa did not take hold until much

later. In The Africa That Never Was, (1970) Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow,

after surveying 500 years of Western writing on Africa, concluded that as late

12 | P a g e

as the 15th

Century, European traders, who were the first whites to

come into contact with Africans, did not focus on value judgment. However, by the 17th

Century, when Europeans began acquiring Africans for slave labor, theories alleging the

Africans' natural inferiority and bestiality became popular, in order to justify their subjugation.

At the same time a worldwide phenomenon emerged. The more "Negroid" an African appeared,

he was portrayed as more backward, or presumed to be, by Europeans. Conversely,

the more "European," Africans looked - with "aquiline" features - they were

portrayed as, and believed to be more "civilized." This is partly why historically, and right into

the modern era, many American and European writers consistently portray the ethnic minority

Tutsis in both Rwanda and Burundi more adoringly and favorably when describing

their features relative to the Hutus, who comprise the vast majority in both

countries. The tendency to venerate Africans with alleged "European" features was found even

in the writings of white people who condemned slavery. In her novel, Oroonoko, The Royal

Slave, (1688), Aphra Behn, the early English abolitionist and first English woman to earn a

living through her writing, countered the slavers' bestial image of

Africans with one of her imagined "ideal" African.

"His face was not that brown rusty black which most of that nation are,

but a perfect ebony, or polished black," she wrote, describing the hero of

her novel who later led a slave rebellion. "His nose was rising and

Roman, instead of African and flat: his mouth the finest

shape that could be seen; far from that great turned lips, which are so

natural

to the rest of the negroes."

Behn noted that except for her hero's race, which, due to no

fault of his own was Black, "there could be nothing more beautiful, agreeable

and handsome. There was no one grace wanting that bears the standard of true

beauty. His hair came down to his shoulders, by the aids of art, which was for pulling it down,

and keeping it combed."

Europeans Travel to Africa, to Discover Africa

"The British public was eager to imbibe absurd tales from the continent."

It was the popular journals of the European travelers that widely disseminated the racist image of

Africa throughout the Western world between the 18th

and the 20th

centuries. Many of these

books are still consulted and quoted from by Western writers who travel to report from Africa.

In 1790, a Scotsman, James Bruce, published his Travel to Discover The Source of The Nile,

telling of his three years of wandering in Ethiopia and Tigre. Unfortunately for him, his

countrymen did not believe him when he described what he alleged was one typical occurrence

in those God forsaken places. Bruce wrote that he witnessed three Ethiopians fling a cow onto

the ground, cut two steaks off its buttocks, pin the skin back over the wound and cover it with

13 | P a g e

clay. Then the Ethiopians chased the cow off and fell upon the warm meat. The British public,

which was eager to imbibe absurd tales from the continent, still rejected Bruce's account and

laughed him into seclusion.

The explorers who followed Bruce fared much better and many

of their journals became best sellers throughout the Western world; the books

were awaited with the kind of anticipation people nowadays reserve for new film

releases. The more the explorers denigrated Africans in their accounts, the more books they were

able to sell.

The travel writers knew the public's appetite for their tales from Africa and did not hesitate to

encourage others to lace their writings with fiction to make them exciting. "It had struck me that

you could not do better than write a short description of your travels in Africa," John Hanning

Speke, author of Journal

of The Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863), wrote in a letter

to John Petherick, a contemporary traveler, "well loaded with amusing anecdotes and fights with

the natives."

In 1866, Samuel Baker - he called himself "Baker of the

Nile," a reference to his purported contribution toward "finding" the source of

the Nile - published Albert N'yanza, recounting his own

efforts at "discovering" the source of the Nile, which, as far as African

fishermen were aware, had always existed. More than any one of his

contemporaries, Baker, who made repeated trips to the continent, had a rabid

loathing for the Africans he encountered. "I wish the Black sympathizer in England could see

Africa's innermost heart as I do, much of their sympathy would subside," he wrote. "Human

nature viewed in its crudest state as pictured among African savages is quite on a level with that

of the brute, and not to be compared with the noble character of the dog."

Elsewhere in Albert N'yanza, Baker observed: "So long

as it is generally considered that the negro and the white man are to be

governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so long will the

former remain a thorn in the side of every community to which he may unhappily

belong. When the horse and the ass shall be

found to match in double harness,

the white man and the African black will pull

together under the same regime."

There were many such popular explorers'

journals that perpetuated and popularized the

racist image of Africa in the West. For instance,

in 1873, the German traveler, Georg

Schweinfurth, published Heart of Africa, in

which he issued the following chilling warning

to fellow Europeans: "The first sight of a throng

of savages, suddenly presenting themselves in

14 | P a g e

their naked nudity, is one from which no amount of familiarity can remove the strange

impression; it takes abiding hold upon the memory, and makes the traveler recall anew the

civilization he has left behind."

"Joseph Conrad's book is a catalogue of scenes portraying Africans in the most racist

manner."

These so-called explorers' writings paved the way for

novelists like Joseph Conrad, who published Heart of Darkness [5] in 1902,

informing Europeans about the African's alleged barbarity and the continent's

propensity to drive people insane - his book is still considered a classic and

it is part of the so-called Western canon.

Conrad probably borrowed the title of his masterpiece by combining the

titles of two books published before his: Schweinfurth's Heart of Africa, and Henry Morton

Stanley's book, Darkest Africa. Conrad's book is a catalogue of scenes portraying Africans in the

most racist manner.

There is one section in Heart of Darkness where an African character is bestowed with the power

of speech - in crude English befitting him, of course - and here's what he tells the

European: ‘"Catch ‘im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp

white teeth, ‘catch ‘im. Give ‘im to us.'" When the narrator of the story asks the African what he

would do with the fellow African captive, the answer is predictable: ‘"Eat ‘im.'"

Elsewhere in Conrad's novel, as his steamer sailed down the

Congo river, the narrator of the story made the kind of "observation" that

still conforms with many white people's deep-seated stereotypical views of

Africa today: "We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the

aspect of an unknown planet. We would have fancied ourselves the first men taking possession

of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive

toil. But suddenly, as we struggled around a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of

peaked grassroofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet

stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy

motionless foliage." (This very scene was plagiarized in a National Geographic article decades

later, in October 1922, as this study will reveal in a subsequent chapter).

Chinua Achebe the Nigerian author and essayist in Hopes

and Impediments (1988) concluded that Conrad's novel projected Africa's

image as "the anti-thesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place

where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by

triumphant bestiality."

There are many other books comparable to Conrad's that

denigrate Africans and that are still widely read and highly regarded in the

West. Conrad's book was one of the best and most enduring writings serving to

convince the European mind about Africa's savagery.

15 | P a g e

The European travelers' journals also had similar influence on American newspapers and

magazines. Most Americans first encountered Africa through a National Geographic magazine

article in its Volume II, 1889 issue. The article was written by the magazine's managing editor,

Gardiner Greene Hubbard, and based entirely on the accounts provided by Henry Morton

(H.M. as he preferred) Stanley, the brutal so-called explorer and newspaper

correspondent. He traveled extensively in Africa and wrote many lavish and concocted tales

about his journeys. During his travels he developed a reputation for shooting down unarmed

Africans who challenged him, as if they were wild game. Stanley's primary claim to fame was

his account of his search for David Livingston, the British traveler who got lost in Africa. He is

credited with the now famous - and most probably concocted - greeting: "Dr. Livingston, I

presume?"

"The negro has never developed any high degree of civilization," Hubbard lamented in his

magazine article, showing total ignorance about the great civilizations of the Zulus,

the Ashanti, Songhay, Mali, Buganda, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and ancient Ghana, "and even if,

when brought into contact with civilization, he has made considerable progress, when that

contact ceased he has deteriorated into barbarism." Here we have a sampling of the enduring

notion that even among so-called "civilized" Africans, barbarism lurked barely underneath the

surface, waiting to be unleashed at any given moment.

"The New York Times explained that Africans were ‘arrested at a position not so much

between heaven and earth, as between earth and hell.'"

Even The New York Times relied on the image of Africa perpetuated by Stanley. In an article

published on July 1st 1877, the newspaper explained that Africans were "arrested at a position

not so much between heaven and earth, as between earth and hell." This article

went on to offer further evidence of the Africans' backwardness. "There is an old touch, a

tertiary or pre-tertiary touch about them, affiliating them with the ancient hippopotamus

and the crocodile; but there is also a touch of a sensitiveness and an

affection as keen as any to which the more civilized races have attained." As

a result of the Africans' "suspended" condition between earth and hell, the

article concluded: "This has exposed them to a torture which the crocodile and the hippopotamus

do not know; but it has been insufficient to elevate them to a

platform of order and happiness."

Another preposterous article about Africa was published in The

New York Times on April 30th

1885. This was shortly after The

Berlin Conference that had resulted in the formal partition of

the African continent among the European powers of the day -

principally Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and Spain. One

vast territory in Central Africa, was acquired through

fraudulent "treaties" between African rulers and representatives

of King Leopold II of the Belgians, including H.M. Stanley, and renamed the Congo Free Estate.

The article, under the headline "A New Native King," explained the challenges the Belgian

monarch would face, should he decide to travel to the

16 | P a g e

continent to rule his new "native" subjects. "He knows that were he to carry to Africa the

manners and the customs of a Belgian king," the article admonished, "his darky subjects would

misunderstand him and would be dissatisfied."

So, in order to familiarize himself with the continent, Leopold had commissioned Stanley to

show him how to make native beer called "pombe"; he had also learned "the banjo and the

bones," and read Daniel Bryant's Theory and Practise of Colored Conundrums. (My several

attempts to locate a copy of this book were not successful). The Times article

explained: "His skill in performing the banjo will please the people, and his knowledge of the

ancient and classical conundrums of the African race will gain for him the reputation of a

man of profound learning."

On the other hand, according to the article, the king also faced grave risks in going to Africa.

"If king Leopold is not ready to face the danger he had better not go to

Africa," the article warned. "He knows very well that no European can make rain, whatever a

native king may be able to do, and he need not expect that he can compromise with his subjects

by establishing a weather bureau." Failure to produce a downpour, the article alleged, would

lead to a revolution "to be followed by a banquet at which the dethroned monarch is the principle

dish."

One effect of the Times' article is known: Leopold was a voracious reader of publications from

all over the world, so perhaps following the Times' advice, he never set foot in Africa, instead,

ruling through his cruel functionaries and intermediaries.

© Milton G. Allimadi

Next week, Part Three: A European Meets a ‘Savage' Intellectual

The

Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist image of Africa

To comment on or discuss this article click here to visit its page on the Black Agenda Blog

Published

by The Black Star Publishing Co.

P.O. Box

64, New York, N.Y., 10025

www.BlackStarnews.com [1]

17 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa

Part Three

By Milton Allimadi

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star News [1], based in

New York City. He has graciously given BAR permission to serialize his work. Part

One appeared in the January 24 issue [2] of BAR, Part Two in the January 31 issue [3].

A European Meets a ‘Savage' Intellectual

Europeans wrote the stories that formed their own perception of Africans, without any

contribution of the Africans they described.

In one of the rarest instances, Samuel Baker -

one of the most famous of these European

trespassers - inadvertently allowed one of the

Africans he encountered to speak for himself in

Albert N'Yanza (1866). The result of their

conversation is remarkable as we will shortly

see. Since Baker's book is still widely consulted

as reference by many Western writers who

travel to Africa, it is worth

reviewing parts in some detail.

The Black man was born for the sole purpose of

servitude -

preferably under the supervision of whites, Baker insisted. "The negro has been, and still is,

thoroughly misunderstood," he explained. "However severely we may condemn the

institution of slavery, the results of emancipation have proved that the negro

does not appreciate the blessings of freedom, nor does he show the slightest

feeling of gratitude to the hand that broke the rivets of his fetters."

"'The negro does not appreciate the blessings of freedom,

nor does he show the slightest feeling of gratitude,' Baker insisted."

Baker further observed: "His narrow mind cannot embrace the feeling of pure philanthropy that

first prompted England to declare herself against slavery, and he only regards

the anti-slavery movement as a proof of his own importance. In his limited

horizon he is himself the important object, and as a consequence to his

self-conceit, imagines that the whole world is at issue concerning the black

man." Baker continued: "England, the great chief of the commercial world, possesses a power

that enforces a

grave responsibility. She has the force to civilize. She is the natural colonizer of the world. In

18 | P a g e

the short space of three centuries, America, sprung from her loins, has become a giant offspring,

a new era in the history of the human race, a new birth whose future must be

overwhelming." England's remaining task was to "wrest from

utter savagedom those mighty tracts of the earth's surface wasted from the

creation of the world - a darkness to be enlightened by English colonization."

Baker was the perfect agent and propagandist for European commercial conquest of Africa.

Only trade with the "civilized" world could rescue the barbarian continent. "The savage must

learn to want; he must learn to be ambitious; and to covet more than the mere animal necessities

of food and drink," Baker explained. "This can only be taught by a communication with civilized

beings: the sight of men well clothed will induce the naked savage to covet clothing, and will be

the first steps towards commerce. To obtain the supply, the savage must produce some articles

in return as a medium of barter, some natural production of his country adapted to the trader's

wants."

It followed from Baker's reasoning that the white man's

burden was controlling the Black man, in order to civilize him. "The

history of the negro has proved the correctness of this theory," he wrote. "In no instance has he

evinced other than a retrogression, when once freed from restraint. Like a horse without harness,

he runs wild, but, if harnessed, no animal is more useful. Unfortunately, this is contrary

to public opinion in England, where the vox populi assumes the right of

dictation upon matters and men in which it has no experience."

The decline of whole economies could be traced to the

emancipation of Black people, Baker asserted: "In his state of slavery the negro was compelled

to work, and, through his labour, every country prospered where he had been introduced. He

was suddenly freed; and from that moment he refused to work, and instead of being a useful

member of society, he not only became a useless burden to the community, but a plotter and

intriguer, imbued with a deadly hatred to the white man who had generously declared him free."

No mention by Baker of the essence of slavery - pillage, rapes, massacres, torture and

uncompensated labor.

Baker was infuriated whenever he encountered Black men who

did not accept the natural order of things and believed that they were equal to

or superior to whites. He recalled how Kumrasi, king of the Bunyoro,

disrespected him, after he had traveled through the Sudan into Uganda. Baker

hoped Kumrasi would rush to see him and help him "discover" a mountain or

lake. "We received a message today that we were not to expect Kumrasi as

great men were never in a hurry to pay visits," Baker sneered, in Albert N'Yanza. "It is very

trying to the patience to wait here until it pleases these

almighty niggers to permit us to cross the river."

"Baker was

infuriated whenever he encountered Black men who did not accept the natural

order of things."

19 | P a g e

Eventually, Baker traveled further north and reached the Lutoko, who live in what's now part of

the Sudan. It was here that Baker had the remarkable conversation with Commoro, the Lutoko

chief, whom he described as "the most clever and common-sense savage that I had seen in these

countries."

The two men spoke about politics, religion, and philosophy,

through an interpreter. Even though Baker recorded the conversation

disparagingly, he unwittingly showed contemporary readers how his host was much

more intelligent than Baker himself. The conversation at one point focused on

Baker's inquiry as to why the Lutoko exhumed the bodies of their dead:

Baker: "But why should you disturb the bones of those whom you have already buried, and

expose them on the outskirts of the town?"

Commoro: "It was the custom of our forefathers, therefore we continue to observe it."

Baker: "Have you no belief in a future existence after death? Is not some idea expressed in the

act

of exhuming the bones after the flesh is decayed?"

Commoro: "Existence after death! How can that be? Can a dead man get out of his grave unless

we dig him out?"

Baker: "Do you think that man is like a beast, that dies and is ended?"

Commoro: "Certainly; an ox is stronger than a man; but he dies and his bones last longer; they

are bigger. A man's bone breaks quickly - he is weak."

Baker: "Is not a man superior in sense to an ox? Has he not a mind to direct his actions?"

Commoro: "Some men are not so clever as an ox. Men must sow corn to obtain food, but the ox

and wild animals can procure it without sowing."

Baker: "Do you know that there is a spirit within you more than the flesh? Do you not dream and

wander in thought to distant places in your sleep? Nevertheless, your body rests in one spot. How

do you account for this?"

Commoro (laughing): "Well, how do you account for it? It is a thing I cannot understand; it

occurs to me every night."

Baker: "The mind is independent of the body; the actual body can be fettered, but the mind is

uncontrollable; the body will die and will become dust, or be eaten by vultures

but the spirit will exist forever."

Commoro: "Where will the spirit live?"

20 | P a g e

Baker: "Where does fire live? Cannot you produce a fire by rubbing two sticks together, yet you

see not the fire in the wood. Has not that fire that lies harmless and unseen

in the sticks, the power to consume the whole country? Which is the stronger,

the small stick that first produces the fire, or the fire itself? So is the

spirit the element within the body, as the element of fire exists in the stick,

the element being superior to the substance."

"The white traveler unwittingly showed contemporary

readers how his host was much more intelligent than Baker himself."

Commoro: "Ha! Can you explain what we frequently see at night when lost in the wilderness? I

have myself been lost, and wandering in the dark I have seen a distant fire; upon

approaching, the fire has vanished, and I have been unable to trace the cause - nor could I find

the spot."

Baker: "Have you no idea of the existence of spirits superior to either man or beast? Have you no

fear of evil except from bodily causes?"

Commoro: "I am afraid of elephants and other animals when in the jungle at night but of

nothing else."

Baker: "Then you believe in nothing; neither in a good nor evil spirit! And you believe that

when you die it will be the end of body and spirit; that you are like other

animals; and that there is no distinction between men and beast; both disappear, and end at

death?"

Commoro: "Of course they do."

Baker: "Do you see no difference in good and bad actions?"

Commoro: "Yes, there are good and bad in men and beasts."

Baker: "Do you think that a good man and a bad man must share the same fate, and alike die,

and end?"

Commoro: "Yes; what else can they do? How can they help dying? Good and bad all die."

Baker: "Their bodies perish, but their spirits remain; the good in happiness, the bad in

misery. If you have no belief in a future state, why should a man be good? Why

should he not be bad, if he can prosper by wickedness?"

Commoro: "Most people are bad; if they are strong, they take from the weak. The good people

are all weak; they are good because they are not strong enough to be bad."

Baker began to get annoyed by Commoro's resistance; he was

oblivious to the clear fact that the "savage" was getting the better of him in

21 | P a g e

the dialogue. He made one final attempt, which he referred to as "the beautiful

metaphor of St. Paul as an example of a future state," to lure the chief closer

towards Christianity. Baker dug a small hole in the ground and buried a grain of corn before

continuing the conversation.

Baker: "That represents you when you die. That grain will decay, but from it will rise the

plant that will produce a reappearance of the original form."

Commoro: "Exactly so; that I understand. But the original grain does not rise again; it rots like

the dead man, and is ended; the fruit produced is not the same grain that we

buried, but the production of that grain: so it is with man - I die, and decay,

and am ended; but my children grow up like the fruit of the grain. Some men

have no children, and some grains perish without fruit; then all are ended."

One can almost imagine Baker leaping to his feet in

exasperation. Was Commoro implying that Baker himself, a European, was a

heathen who would rot after his death? "I was obliged to change the subject of

conversation," he wrote, in Albert N'Yanza, "In this wild naked savage there was not even a

superstition upon which to found a religious feeling; there was a belief in matter; and to his

understanding everything was material." At the same time, Baker was

forced to concede that Comorro was no ordinary savage: "It was extraordinary to find such

clearness of perception combined with such obtuseness to anything ideal."

"Baker asked the

chief to show him how to get to Luta N'zige, the great lake through which the

river Nile flowed, so he could ‘discover' it."

One feels terribly cheated that Baker did not record any

more of this insightful dialogue and instead chose to abruptly end the

conversation with Commoro. Baker should have asked the chief about his attitude

toward Europeans such as himself - it's clear from the preceding dialogue that

Commoro would have offered some interesting perspectives. "Giving up the religious argument

as a failure, I resolved upon more practical inquiries," Baker wrote, and

described how he asked the chief to show him how to get to Luta N'zige, the great lake through

which the river Nile flowed, so he could "discover" it.

"Suppose you reach the great lake, what will you do with it?" Commoro asked Baker, and we

can almost see the wise chief mischievously scratching his chin. "What will be the

good of it? If you find that the large river does flow from it, what then?"

Chief Commoro would have been puzzled and amused had someone

informed him that the strange white man eventually reached the lake and that

upon his return to England, renamed it Lake Albert in honor of Queen Victoria's

husband; and, for his "unique" discovery in Africa, Baker was knighted by the

Crown. Commoro would have been more shocked that, nearly a century later, long

22 | P a g e

after Uganda's formal independence in 1962 from Britain, there was a school

still named Sir Samuel Baker Secondary School in Uganda.

The Abyssinians Rout the Italian Empire

When Western writers were not preoccupied with analyzing the

Africans' intellectual and moral backwardness, they were reinforcing the myth

of Europeans' military genius relative to Africans.

Consider this assessment offered in an article published in The

New York Times on July 25th

1879, after the military

confrontation between a Zulu army and British forces.

"Whether or not providence is on the side of the heaviest

battalions there can be little doubt of the result of a contest

between a civilized nation, with great military and naval

power and inexhaustible resources," proclaimed

the Times, "and a primitive and barbarous tribe, however brave

and unyielding."

The Times' editors were angered and taken aback by the Zulus'

temerity, for daring to defend themselves against the British

forces intent on conquering them and occupying their land.

"Sooner or later, the powerful nation was destined to bring the

savage tribe into abject submission or demolish it utterly," the

Times article declared with finality. "The justice of the cause

had nothing to do with this foregone conclusion."

Eleven years later the Times

was glorifying and justifying Italy's brutal aggression against Ethiopia, which

was then referred to by its ancient name, Abyssinia. The Italian ruler

Francesco Crispi - a descendant of Machiavelli - had just defeated Menelik II,

the Abyssinian monarch, in a major battle. "THE ITALIANS IN AFRICA," exulted

the Times in thick bold headlines, in

an article dated February 2nd

1890.

"Results of Crispi's Brilliant Policy," proclaimed the sub-headline.

"'The powerful nation was destined to bring the savage

tribe into abject submission or demolish it utterly,' the Times article

declared with finality."

What led to the battle was Italian treachery. They had

concluded the Treaty of Uccialli with Menelik in 1889, giving the monarch the

"option" to use Italy as an intermediary in dealings with other European

powers. However, the Italian version of the treaty - unlike the Amharic version

that Menelik retained - actually made Ethiopia an Italian protectorate. The

23 | P a g e

emperor immediately rejected the agreement when he discovered the deceit,

leading to war.

The article was one of the most absurd melodramatic celebrations of European imperial assault

on Africa, declaring that Italy had "achieved triumph upon triumph in Africa," and that there was

a surrender by "all the tribes," and when the Italians occupied Adowa (or Adwa), the ancient

capital, they were welcomed "by the natives as liberators." Since not a single "native" was

quoted, we can easily dismiss this assertion as propaganda.

"Europe now marvels and perhaps scarcely credits its own eyes. Italy in Adowa!," the Times

article continued, in its hyper-melodramatic tone, "Is it true or is it a dream. Nothing in the

world has the power to drive the Italian troops from their central position."

Still, the editors must have realized that even at the

height of 19th

Century European conquest and colonization of Africa,

it was highly hypocritical of a leading newspaper in a "democratic" society to

blatantly celebrate such unprovoked aggression, even if the victims were

savages. So the Times article offered a rationale for the invasion. "We could not thus speak,

however if the programme of Italy in Africa was one of

pure conquest, because exploits exclusively military are in too great

opposition to the sentiments of progress, of peace, of work, of companionship,

that should form the pivot of modern life," the article stated. "But instead, we may rejoice in and

applaud this conquest of civilization and Christianity over barbarians and savages,

over unbelief, over habits of ferocity, over brutal ignorance of every human law, religious, social

and civil."

"We may rejoice in and applaud this conquest of

civilization and Christianity over barbarians and savages."

These assertions, invoking moralistic and divine

justification for European imperialism were so nonsensical that the Times editors' were

compelled to temper it. So, at the very end, the article finally offered the true motive behind

Italy's aggression: "The water roads of Africa and the large commercial arteries in the hands of

Italy signify that they are also in the hands of the civilized world, which can now introduce

without fear the benefits of commerce, of exchange, of relations of any and

every sort, and in short time produce the best profits from the immense natural

wealth existing there." This brief sentence easily summed up the essence of Europe's entire

interaction with Africa.

The Ethiopians continued their resistance and were never

fully subdued. They smarted under the humiliating yoke of Italian domination for six years.

Then, suddenly, the Ethiopians struck back with brutal efficiency. This time around, the good

newspaper was suddenly singing a mournful tune.

"ITALY'S TERRIBLE DEFEAT," the Times lamented, describing the great battle of Adowa, in

an article published on March 4th

1896.

24 | P a g e

The newspaper reported that 3,000 Italian soldiers were massacred by

Ethiopian troops in the battlefields of Adowa. Additionally, 60 heavy guns were

captured and all provisions for the Italian troops were completely destroyed.

Italian casualties included generals of the Army, the paper reported. Out of a

total original force of 10,596, those killed or missing numbered 4,133, while

2,000 were captured. In fact, Menelik called off his troops when the Italians

fled in panic; otherwise the entire army would have been annihilated.

This defeat was so thorough and embarrassing that the

Italian nation refused to accept it. Instead, the military commander, General

Oreste Baratieri, was blamed for poor military strategy by the Italian

government and newspapers. Every possible excuse was entertained; the Italians

could not credit the Ethiopians with military genius. The Ethiopians too

suffered heavy losses; but it was their country and they were willing to make

sacrifices to defend and liberate it.

Reinforcements from Italy were to be quickly rushed to

Africa, the Times reported, and political conditions were so grave that the Pope canceled a major

diplomatic banquet. The Italian government was completely destabilized by the defeat, the

paper reported, and its survival was in jeopardy. "The present campaign against the Abyssinians

threatens to become one of the most disastrous in which the Italian arms have ever taken part,"

the Times concluded, "and what the final outcome will be it would not be hard to predict."

"The defeat shook

the foundations of their moral convictions and their sense of racial

supremacy."

Italian citizens - indeed, all Europeans - were simply

incapable of conceptualizing what had occurred, deep in "darkest" Africa, and

they were traumatized. All the racist literature and myths they had been reared

on had never even hinted at the possibility of such a defeat in Africa. The

defeat shook the foundations of their moral convictions and their sense of

racial supremacy to the core.

What compounded the traumatic embarrassment was the fact

that during the early part of the invasion, Gen. Baratieri had scored several

victories against Menelik's army. Baratieri had become so emboldened that he

returned to Rome and asked Parliament for more funds so that he could

"annihilate" the Ethiopians. Italian journalists stoked national euphoria by

endorsing the campaign in newspaper articles and even hailed Baratieri as the

second coming of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification in 1861.

Gen. Baratieri, in turn, could not resist boasting that he would return with

Emperor Menelik in a cage.

Yet, when commander Baratieri returned to Africa to conclude

his victory, the savages refused to cooperate with his plans. They tamed the

25 | P a g e

general and cut down his troops, with Menelik, 52, riding on horseback from one

battle to the next, exhorting his troops and leading the rout. Later, in Italy,

Baratieri was charged and court-martialed for "cowardice." The Italians had

been defeated before in combat; but never before by Black "savages." The

national psyche was unprepared; riots broke out in the streets of Rome, perhaps

in fear that the savages would pursue the Italian troops all the way back to

Italy. Eventually, the Italian government collapsed. The Ethiopians forced

Italy to pay several million pounds as compensation before releasing the

captives. With a few more generals like Menelik II, the history of Africa could

have taken a dramatically different course.

© Milton G. Allimadi

Next week, Part Four: The New York Times as Apartheid's Apologists

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the

Racist image of Africa

Published by The Black Star Publishing Co.

P.O. Box 64, New York, N.Y., 10025

www.BlackStarnews.com [1]

26 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa

Part Four

By Milton Allimadi

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star News

[1], based in New York City. He has graciously given BAR

permission to serialize his work.

The New York Times as Apartheid's Apologists

In documenting the early history of apartheid, the system of

institutionalized racism in South Africa, Western media,

including The New York Times often acted as accomplices

and apologists.

In 1910, the Union of South Africa was formed, comprised

of the Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The past

rivalry and competition for mineral wealth between the competing European

nations - England and Holland - in South Africa was subsumed by their common

desire to subjugate the African majority in order to exploit the territory's

vast wealth.

Blacks were disenfranchised and by the end of the second

decade of the 20th

Century, South Africa was regarded by Europeans

as a "white" country even though whites comprised a minuscule minority. The

ruling class of transplanted Europeans treated Africans as sub-human beings, as

did the white writers who went there to chronicle events for their readers.

"The reporter wrote, 'modern European civilization is apt

to be to the semi-civilized native of much the same use as a razor in the hands

of a monkey.'"

An article in The New

York Times, on May 26th

1926, under the headline "Colors Clash

in South African Union," with the byline of Wyona Dashwood, reflected the

racist attitude toward Blacks that prevailed in the United States. Dashwood's article discussed a

proposal by James Barry Hertzog, leader of the National Party in South Africa, to segregate

and disenfranchise Blacks in the Cape Province as a way of dealing with the

"native factor" as the writer put it.

The writer's views were indistinguishable from those of

Hertzog's. "The idea behind it," Dashwood wrote, referring to Hertzog's

proposal, "is to give the native a chance to develop along his own lines and afford him the

opportunity to lay a sound national foundation on which to ground the more advanced economic,

27 | P a g e

social and political systems of the white man's civilization." There was not a single official or

document or any other source to which Dashwood attributed these views - not even the

ubiquitous "an official who declined to be identified," that many writers now

like to use. "Without this intermediate step," Dashwood continued, "it is held, modern European

civilization is apt to be to the semi-civilized native of much the same use as a razor in the hands

of a monkey."

The writer stated as a matter of fact that the so-called

"reservations," the barren lands where many Black families were forcefully removed

to and confined after their lands were stolen by the Europeans, was for their

own good. So reservations such as Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and Swaziland, were

formed to stop "tribal fighting"; while Transkei was formed to "clear other

land for mining and farming," according to Dashwood. The fact that Africans had

lived on the lands that the apartheid regime now had to "clear" did not weigh

heavy on this journalist's conscience.

Dashwood's article went on to enumerate some of the

"problems" presented by the "natives," using some of the well-established

racist views towards Blacks; she must have been aware that readers in the

United States would relate to them. To begin with, they had a problem of rapid

"multiplication" of their numbers and a tendency to work "reluctantly."

Nonetheless, Dashwood asserted, native labor had become a "necessity" in South

Africa, not just a "convenience." This was because, according to Hertzog's

preposterous philosophy, which Dashwood evidently believed, native laborers "undermine the

energy of the white youth" who saw no need to work in a land

blessed with abundant free "native" labor.

So, on the one hand, Africans were accused of being lazy, and, on the

other hand, they were accused of corrupting white youth by working too

efficiently, for free, and making whites dependent on Black labor. Heads they

lost; tails they lost.

"In Dashwood's eyes

the Africans were not trustworthy and could do nothing right without white

supervision."

Segregation of the native, Dashwood's article explained, was

therefore the solution for preventing them from "undermining" the vigor of

white laborers. Dashwood followed with a statement that literally advocated genocide: "So

South Africa begins to feel the menace of its indolent, ignorant,

five and a half million upon the wise disposal of whom depends the prosperity

of its future."

It was not in Dashwood's interest, or that of her editors,'

to explain to the Times' readers that

South Africa would never have developed its colossal wealth had it not been for

the backbreaking slave labor of the Black populace, as was the case with the

28 | P a g e

United States, the beneficiary of centuries of uncompensated labor. Dashwood

was not impressed by this reality. Instead, she preferred to document the clash

between alleged African "barbarity" and the civilizing mandate of the whites.

In her eyes the Africans were not trustworthy and could do nothing right

without white supervision. She informed her readers that when a Black worker's

contract at the mine expired, he was kept under watch and guard for five days "because of his

propensity for stealing, and is allowed to only take soft clothing away with him: even his

footwear must be left behind, for he is clever at secreting diamonds in his boot-heels."

Dashwood's article would not have been complete without

demonstrating how the Africans were ill suited for the trappings of white

civilization. After leaving the mines, according to Dashwood, the African has

"scarcely resumed his life in the shaggy huts before he strips off every stitch

of the white man's garb. Presently he shows no trace of even having tasted the

life of the town." In other words, the native could not wait to return to the savage life-style,

which he was accustomed to and yearned for. One can visualize the Times' readers howling in

derisive laughter.

"At Cape Town, the first landing you make, you look everywhere for the native," Dashwood

added, still elaborating on the natives' discomfort with the finer things in life, "You realize at last

that these fellows in wide trousers and straw hats are native grandees. You feel it is too bad to

see the clothes of Western civilization on them. They do not compare in interest

with the dashing young men who parade the streets of Johannesburg on Sundays in

red blankets, tinkling and jingling with metal and ivory ornaments."

So then, as of 1926, what did the future hold for this great

"white" country in Africa? Here's what Dashwood surmised: "Segregation is the first definite

policy advanced toward the solution of the South African dilemma." She added, "History keeps

ominous records of what has happened whenever the native and colonists have been brought

together - one or the other inevitably succumbing. In America it was the native, in ancient

Africa the colonist. In Asia, Europeans have never established themselves except as a small

ruling caste. In South Africa it remains to be seen."

Of course Dashwood could not have dreamed that there was a

young boy named Nelson Mandela, who was already alive and who would, very much

later, together with his compatriots have much to say about the course of this

history.

Finally, in 1948 South Africa's system of racial segregation

and inequity in all aspects of social, economic and political life became

official policy. During the 1950s the white minority regime began to codify the

laws and statutes that would buttress apartheid. The Population Register, which

was intended to classify every individual in the country into specific racial

groups in order to apportion the national pie (in favor of whites) and assign

one's lot in life, was introduced under prime minister Johannes G.

Strijdom. The Register was the cornerstone of apartheid and was intended to make it impossible

29 | P a g e

for "borderline" cases to escape into a higher racial classification and to enjoy

the benefits and privileges it entailed.

The officially designated races were: Blacks, who were

consigned to the lowest rung of the racial hierarchy; the so-called coloreds,

offspring of white and Black parentage, who were above Blacks; and, then the

whites, at the apex. Asians were considered by the white regime as "foreigners"

with no local roots and were not classified. The classification scheme drew its

lessons from Nazi Germany and sometimes the tragic repercussions even had comical

qualities. Consider this non-bylined article from The New York Times on August 21st, 1955,

which read in part like a government press release. "In one half hour yesterday six Kimberley

men, who regarded themselves as colored - mulatto - were reclassified as negroes, thrusting them

back to the bottom of the social ladder up which they had attempted to climb," the article

reported.

South Africa's director of the Census at the time, J.I. Raats, told the reporter that 7,000 people of

"doubtful racial origin" had been classified and 260 of them had said they would appeal. This

system of categorization engendered inferiority complexes since Blacks had to literally

renounce their race in order to improve their lot in life. The law placed a

premium on lightness of skin; the legacy of this policy has outlasted apartheid

and even today Black people in South Africa are the highest per capita

consumers of skin-bleaching creams.

Yet, according to the Times article, there was no need for people to worry about the racial

categorization. "The classification is being done by specially selected officials," the

article in the Times reported, in a

matter-of-fact manner, "picked for their impartiality, integrity and humanity." It's unclear

whether the writer relied on a government press release or words whispered into his ears by

census director Raats to arrive at this absurd conclusion.

"The reporters and the editors surmised that American

readers could relate to and identify with racial separation in apartheid South

Africa."

In May 1957 the South African Parliament approved a

"native law amendment bill," empowering the minister of

Native Affairs, Hendrik Verwoerd, to ban Blacks from

churches, clubs, hospitals, schools and other

places if he believed they would "cause a nuisance." This

is how the Times' Richard Hunt summed the law in

the paper's May 26th

, 1957 issue: "The sitting minister

holds that these powers are needed to insure that

the relations between black and white here be those of

guardian and ward, and consistent with the policy of rigid racial segregation."

30 | P a g e

The introduction of these racist laws were reported in a

detached and even sympathetic manner in the newspaper, which was not

surprising, considering how racial segregation and prejudice towards Blacks was

prevalent in the United States. The reporters and the editors surmised that

American readers could relate to and identify with racial separation in

apartheid South Africa; the racist policies mirrored the segregationism in the

United States. Moreover, the views or opinions of Africans were never

solicited, since Blacks merely formed the backdrop to social and political

events, as they often still do.

When Strijdom died, the extremist, Verwoerd became prime

minister on September 2nd

, 1958. This former professor of applied psychology at Stellenbosch

University, with a specialization in social services, could not wait to apply his theories

in South Africa. He was the chief architect of apartheid and was instrumental

in passing many of the racialist policies that institutionalized racial

segregation and preference through parliament. Under Verwoerd's regime, the

country's segregationist policies were vigorously enforced, as was made clear

in a New York Times article by Albert Hunt, published on April 1st 1959, under the headline

"Arrests Abound in South Africa."

More than 1.25 million Africans were arrested every year for

violations ranging from carrying the detested passes, the internal passports

issued to Blacks, to violations of labor regulations, curfew and residency

requirements. Practically every Black man in every major South African city was arrested on

average once a year, Hunt reported in his article. "The negro walks in constant danger of arrest

for some technical offense," the Times article explained. "Thousands who have never so much as

stolen a loaf of bread have records of ‘previous convictions' that would make a hardened

criminal in any other country shudder."

The arrests were absolutely arbitrary and dependent upon the

mood of the police officer enforcing the law. These men had life and death

powers over Blacks, as Hunt made clear in his article in the Times, dealing with the arrest of an

elderly man: "One warm summer evening, while cooking his supper on a kerosene stove, he

stepped outside in his shirtsleeves to knock out his pipe on a curb. A pick-up van stopped and a

young policeman demanded to see the old man's pass. The old man argued in vain that

the document was in his jacket, hanging inside the door. He was bundled into

the van and taken to the nearest police station. The policeman refused even to

allow him to enter his cottage to turn off the stove. Next day he was fined 1

pound for ‘being without a pass.' If he was a younger man and was not able to pay his fine, (in

fact, his employer paid for him), he would have been given the choice of serving ten days in jail

or two weeks in a potato farm and no one would have known what had happened to him."

By 1959, apartheid was so sufficiently entrenched that

foreign investors were confident enough to support the system in order to

exploit the country's riches. On February 11th

, 1959, a wire story

appeared in the Times under the headline "New Interest in Africa." The article discussed the

31 | P a g e

opening of the Chase Manhattan bank branch office in Johannesburg by its vice-chairman, David

Rockefeller. "Mr. Rockefeller said the opening of the branch here was an indication of the

‘confidence we feel in the economic potential of South Africa,'" the article reported.

One year later, the apartheid regime was still oblivious to

the wrathful rumblings of discontent stirring among the oppressed Black

majority; equally clueless were the American media stationed there. On January

7th

, 1960, a New York Times article by Leonard Ingalls

appeared under the headline "South Africa Business Men Plan to Win World's

Goodwill." According to the article 25 prominent businessmen and industrialists

had formed the South African Foundation to increase the "selling" of the

country's image in Europe and the United States. The businessmen included Harry

F. Oppenheimer, chairman of the Anglo American Corporation and Charles W.

Engelhard, who headed a Newark, New Jersey-based company that bore his name. "They are

concerned over foreign reactions to the Government's policies, particularly those dealing with

matters of race," was how Ingalls euphemistically described apartheid. "Boycotts of

South African goods have been threatened abroad and it has been difficult to

obtain investment capital from abroad," he explained, not once using the term apartheid.

"The headline was patently false, reflecting South

African propaganda."

However, the restless masses that nobody ever bothered to

consult did not cooperate with the grand plans by the Rockefellers and the

Oppenheimers to exploit the country's wealth. The eruption finally occurred on

March 21st, 1960 with the Sharpeville massacre. "50 Killed As Police

Fire on Rioters," declared the headline of a Times article published on March 22nd

, 1960. The

headline was patently false, reflecting South African propaganda. The

demonstration had in fact been peaceful until panicky policemen started firing

into the unarmed crowd. "The police opened fire today on thousands of Africans besieging a

police station in Sharpeville, thirty miles south of Johannesburg," the article stated, still blaming

the victims for their deaths. "The Africans were demonstrating against

South Africa's laws requiring Africans to carry passes at all times," it explained.

The crowd stoned the police and the armored cars around their

station, then the police, hiding behind a wire fence, opened fire into the

crowd, according to the article. Initial reports placed the dead at 25 and 50

wounded; the figure was later upgraded to 72 dead and 184 wounded. A senior

police official was quoted in the Times article stating, in a

matter-of-fact manner: "I don't know how many we've

shot. If they do these things they must learn the hard

way."

In the days following the uprising, foreign investors fled

and share values on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

plunged precipitously, with losses amounting to $300

32 | P a g e

million in only one week. For a short period, the

regime was staggered by the defiance of the Africans who had confronted the police, the

enforcers of apartheid. "The racial differences that have plagued South Africa throughout its

history,"

the Times article observed, with the euphemistic reference to apartheid, and again apportioning

the blame equally between victims and oppressors, "have finally plunged the nation into a

terrible convulsion." Still, apartheid endured for more than three decades after the Sharpeville

massacre; and more blood was yet to flow.

The Times' apologetic coverage of South Africa was duplicated in Mozambique, a Portuguese

colony in Southern Africa. Consider Times reporter Albion Ross's interview with Gabriel

Teixeira, the Governor General of Mozambique, published on April 22nd

, 1954, under the

headline "Portugal Accepts African Equality," with the even more promising sub-headline

"Mozambique Governor Sees no Reason to Bar Advance of Natives to Citizenship."

The headline alone betrayed the slant of the article. If the

Portuguese accepted "African Equality" why were the Europeans the ones who were

the rulers? If the "natives" were not considered good enough to be "citizens" how

could they be considered equal?

"Gabriel Teixeira, Governor General of Portuguese Mozambique, sees nothing wrong with a

future united Portugal in Europe and Africa in which negroes would be a majority," Albion

Ross wrote. "He does not believe there is any such thing as Negro nationalism."

Portugal's colonial philosophy rested on four major

foundations, the governor told Ross: Racial superiority was "nonsense" and did

not exist; however, rushing the development of "primitive men such as Africans

would destroy them," the governor said; Christianity offered salvation to

Africans; and, Africans would eventually become "full-fledged Portuguese."

"The Portuguese Governor's views were delivered to the

Times' readers as statements of fact."

What made Ross's article valuable is the honesty with which

he reveals his own bias, by his failure to challenge any of the good governor's

preposterous statements, or to offer any counter-balancing information or

opinion from any of the Africans whose fate was being discussed. Teixeira's

views were delivered to the Times' readers as statements of fact. "We

do not believe in superior and inferior races," the governor is quoted telling Ross. "The black

man in Africa is simply where the white man began thousands of years ago. You cannot rush

that sort of thing."

Governor Teixeira in a philosophical manner outlined to Ross

how the Portuguese were toiling to "civilize" the natives and turn them all

into full-fledged Europeans. "You must have a balance between a moral advance and a material

advance," the governor explained. "Too sudden contact of advanced material civilization with

33 | P a g e

primitive peoples destroys primitive people." The governor of course made no mention of the

massacres of the "natives" when the Portuguese were securing the territory before they started

their civilizing mission, and whenever there was an uprising.

"On the other hand, if the material advance falls behind the moral advance, you have hatred and

disorder," the governor is quoted as saying. "The problem is to keep a balance between the moral

advance and the material advance. The end result which we seek is Brazil," he added, without

noting that Blacks in Brazil were at the bottom of the racial hierarchy then,

as they are now. The governor also made it clear to Ross that the Africans in

Mozambique did not have any aspirations or plans that were at odds with any of

the designs prepared by the Portuguese on their behalf. "A native vote is absurd,"

he told Ross. "These people's grandfathers were sometimes

cannibals. How do they vote? What do they vote for?"

One can only imagine the governor's as well as the

reporter's demeanor during this interview. Are they occasionally smiling? Are they occasionally

nodding in agreement? Are they occasionally somber? Does the reporter pause while taking

notes to intellectually digest the Portuguese's profound philosophy?

Pro-Apartheid Press

In 1984 the intensified coordinated challenge to apartheid

led to the declaration of a state of emergency by the white regime in South

Africa the following year. In the absence of the banned African National

Congress (ANC) a multi-racial coalition developed comprising the United

Democratic Front and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). It

spearheaded the onslaught through strikes and demonstrations and calls for

international boycotts.

The white regime employed the time-tested strategy of

divide-and-rule. Members of the collaborationist Inkatha Freedom Party of Chief

Gatsha Mangosuthu Buthelezi were provided with weapons and paid to attack

supporters of the UDF and by extension the ANC.

"U.S. media representations endorsed the apartheid

regime's contention that South Africa would descend into total mayhem once the

ANC formed a predominantly Black government."

Nelson Mandela was released in February 1990. Soon

thereafter, violent confrontations between ANC supporters and Buthelezi's

intensified. During a nine-day period between August 17th

-26th

,

1990, 500 people were killed in Soweto alone. Mandela publicly insisted that

there was a "hidden hand" fueling the killings but major Western media

preferred to write about "factional fighting," "tribal battles," and

"black-on-black" violence. The killings were presented as pathological

behavior, with no context or underlying causes. These representations endorsed

34 | P a g e

the apartheid regime's contention that South Africa would descend into total

mayhem once the ANC formed a predominantly Black

government.

Ironically, Mandela was later exonerated when an

independent investigation he demanded confirmed that the

apartheid regime's secret police had financed and trained the

death squads.

By characterizing conflicts as "tribal," the implication is

that they are irrational and have no logical or legitimate

contributing factors. Western media have historically used

the word "tribal" disproportionately to characterize

confrontations involving Africans and other

non-Europeans, as Lisa Brook, professor of African history

demonstrated in

"Africa's Media Image" (1992). "I found the words tribe or tribal employed to

describe native Americans, Africans, Asians and other peoples of non-European

descent in 235 out of a total of 250 times that it was used between January

1989 and April 1990," she wrote. "Thirteen of the other fifteen

times it was used to describe the British rock band ‘The Tribes.'" Brock had

surveyed articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlanta Constitution

Journal, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor and The Los Angeles Times.

In neighboring Zimbabwe, only three years after its own

liberation from an apartheid regime, Western media eagerly chronicled the

anticipated mismanagement of the country by its new African rulers. An article

appeared under the headline "The Plague of Tribal Enmity," in Time magazine on January 17th

,

1983. After describing a "spree of violence" near Bulawayo, the

country's second largest city, the writer observed: "The latest streak of

violence is a disquieting sign that the fragile tribal coalition that turned

white-ruled Rhodesia into black-governed Zimbabwe in 1980 is crumbling."

A casual reader in the West - as most are especially when it

comes to matters related to Africa - could be forgiven for believing that the

country's woes began once the Africans were in control of government. Time

magazine disingenuously equates majority rule with apartheid by contrasting

"white-ruled" Rhodesia and "black-governed" Zimbabwe. As if whites had also had

their lands brutally seized; as if whites also had been massacred during the

conquest of the territory; as if whites too had been confined to concentration

camps called "protected villages"; as if whites too had been subjected to media

propaganda extolling their alleged inherent intellectual inferiority; and, as

if whites too had been statutorily excluded from participating in the economic,

political and social fabric of the country in nearly 100 years of colonial and

white settler rule.

35 | P a g e

"Nearly three years after taking office," the writer

continued, without even appreciating the irony, "Mugabe now faces his biggest

challenge yet, one that threatens to force more whites to flee the country

while shaking international confidence in Zimbabwe's future. Says a businessman

in the capital city of Harare ‘It's tough, tough, tough here.'"

So once again, as Time magazine had found in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising nearly 40

years earlier, the welfare and stability of an African country was to be measured by

the comfort level of the Europeans there. "The tribal rivalries stretch

back to the early 19th

century, when Ndebele warriors plundered the

camps of the Shonas," Time magazine explained, "British settlers combined the hostile tribes into

one nation in 1890, but the antipathy remained." Now again we encounter a clever way of

re-writing history to make it appear as if the benevolent British had traveled

to this part of Africa to suppress "tribal" warfare and rescue the "natives."

Suddenly the lynchings, massacres, land seizures and exploitation of minerals have vanished

from history.

"Caught in the web of the tribal conflict are the country's

170,000 whites, less than 3% of the 7.5 million," Time magazine's writer continued. "Zimbabwe

depends heavily on its skilled white workers, especially in farming and mining."

"Time

magazine assured readers that things had deteriorated when the 'natives' took

control."

The transformation was now complete: The colonists who had

stolen the entire country were suddenly the innocent blameless bystanders. In

fact, Time magazine assured readers that things had deteriorated when

the "natives" took control. "The situation is much more worrisome than it was

during the war," the magazine declared.

Mugabe, a Shona who had commanded the Zimbabwe African

National Liberation Army (ZANLA) had teamed up with veteran nationalist Joshua

Nkomo's ZIPRA to form the Patriotic Front. After the defeat of Ian Smith's

illegal British-supported regime in 1979 the parties contested separately for

the elections and Mugabe became prime minister after his party's victory.

Nkomo, who considered himself the senior nationalist by virtue of age, later

lost out on a power struggle with Mugabe after their armies fought a short but

ferocious war.

The type of coverage of Zimbabwe in Time magazine was typical of the major Western media

since most operate with a herd mentality. Zimbabwe officials became frustrated with the

coverage and eventually issued the Kadoma Declaration, barring visiting Western

reporters from covering Zimbabwe unless the correspondent was based there. The New York

Times protested against the Kadoma restrictions in a June 11th

, 1985 letter from the newspaper's

36 | P a g e

foreign editor Warren Hoge to Nathan Shamuyarira, Zimbabwe's information

minister.

Hoge argued that even though the Times' correspondent Alan Cowell was based in South Africa,

his coverage would not be distorted in any way. "The premise itself, I feel, is

tantamount to a slur on his objectivity," Hoge protested. Moreover, a

better way to combat or eliminate any distortion or perceived bias was "by

opening, not closing, the doors of Southern Africa nations to correspondents,"

he wrote. The New York Times based its correspondents in South Africa - as did other major

Western media – because of the volume of news from that country, Hoge insisted.

Shamuyayira would not budge. "My personal conclusion, and

that of equally experienced staff with journalistic training in my Ministry,

was that there was an undeniable bias against us in the reports emanating from

South Africa-based correspondents," he wrote in a letter dated August 13, 1985

to Hoge. "This may not apply to your man, Mr. Alan Cowell, but it certainly

applied to the others." Shamuyayira also added: "I agree that the bulk

of the news stories emanating from this region originate from the Republic of

South Africa. The position is likely to remain like that until the attainment

of majority rule and true independence there. In the circumstances, we would

prefer not to be reported upon at all than to be reported badly from South

Africa."

It is obvious that some of the subsequent hostility towards

Mugabe's government in the Western media originated from the Kadoma

Declaration. Mugabe is also not given credit for the conciliatory policy his

government pursued after the end of apartheid in Rhodesia. Ian Smith, the

racist prime minister still lives, unmolested, in Zimbabwe and even owns a huge

estate.

Next week,

Part Five: The Mahdi Defeats Gen.

Charles Gordon

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the

Racist image of Africa

Published by The Black Star Publishing Co.

P.O. Box 64, New York, N.Y., 10025

www.BlackStarnews.com [1]

37 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How

European Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa

Part Five

By Milton Allimadi

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star News [1], based in New York City. He has

graciously given BAR permission to serialize his

work.

The Mahdi Defeats Gen. Charles Gordon

The death of the Victorian hero, General Charles Gordon at the hands of the Mahdists in the

Sudan was one of the most traumatic defeats for the British in Africa, or anywhere else in the

world. It has haunted the Western psyche for generations, and accounts for much of the negative

and biased coverage of Islam in Western media.

This was because in addition to being an African "savage" the Mahdi embodied the "Islamic

peril" to the West; he represented the antithesis of Christian civilization.

38 | P a g e

For centuries the West had a real and abiding fear of Islam, as Edward Said showed in his book

Orientalism [2] (1978). Islam, according to the West, was a "false religion" and many of the

writers referred to the faithful derogatively as "Mohammedans;" in other words, they were

followers of Mohammed, a mere mortal, and since Mohammed was regarded as a disseminator

of a false revelation, Said wrote, he became "the epitome of lechery, debauchery, sodomy, and a

whole battery of asserted treacheries, all of which derived ‘logically' from his

doctrinal impostures."

"For Europe, Islam was a lasting

trauma."

The Europeans had good reason to fear Islam, having been

conquered by Muslims at an earlier period. "Not for nothing did Islam come to symbolize terror,

devastation, the demonic hordes of hated barbarians," Said wrote. "For Europe, Islam was a

lasting trauma. Until the end of the 17th

Century the ‘Ottoman Peril' lurked alongside Europe to

represent for the whole of the Christian civilization a constant danger, and in time European

civilization incorporated that peril and its lore, its great events, figures,

virtues, and vices, as something woven into the fabric of life."

So one can imagine the national trauma that gripped England

when Gordon was cut down by the Mahdi after his army was overrun in the great

battle of Khartoum. One of the better and more realistic accounts of the

episode is found in Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians [3] (1918). Strachey was a freethinking

Britisher who did not echo the national adulation for Gordon. He wrote in a sober manner and his

accounts are more credible compared to most of the contemporaneous as well as

subsequent accounts of the battle.

Gordon had gained wide fame for exploits in China, where he

reputedly trained and commanded a force of British and Chinese soldiers who

crushed a rebellion led by a charismatic visionary. In return, he gained the

nickname "Chinese" Gordon.

He was first invited to Africa in 1874 by Egypt's Khedive

Ismail to replace Samuel Baker - the same "Baker of the Nile" who was outwitted

by chief Commoro (see Part Three [4], Feb. 7) - as governor of Equatoria province in what is

now modern Sudan [5]. After two mediocre stints in the region Gordon was sent for a third tour

by the British government to help rescue trapped garrisons of Egyptian troops and English

commanders in the Sudan.

In the early 1880s, a Sudanese preacher, Muhammad Ahmed ibn

Abdallah, had emerged as a powerful leader and built a vast following

throughout Sudan. When the Egyptian governor-general in Khartoum sent an army

of 200 to arrest him, they were quickly annihilated. After that victory, Ahmed

ibn Abdallah marched to El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, where he defeated an

Egyptian garrison in January 1883.

39 | P a g e

After a string of victories Ahmed was declared the Mahdi -

the last prophet in a succession of 12 holy Imams beginning with the prophet

Muhammad. "The tall, broad-shouldered, majestic man with the dark face and black

beard and great eyes," Strachey wrote, "who could doubt that he was the embodiment of a

superhuman power?" In contrast with Strachey's sober evaluation, Alan Moorehead, the famous

apologist for colonialism and racism, in the White Nile (1960) claimed the Mahdi was a "mad

man."

The British were wary about developments in the Sudan

because of events in Egypt. In 1881 under the leadership of a nationalist, Col.

Ahmed Arabi, Egyptian nationalists who hated the British and French control of

the country's finances and the fact that the army was commanded by Turkish

officers staged a successful uprising. The British army intervened brutally and defeated Arabi's

followers at the battle of Tel el-kebir.

In the Sudan, the British were stunned when the Mahdists

ambushed a 10,000-strong expeditionary force led by a retired English officer,

Col. William Hicks. The expeditionary army was no match for the Mahdists and

nearly all of them were wiped out, except 300 survivors who managed to escape.

"Gordon

began his regime by proclaiming the resumption of the Slave Trade."

There was no question after the destruction of Hicks' army

that the British would go after the Mahdi's head. So England's most celebrated

general was selected for the mission after weeks of campaigning by British

newspapers, including The Pall Mall Gazette. Upon landing in Cairo, on his way to the

assignment, Gordon was declared governor-general of the Sudan. He began his regime by

proclaiming the resumption of the Slave Trade, hoping that this maneuver would win him the

support of wealthy slave dealers and build opposition against the Mahdi. He was

denounced by the Anti-Slavery Society.

But instead of defeating the rebels, Gordon and his military

secretary colonel Stewart soon found themselves surrounded by the Mahdists

forces in Khartoum. The nature of the mission changed very quickly. "The question now,"

Evelyn Baring,

the British Consul General in Cairo, wrote to Lord Granville, the foreign

minister, "is how to get General Gordon and Colonel Stewart away from Khartoum."

The Mahdi was content with maintaining a siege of Khartoum,

and he confidently urged Gordon to surrender. "For after the beginning of the battle were you to

surrender," he warned in a letter to the British general, "it would be from fear, and

not willingly, and that will not be accepted." Gordon responded defiantly, firing off

numerous telegraph messages to Baring demanding more British and Indian troops

so that he could "smash up the Mahdi."

40 | P a g e

Trapped in Khartoum with Gordon were also Colonel William

Hicks and Frank Power, who became a correspondent for the English newspaper, The Times.

Power made surprisingly frank - one could even say "seditious" by the standards of those days –

observations in his journals, which were in total contrast to the adulation of British

imperialism prevalent in most of the accounts of the era. "I am not ashamed to say I feel the

greatest sympathy for the rebels," Power declared, as quoted in We

Thundered Out: 200 Years of The Times, 1785-1985 (1985), "and every race that fights against

the rule of the Pashas, backsheesm, bribery, robbery, and corruption. It is the system,

and not the Mahdi, that has brought about the rebellion. The rebels are in the

right, and God and chance seem to be fighting for them. I hope they will hunt

down every Egyptian neck and crop out of the Sudan."

On September 10th

1884 Power and Colonel Hicks

left Khartoum aboard a steamer in a bid to escape. When the steamer grounded, the two men

were killed. Some steamers did make it through the

Mahdists' tight gantlet along the Nile, surviving the rifle shots from the

banks of the river and succeeding in smuggling the trapped general's volumes of

notes, later published as the Khartoum Journals. This is Lytton

Strachey's evaluation of the book: "Anmore singular set of state papers was never compiled.

Sitting there, in the solitude of his palace, with ruin closing around him, with anxieties in every

hand, with doom hanging above his head, he let rush, for hour after hour in an

ecstasy of communication, a tireless unburdening of the spirit, where the most

trivial incidents of the passing day were mingled pell-mell with philosophical

disquisitions, where jests with anger, hopes and terrors, elaborate

justifications and cynical confessions, jostled one another in reckless

confusion."

The Mahdists finally broke through the British defenses and

overran the garrison, killing General Gordon on January 26th

1885.

By the time a rescue expedition led by Charles Stewart arrived on January 28th

,

Khartoum had been razed. So powerful was Gordon's hold on the Victorian

imagination that even his death was romanticized. There is the famous

painting by G.W. Joy, which shows Gordon standing defiantly on top of a flight

of steps, with his left arm crossed at an angle as if he were checking a

wristwatch, with a pistol pointing toward the ground in his right hand. The

long-robed Mahdists, one holding a spear, are shown creeping toward him,

hesitantly, as if awed by the prospect of their prize, this great white

general.

This imagery is so illogical that it cannot bear

resemblance to reality - it's more convincing to imagine that Gordon either

charged into combat and was killed, or that he unsuccessfully pleaded for his

life before he was stabbed multiple times. What has never been disputed is the

fact that Gordon's head was lobbed off and taken to the Mahdi in Omdurman.

41 | P a g e

"The queen was in a terrible state about the fall of Khartoum," her private secretary, Sir Henry

Ponsonby wrote in his memoirs (as quoted in Lytton Strachey's Eminent

Victorians), "and indeed it had a great deal to do with making her ill." The newspapers

throughout Europe and the United States went wild. There was real fear that an Islamic uprising

would sweep to Egypt, throughout north

Africa and into Europe.

"El Mahdi Triumphant," The New York Times announced in a three-lined heading on February

8th

1885; the second sub-headline read, "The Peril of the British Forces on the

Nile," and a final sub-headline declared, "Gen Gordon Believed to Be Dead."

London was reported to be in a panic, with officers

volunteering for service in Africa. In Paris, although the French must have

privately chortled at the defeat of the British, their colonial rival, they

secretly worried that the French colonies of Algeria and Tunisia could be swept

by an Islamic tide. The Italian prime minister and the war minister "fully

resolved" that their country was ready to join England in concerted action

against the Mahdi, according to the article.

"Chinese Gordon Killed," mourned The Times of London on February 11th

when the general's

death was confirmed; a sub-headline read, "Hero of Khartoum Treacherously

Stabbed," (even though he had been killed in warfare), and another sub-headline

42 | P a g e

declared: "His Fate No Longer in Doubt - The Egyptian Soldiers Massacred in the

Streets by The Mahdi's Followers."

"There was real fear that an Islamic uprising would sweep

to Egypt, throughout north Africa and into Europe."

"The scenes of slaughter are

described as surpassing the Bulgarian atrocities and rivaling the worst horrors

of the Sepoy mutiny," the Times of

London reported, "The panic-stricken

Egyptians were captured in their flight and put to death in the most fiendish

tortures."

Several decades later, Alan Moorehead, the famous apologist

for European colonialism, was still trying to malign the Mahdi in the White Nile, claiming that

once he retired to Omdurman to enjoy his victory, "there was an extreme love of sensual pleasure

in the Mahdi's character, and once the siege was over he seems to have abandoned to it

altogether." The Mahdi, Moorhead claimed, grew "enormously fat," and in the privacy

of his harem, "his concubines attended him as though he were some great, sleek queen-bee in the

pulsating center of a hive."

The Mahdists' victory contributed to the fall of Gladstone's

government in England. The Mahdi himself died within months of Gordon's defeat.

Yet, in September 1898, more than 14 years later, the British remained so

bitter about the defeat that when Colonel Herbert Kitchener defeated the

Khalifa Abdullah in the Sudan, he desecrated the Mahdi's tomb. His remains were

exhumed and tossed into the Nile. Evelyn Baring declined to accept the Mahdi's

skull when Kitchener sent it to him as a trophy.

National Geographic Magazine & Africa's Savagery

One of the most preposterous articles published about Africa

appeared in the October 1922 issue of The

National Geographic magazine, a publication that was very influential in

shaping the perception of Africa to Americans.

Founded in 1888 as the publication of The National

Geographic Society by a group of investors, geographers, lawyers, bankers and

biologists, the magazine's objective was to "further the prosecution of

geographic research," and to "diffuse the knowledge so gained, among men, so

that we may all know more of the world upon which we live." By the 1950s, the

magazine had a subscription base of five million.

43 | P a g e

The October 1922 article was entitled "Transporting a Navy

Through the Jungles of Africa," and was written by a Briton, Frank J. Magee. It

was Magee's account of how he and 27 English naval volunteers journeyed from

the West Coast of the continent, with African porters, into the interior, to

assist Belgians in Belgian Congo who were then fighting German soldiers on Lake

Tanganyika in 1915 - Germany then controlled Tanganyika.

Their objective was to reach the river Lualaba with their

disassembled boats. From there, the boats would be re-assembled, and the crew

would sail to Lake Tanganyika. The concocted article is worth reviewing in some

detail because it offers insight into the psyches of the writer, the editors

who commissioned the article, and the readers it was intended for.

"And so early in the coolness of an African morning," Magee wrote, recalling the beginning of

the journey, "we turned our backs on civilization and all that it meant, to fade away, but for a

short time, we hoped, into the heart of the African bush."

The writer portrayed the traditional rulers encountered

along the way with the same type of contempt displayed by the authors of the 19th

Century explorers' journals - not surprising since he was trying to emulate them.

"One old chief, I remember, was attired in an old British militia tunic and a pair of spats, his

crowning glory being an opera hat and a pink sunshade," Magee wrote. "I was aware that a big

business in out-of-date uniforms is carried on between traders and these tribes, but the

origin of the spats and the sunshade puzzled me somewhat until I remembered we

were in the land of reputed cannibals."

According to Magee, when he and his colleagues ignited the

engine to start up the bulldozers for clearing a path, all the "natives" fled

into the bush, thinking it was some kind of monster that had come to devour

them. Along the way, the "natives" happily sang Christian hymns while carrying

loads that weighed more than 50 pounds. "They had memorized the tune and words, but they had

no actual comprehension of the meaning," Magee explained. "Imagine therefore, a crowd of

natives on the march, each carrying a load of some 60 pounds on his head, with a prospect

of a 30-mile trek under a blazing sun, singing such a hymn as ‘Now the

Laborer's Task Is O'er.'"

"They came

bounding down from the trees and the hill-tops, falling over each other in

their hurry to pay homage to the new Great White Chief."

On September 28th

, 1915, the expedition reached

the Lualaba river and after transporting their vessels "The Mimi" and "The

Tou-Tou" by railhead, it sailed the rest of the 350-mile distance along the

river, shooting crocodile and hippos along the way, as all brave adventurers

can be expected to do. When they reached their destination, they were welcomed

44 | P a g e

by Belgian troops and they all started constructing a harbor using blasted

stones. By the time Christmas arrived, all their vessels were afloat - so the

team waited patiently for the German enemy.

Suddenly one day, according to Magee's account, a German

vessel appeared with guns ablaze and the battle commenced. By the time the smoke cleared, the

German vessel, the Kingani, was immobilized and three German marines killed. Three

Africans were missing, while the British suffered no losses, Magee reported.

When the German vessel was escorted to the shore, flying the

white flag of surrender, the "natives" erupted in wild celebration of the

British victory, Magee claimed. "They came bounding down from the trees and the hill-tops,

giving vent to loud whoops of delight and gesticulating wildly, simply falling over each other in

their hurry to reach the beach in order to pay their homage to the new Great White

Chief, our commander," he wrote. Magee then followed up with a scene that he plagiarized from

Joseph Conrad's Hearts of Darkness: "There they assembled in thousands, arrayed in their

brightest pigments and grandiest loin-clothes, a jigging, jogging, frenzied mass of black

humanity - a sight not to be forgotten."

Once the British commander landed ashore, Magee claimed, "The natives, with grunts of

satisfaction and approval, threw themselves flat on the ground and trickled sand on their

hair - a sign of respectful homage - as the commander passed among them. The

native women flocked around in an effort to be seen by him, regarding this as a

fetish which would protect them from evil spirits." In contrast to the

"natives" barbaric form of celebration, the Europeans, Magee wrote, "expressed their joy in the

usual demonstrative Continental fashion of embracing and kissing each other and by

singing of their national anthem."

The dead Germans were then buried with "full military

honors" after which, according to Magee, "specially chosen native troops were

put on guard over the graves" around-the-clock. "The significance of this," he explained,

"lies in the fact that a large majority of the Belgian native troops were

recruited from tribes addicted to cannibalism and some of them might have felt

tempted to take the opportunity of indulging in their horrible custom if

precautions had not been taken to prevent it."

The natives, Magee claimed, were so impressed by the victory

over the Germans that they molded the likeness of the British commander, Spicer

Simson, in clay and started worshipping him as their new "ju ju." Magee

explained: "This was very well for Commander Spicer Simson, but it must have proved rather

disconcerting to the Belgian White Fathers of the native mission - who had spent years and years

in an effort to open the native mind to Christian teachings to find their black

folk suddenly turning to a new ju ju in the form of a British naval commander in clay."

This psychotic writer saved his best concoction for the last

part of his fairy tale. The Belgians had decided to test a Marconi wireless

45 | P a g e

equipment at the precise moment that they were also test-flying a newly

assembled plane. "Picture, therefore, the amazement of the superstitious negroes," Magee wrote,

"when, shortly after the wireless had begun sending testing messages, with the rasping, crackling

of electrical sparks, lo and behold came the answer to their prayer to Heaven, as the natives

thought, in the form of a low droning, gradually getting louder."

He continued, "Suddenly, the seaplane shot into view out of the sky, describing circles and going

through sundry evolutions over the camp. The natives stood spellbound, gaping

upward with arms extended, eyes bulging, and mouths agape. The airmen then made

a sudden dive downward and that broke the spell. The savages bounded off into

the bush, terror lending wings to their progress. Mothers snatched up

pickaninies and dived for the shelter of their kraals, shrieking at the top of

their voices, it was real pandemonium."

The National Geographic even published an obviously staged photograph of the

terrified "natives," showing seven Africans kneeling on the ground, gazing up

at the sky with arms upraised, and with the following caption: "Spell-bound, gazing upward with

their arms extended, eyes bulging, and mouth agape, the awe-stricken natives first

believed the aero plane a new kind of monster swooping down from the sky to

destroy them." Who can blame any African, reading these lines today, for

wishing that many Europeans like Magee had been consumed by the alleged

cannibals they encountered?

Mussolini's ‘Civilizing' Mission in Ethiopia

Europeans did not mind killing millions of Africans,

or fellow whites for that matter. However, in order to

maintain the worldwide myth of white superiority -

which was essential to enable them to dominate the

non-white races - it was paramount that Africans not

see them fighting amongst themselves.

46 | P a g e

After British and French colonial armies clashed with

Germans in Africa, a New York Times

article published on March 20th

, 1915 under the headline "African War A Blot," reported that the

Duke of Mecklenburg, who was the president of

the German Colonial Society, had complained bitterly in a letter. According to the good Duke,

"The actions of the British and French are destroying the civilizing work of Europeans in Africa

and that this procedure constitutes a ‘mockery of the law of nations and

definite international agreements.'"

"Before the eyes of natives, white men, with the aid of blacks, now

engage in the slaughter of white men," the Duke protested, in his letter, "The

effect of that unhappy racial encounter can be only fatal to the future

colonizing work of every European nation in Africa."

The Duke also complained in his letter that the French had

transported German captives from Togo and Cameroon to French Dahomey, making

them walk 300 miles in the process. The Germans were forced to suffer further

indignity during the journey. According to the Duke, the white captives were "compelled to do

manual work under the supervision of black men."

After Germany's defeat in the War there was a scramble to

divide up her colonial possessions in Africa, and as always the Europeans knew

what was in the best interest of the Africans. A New York Times article published on December

7th

, 1918 under the headline, "Says Colonies Favor Britain," revealed that Walter Hume

Long, the British Secretary of State for Colonies had told Parliament that the "Natives of

Germany's colonies want to come under British rule." The honorable Secretary never explained

how he arrived at this conclusion without the benefit of a survey or referendum that might have

solicited the opinion of those natives.

"It will be a great injustice to our great dominions," Hume is quoted as telling Parliament, "to tell

them that the colonies, which, in a large measure, they conquered by their blood and valor, are to

pass under the control of anybody but the empire to which they belong." Perhaps it had

never occurred to Hume; was it not plausible that the "natives" might have preferred to govern

themselves?

During the 1930s, Italy was once again contemplating the conquest of Ethiopia. An article

published in The New York Times on December 23rd

, 1934, under the

headline "Abyssinia Encircled by Covetous Powers," reported that Italy wanted

to control Ethiopia before Germany and Japan. All these countries, the Times explained, coveted

the "vast potential sales to Abyssinia's millions" the "quantities of the cheap gimcracks which so

fascinate semi-civilized

populations."

"The Times attempted to re-write history, to make it

appear as if the Italians had not been fairly defeated."

47 | P a g e

The Italians remembered their annihilation at the

hands of Menelik's army in 1896, as the Times

article recalled. Here's how the newspaper

characterized that Italian defeat: "There was a fast

and fierce clash, the battle of Adowa, in which a

quarter of a million savage black warriors,

equipped mainly with spear and shield, slaughtered

nearly 40,000 Italians

practically in their tracks and in spite of the Italian

rifles and artillery." Here,

almost 40 years later, there is an attempt to re-write

history, to make it

appear as if the Italians had not been fairly

defeated, and had been merely

overwhelmed by superior numbers. The writer never bothered to consult the Times' own archives

to learn how his predecessors had documented Ethiopia's great victory. In fact, Menelik's army

had numbered about 70,000, not the 250,000 the Times now claimed.

"The insult of defeat has rankled in the breasts of Italian militarists these many decades," the

Times article explained, "Fully as strongly as burned the Ethiopian

conviction that, having once beaten Europe at her game of war, Abyssinia could

do so again." The article cautioned Europeans and Americans not to underestimate the

psychology of the Ethiopian, particularly the "true Abyssinian" who was Amharic and "considers

himself vastly superior to a white man."

But Il Duce wanted to avenge Italy's humiliating loss and

nothing would stop him from invading Ethiopia, not even a desperate appeal to the League

of Nations [6] by Emperor Haile Selassie, and an Op-Ed article he published in The New York

Times on July 14th

, 1935 to rally international diplomatic support. The emperor vowed that he

would resist any Italian aggression and criticized Mussolini for not submitting the

disputes between the two countries to a neutral arbiter. Selassie was to discover, bitterly, that the

"collective world security" espoused by the League of Nations did not apply to natives.

On May 5th

, 1936, Selassie was forced to flee as

30,000 Italian troops, backed by 1,000 trucks, abundant supplies of mustard

gas, which the Italians used liberally, and with 50 planes flying overhead,

swept into Addis Ababa. The emperor set up a government in exile in London

while Ethiopians continued guerrilla warfare against the Italians.

48 | P a g e

The NewYork Times account of the conquest was written by Herbert L. Matthews,

who had traveled with the Italian convoys. The headline of a May 6th

,

1936 Times article read like a press release from the Italian military: "Ethiopia is Italian, Says

Mussolini as His Troops Occupy Addis Ababa." A second sub-heading read, "Raises Italian

Tricolor," and a third stated, "Finds Miserable Scene."

"Ethiopia's era of independence, which had lasted since

biblical times, ended at 4 o'clock this afternoon when

the Italians occupied Addis Ababa," Matthews wrote.

"This account is being written in the automobile in

which this correspondent came to Addis Ababa from

Dessye with Marshall Pietro Badoglio."

Marshall Badoglio, the Italian commander, fired barbs

at the departing emperor, and Matthews was evidently

happy to take dictation for him. "The Negus, following

his great victories,

has been obliged to flee from his capital," Badoglio told

Matthews,

sarcastically referring to Selassie by his title, which

meant "king of kings"

in Amharic, "We, following the defeats

we received, have arrived here.

"You have seen the welcome the

populations have given us along the road," Marshall Badoglio continued, and

the obliging Matthews wrote, without bothering to get a quote from a single

native, "They feel themselves freed of

the heaviest yoke. Now begins the labor for us, as arduous as that of

the war we won, to give civilization and progress through peace and tranquility

to these people for all."

The brutal occupation was punctuated by a New York Times article published on May

10th

, 1936 under the headline "Conquest of Africa Completed" and

under the byline of P.W. Wilson. The Italian victory, the article reported,

completed "four centuries of a territorial transition that now embraces the

whole of the once-Dark continent of Africa with its 12,000,000 square miles and

about 150,000,000 inhabitants." With the "comparatively unimportant exception

of Liberia, a Negro republic on the Atlantic seaboard," the article added. "The

evaluation of Africa as a white man's empire is subject to emotional factors

and especially pride of possession..."

Next week, Part Six: Viewing Africa Through Western Writings

49 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the

Racist image of Africa

Published by The Black Star Publishing Co.

P.O. Box 64, New York, N.Y., 10025

www.BlackStarnews.com [1]

50 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European

Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa

Part Six

By Milton Allimadi

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star News [1], based in

New York City. He has graciously

given BAR permission to serialize

his work.

Viewing Africa Through Western

Writings

Frederick D. Lugard, an English

colonist, informed his

contemporaries about the African's

susceptibility to domination in Rise

of our East African Empire (1897).

According to Lugard, who had been

a fireman in England before

winning fame in Africa, "In Africa,

there is among the people a natural

inclination to submit to higher authority. That intense detestation of control

which animates our Teutonic races does not exist among the tribes of Africa."

Lugard's contemporary, James Bryce, concurred with this

assessment, in Impressions of South Africa (1897), claiming, the "black

man accepts the superiority of the white as part of the order of nature." This was because the

Black man was "too low down, too completely severed from the white, to feel indignant,"

according to Bryce.

The continent itself was portrayed by white writers as

physically inhospitable - a forbidden planet, as Joseph Thomson claimed, in Through

Masailand, (1885): "We might imagine that some all-powerful genie held sway

over the land and kept some lovely damsel or great treasure deep hidden in the

interior, surrounded by a land teeming with horrors and guided by the foul

monster of disease, of darkness and savagery."

"James Bryce claimed, in Impressions of South Africa

(1897), the ‘black man accepts the superiority of the white as part of the

order of nature.'"

51 | P a g e

Thomson also shared his contemporaries' preference for

Africans with so-called European features, as he revealed, in the same book

after he encountered the Masai. "These pure-blooded Masai have the finest

physical development," he wrote, "are undoubtedly superior to the others in

shape of the head, the less depressed nose, and thinner lips."

His description of the ideal African was very similar to

Aphra Behn's 200 years earlier, in Oroonoko, The Royal Slave. "Indeed,"

Thomson wrote, "but for a prominence of the cheekbones, a tendency to a

Mongolian shape and upward slant of the eyes, the chocolate-coloured skin, and

the hair with a tendency to become frizzy, they might pass muster as very

respectable Europeans."

In contrast to the Masai, Thomson was disappointed and even

angered when he came upon the Wa-Kavirondo. They were "by no means attractive

in their appearance, and contrasts unfavorably with the Masai." One gets the

impression that Thomson wished the Wa-Kavirondo didn't exist at all, when he

added, "Their heads are of a distinctly lower type, eyes dull and muddy, jaws

somewhat prognathous, mouth unpleasantly large, and lips thick, projecting and

everted - they are in fact true negroes."

Sometimes the writer's fantasy was too fantastic, as when

Arthur H. Sharp and Ewart S. Grogan, in From Cape to Cairo (1900), were

able to observe "ape-like creatures" whose faces, bodies and limbs were covered

with wiry hair. According to these authors, "the hang of the long powerful

arms, the slight stoop of the trunk, and the hunted vacant expression of the

face made up a tout ensemble that was terrible pictorial proof of Darwinism."

Perhaps John Ames, a fictional character created by Sir

Bertram Mitford in John Ames, Native Commisioner (1900) summed it aptly

for contemporary Europeans, when he declared, "A nigger's a nigger, even if he

is high class; all of them should show proper respect to a white man."

"Africans did not exist as human beings with independent

thought and aspirations."

Even Europeans who professed love for Africa were

paternalistic. Africans were never full-grown men and women,

but always remained child-like, in need of European

paternalism. They did not exist as human beings with

independent thought and aspirations.

Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa (1938), wrote

that she had "a great affection for the natives" the minute she

reached the continent. "The discovery of the dark races was to

me a significant enlargement

52 | P a g e

of all my world," she continued. "If a person with an inborn sympathy for

animals had come into contact with animals late in life: or if a person with an

instinctive taste for woods and forest had entered a forest for the first time

at the age of twenty; or if someone with an ear for music had happened to hear

music for the first time when he was already grown up; their cases might have

been similar to mine."

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, renowned for having abandoned Western

civilization and comfort to establish his famous clinic in Lambarene, Gabon,

also professed his adoration for the "natives" in his book African Notebook

(1939). "I do not deny that they are undisciplined and in many ways

unreliable," Schweitzer wrote, "and that many of them give way to the

temptation to appropriate other people's property and that all too often they

are untruthful; nevertheless what a number of really faithful servants I have

discovered in these years, not only among my own men but among the employees of

other Europeans!"

Schweitzer urged other whites to be patient when dealing

with these natives. "Really to understand the African one must get to know him as a man," he

explained. "In greater or less degree he will seem to us strange and unattractive, but one

must overlook all that and understand his essential nature. Whoever succeeds in

this knows how much there is in him that is good and valuable. What repeatedly

impresses me in our natives is their kind-heartedness."

After World War II Africans living in urban areas became

more politicized. African veterans had already fought in two of Europe's World

Wars in the colonial armies; now they were demanding for the same freedom and

liberty that they had shed blood for on behalf of the Empire, as their Black

cousins overseas had also done for the United States. European colonists

noticed the winds of change in Africa. "Today the word empire is taboo,"

Charles Dundas, a former British governor of Uganda lamented in African

Crossroads (1954). "We may not speak of subject races, they have become

backward peoples; colonial rule has become ‘trusteeship.'" (One wonders how he

reacted, during the 1960s, when some of these "backward peoples" became

presidents of independent states).

"A chapter of world history has herewith been closed,"

Dundas continued, "Whether another chapter of comparable benefits to the human

race will be written may be questioned. Certainly more was done for backward

mankind in the era of British colonial rule than in any previous age, and if

colonialism is now discredited I believe that its passing will nevertheless be

mourned by the simple people of one-time British colonies as the end of a

Golden age."

With the imminent demise of this "Golden age" of

colonialism, would the "native" writers now be allowed to tell their own

53 | P a g e

stories and write their own histories? How would the Europeans, who had

concluded that these "natives" were bereft of vision, history, and artistic capability,

react? After reading Amos Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard, the European

settler, Elspeth Huxley, offered her opinion. "The Palm Wine Drinkard is

a folk tale, full of queer, distorted poetry, the deep and dreadful fears, the

cruelty, the obsession with death and spirits, the macabre humor, the grotesque

imagery of the African mind," she wrote, contemptuously, in her own book Four

Guineas (1954). "African art, if it is genuine, is never comfortable,

noble, or serene. It is possessed by spirits and the spirits are malign."

Huxley's views towards Africans were important because other

Western writers respected her and consulted her writings; she was also a

contributor to major Western publications, including The New York Times.

"'African

art, if it is genuine,' wrote Huxley, ‘is never comfortable, noble, or serene.

It is possessed by spirits and the spirits are malign.'"

In Red Rock Wilderness (1957), Huxley elaborated on

her disapproval of the changing political climate in Africa. What was occurring

in the continent was a "battle for the continent, and perhaps even more than

that, for the survival of the West." She added, gravely, "It is a battle

between the forces of reason, progress and civilization and

the forces of fear, hatred and tyranny - the forces of

darkness."

This was a period of political repression by the colonial

authorities in Africa as they resorted to tyranny: the

detention of rising African political leaders; exiling of

leaders; and, repressive measures such as

muzzling of any critical media. On July 1st, 1956, an article

by Leonard Ingalls, discussing some of the repression,

appeared in The New York Times under the headline "Press

in Uganda Court Trouble," laying the blame on the victims.

The article dealt with the prosecution of editors and

publishers of Luganda language newspapers opposed to the

colonial government. The editor of Gambuze had been fined $140 for allowing the following

direct quote to appear in the newspaper: "All of us should strike for self-government.

Foreigners pack up and go home. The people of Uganda should unite to clamour

for self government and if we are to die then we shall die until we are exterminated."

Ingalls' article noted, "The superintendent of the Criminal

Investigation Department of British Colonial Police testified in the case that

the quotation amounted to an exhortation to fight to the death." Ingalls

reported that two publishers and two editors of another Luganda language paper Emambya-

54 | P a g e

Esage

(The Dawn) were awaiting trial on sedition charges for having printed an

article under the headline, "How Can Peace Come to the Country While Britain

Uses Robbery!"

"The government charged that this incited dissatisfaction

and discontent among Africans and promoted feelings of ill-well and hostility

among them," Ingall's article added, without discussing how draconian and

tyrannical the colonial government's laws were. Ironically, many

post-independence African governments later used these very laws to lock up

their political opponents. These repressive colonial-era laws, including

detentions without trial, remain on the books in many African countries.

Ingalls also reported that owners of The Uganda Post

had been fined $280 for printing a letter that contained the following passage,

"There are many reasons why the people of this country wish to govern

themselves. Racial discrimination, being made to work like slaves and being

cheated in a cunning manner, failure to realize the African was created in the

same way as the Europeans are some of the many reasons, so when we hear that

other countries are fighting for self-government we should not sit back and

watch."

The British were terrified - the reference to "other

countries" fighting for independence most certainly referred to Kenya, where

the Mau Mau guerrillas were waging war to oust the white settlers who had

robbed their farmlands.

By 1952 it was clear that European colonial rule in Africa

was doomed: Emmanuel Freedman, The New York Times' foreign news editor

instructed William S. White, one of his experienced reporters, to prepare a

memorandum outlining how to approach African news coverage. White had just

returned from West Africa from where he had filed several reports about the

independence movement.

"Should the Times have a staff man in Africa South of

the Sahara?" White asked rhetorically in his memo then answered affirmatively.

One major story in Africa was "Malanism" or apartheid: At that time, the

country's racist policies were synonymous with the name of one of its principle

architects, Dr. Francois Malan. A second major story was the British attempt to

federate Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), northern Rhodesia (Zambia), and

Nyasaland (Malawi).

The federation strategy was designed to create a buffer

between that area and apartheid South Africa, White explained. If the strategy succeeded, he

wrote in the

memo, it would "conceivably avert in Africa a racial explosion that might

55 | P a g e

result in denying to the West effective use of the indispensable minerals and

strategic position of an absolutely indispensable continent." A third story,

White observed, was the British "experiment in native self rule in the Gold

Coast," which, if successful, would move the 200 million Blacks a short step

"toward freedom."

The African continent offered a "great story in which no

one

else in the world is doing very much," and an opportunity

"for a journalism of

illumination - rather than of rushing off to the cable head

with items every 20

minutes - that could not possibly reflect other than great

credit on The

Times," White wrote. He added: "There is the opportunity

for the paper to

make a distinguished contribution in public service - and if this is not too

pretentious, possibly also a contribution to the security of the Western

World."

Who then was the ideal candidate for such a bold and

important mission? "I should say that

any staff man we would want to send to Africa would need to be mature and long

in experience, first in politics, second in military conceptions, third in social

and economic ideas - and such men usually have families," White wrote to his

editors. "To send a family man to Africa - much of which is pestilential and

nearly all of which is without medical facilities that Americans require for

their children - would be a hard and impracticable thing."

It was only fair to let the prospective Africa correspondent

know about "all the bad in advance" White advised, and "all the good of it

too." He warned that this correspondent would have to face "loneliness,

dysentery, the general melancholy of the aura of the continent."

"But it would be a

good life too," White continued, "and a good man would be welcomed in the

greatest of good comradeship by other good men who are sweating it out down

there: The man covering it would be doing not only a unique job but a job that

never could be called a boy's errand. Myself, I think he should have some

personal knowledge of the colored problem - and in that connection neither be a

Bilbo nor a reformer - and that he ought to be a tough, reasonably

hard-drinking bachelor." (White's reference to Bilbo was to Mississippi senator

Theodore Bilbo, who advocated returning all Blacks to Africa.)

56 | P a g e

"At all events," White continued, explaining that the

ideal Africa correspondent, "would not be covering luncheon clubs in Toledo. Maybe

it could be put to him as Patton put it to his pre-invasion troops in England:

‘Would you rather be in combat, or would you rather tell your children that you

spent the war shoveling shit in Louisiana?'"

"The essential picture is that self government is being

given to the Africans long before they are ready for it."

White's own article on the British experiment in "native

self rule" had been published on May 16th

, 1952 in The Times

under the headline, "New World of Africa's Gold Coast Arises From Ashes of

Colonialism." The sub-headline had

explained, "Although Land is Still British, Black Men Are Master in Their Own

House." According to White, after

"rioting in 1948 and again in 1950," the natives had been granted a measure of

self-government. "The black man's brave

new world is slowly rising here on the backs of those who once were his white

masters and now do his bidding - the British civil

service," White wrote.

"The whole experiment is a fantastic one," White's

article

concluded, "The essential picture is that self

government is being given to the

Africans long before they are ready for it and it is

being given to them simply

because the British decided that after the troubles

of 1950 that it is either a

white retreat or civil war."

When Ghana finally won its formal political

independence

from Britain, The New York Times announced it

under the banner headline

"Negro Nation of Ghana Is Born in Africa," on

March 6th

, 1957. "A new Negro nation was born at

midnight,"

the article reported. The main story was

accompanied by a shorter profile of

the new prime minister. "Kwame Nkrumah was the first Negro to become Prime

Minister of a British colony," the article said. "Mr. Nkrumah, a goldsmith's

son was born in primitive bush country forty-seven years ago. Now he heads the

first black dominion in the Commonwealth."

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Racism and Black Inferiority Complexes

Several centuries of racist representations of Africa have

created various types of inferiority complexes and self-hatred amongst Black

people all over the world. One remarkable demonstration of this malady was an

article, "A Black Man in Africa," by Keith Richburg, an African American

reporter for The Washington Post.

Richburg, who had been The Post's Nairobi-based

Africa correspondent, covered the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In "A Black Man in

Africa," he described his reaction when he watched "discolored, bloated bodies floating" down a

river towards

Tanzania. He recalled the "revulsion,"

"sorrow," and "pity," he felt for the victims of

the massacres. Most importantly, Richburg wrote, he realized how he was

extremely fortunate. Had his ancestors not been blessed by being captured and

shipped into slavery 400 years earlier,

"There but for the Grace of God go I." Had he not been rescued by

slavery, Richburg wrote that he "might have instead been one of them or have

met some similarly anonymous fate in any one of the countless ongoing civil

wars or tribal clashes on this brutal continent. And so I thank God my ancestor

made that voyage."

"A Black Man in Africa," was published in the April 10th

-16th

,

1995 issue of The Washington Post's National Weekly Edition. It never

would have been published had it been written by a white person. It was easier

for the newspaper's editors to print it, outrageous and uninformed as it was,

because it contained the views of a Black man and thereby insulated the

newspaper from accusations of racism. The article later formed the basis of Out

of America (1997), a book based on the same theme; the corrosiveness of

African barbarity on human beings.

But Richburg could not have been as ignorant regarding the

horrors of slavery, as his article indicated. One need only consult some of the

depictions in C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins, where he described how

French masters in Haiti used to pack dynamite into the anus of rebellious

slaves and then blow them up, to recall the horrors.

"The Antilles Black, Frantz Fanon explained, believed

himself to be ‘more "civilized" than the African, that is, he is closer to the

white man.'"

Black self-hatred and the desire to be affiliated with the

dominant race is a more credible explanation of Richburg's condition: Frantz

Fanon has analyzed and discussed the psychopathology of people such as Richburg

in a number of his books, including Black Skins, White Masks (1952).

58 | P a g e

Media stereotyping of Blacks over the centuries have conditioned many Black

people into developing inferiority complexes that often cause some to believe

the only way they can escape their affliction is by severing links with their

Blackness or any trace of their African heritage. Fanon discussed how he had

encountered Congolese who tried to pass off as if they were Antilles Blacks,

and Antilles Blacks who were enraged when they were mistaken for Senegalese.

The Antilles Black, Fanon explained, believed himself to be "more ‘civilized' than the African,

that is,

he is closer to the white man."

Remarkably, Richburg in his 1995 article, "A Black Man in

Africa," unwittingly revealed the roots of his pathology - it was passed on

directly from his family who had migrated to Detroit first from the Caribbean,

and then from the South. "It was drummed into me that South Carolina Blacks,

like my family, owned their homes and rarely rented," Richburg boasted in the

article. "They had small patches of yard in the front and kept their fences

mended. They came from Charleston, Anderson, Greenville, sometimes Columbia.

They saved their money, went to church on Sunday, bought their kids new clothes

at Easter and for the start of the school year. They kept their hair cut close,

to avoid the nappy look." In other words, Richburg, like the Antilles Blacks

Fanon described, was trying to explain that his family, and his upbringing, had

been practically white.

But let Richburg describe the "other" Blacks he was warned

to avoid, in his own words. ‘"Don't cross Woodward Avenue,' we were told,

because those Blacks over there came from Alabama," he recalled in his essay.

"They talked loudly, they drank heavily, and they cursed in public. They had

darker skin and nappier hair. They did not own homes, they rented, and they let

the grass in the front run down to dirt, and their fences are all falling

apart." Richburg added, "They were, as

my father would have called them back then ‘niggers' - South Carolina Blacks

being good colored people."

So who were Richburg's heroes then when he was a young man

growing up in Detroit? He wrote about going with his brother to watch movies

where he would see "a group of British soldiers against attacking Zulu

tribesmen." That sentence alone

revealed his warped and distorted state of mind. The Zulus, who were simply

defending themselves are referred to by Richburg as "attacking Zulu tribesmen,"

as if they were the aggressors.

Richburg finally conceded, not surprisingly: "We took turns

cheering for the British side and the Zulus. Neither of us really wanted to

cheer for the losers. Whoever was

rooting for the Africans usually sat sullenly, knowing what fate held in store

for him or her. Then came the credits and the heady knowledge that when the

59 | P a g e

movie played again, after a cartoon break, you would be able to cheer for the

British once more." Richburg's essay, and his subsequent book, could have been

summarized into the following sentence (which is mine): See, I, too, have refined

white sensibilities and upbringing and except for the misfortune of my Black

skin, I too might have been white.

"Exchanging one identity for another is as valid a ploy as

distancing oneself from failure, loyalty being the litmus test of one's

commitment to one's community," Nurrudin Farah,

the Somali author wrote, in a

review of Richburg's book, in Ishmael Reed's

KONCH magazine.

"These are treacherous times, when cowards take

pride in

declaring their cowardice, their subversive stance,

when traitors come out of

the woodworks, boastfully declaiming, ‘Thank

goodness for slavery!'" Farah

added: "He is a man without the makeup to take a

courageous stand. Richburg is

a slave singing the eulogies of his master."

"Blue eyes, the people say, frighten the negro."

Frantz Fanon recalled the pathetic and revealing case of a

Martinique writer named Mayotte Capecia, who discussed her frustration at

having not been born white, in her book Je Suis Martiniquaise (1948);

Capecia's experience, and agony, is similar to Richburg's. "I should have liked

to be married, but to a white man," the tormented Black woman wrote. "But a

woman of color is never altogether respectable in a white man's eyes. Even when

he loves her." Elsewhere, while explaining her love for a particular white man,

she wrote, "All I know is that he had blue eyes, blond hair, and a light skin,

and that I loved him." To which Fanon, in his always-effective style, simply

observed, "Blue eyes, the people say, frighten the negro."

Capecia recalled how "proud" she felt when she discovered

that her grandmother had been white. "So my mother, then, was a mixture? I

should have guessed it when I looked at her light color," she wrote,

triumphantly. "I found her prettier than ever, and cleverer, and more refined.

If she had married a white man, do you suppose I should have been completely

white?...And life might not have been too hard for me?" It's very easy to picture Capecia

sighing, and pressing a

photograph of her light-skinned mother against her bosom after she wrote those

words.

60 | P a g e

Capecia was bitterly disappointed when she saw "Green

Pastures," a movie based on a 1936 book by the same title, in which God and the

angels were portrayed as Black people. "How is it possible to imagine God with

negro characteristics?" she declared angrily. "This is not my vision of

Paradise. But, after all, it was just

an American film."

Fanon concluded that the following story best-suited people

such as Capecia:

"One day St. Peter saw three men arrive at the gate of

heaven: a white man, a mulatto, and a negro."

‘What do you want most?' he asked the white man.

‘Money.'

"And you?' he asked the mulatto.

‘Fame.'

"St. Peter turned then to the negro, who said, with a wide

smile: ‘I'm just carrying these gentlemen's bags.'"

Fanon's parting words to Capecia were, "Depart in peace,

mud-slinging storyteller." The same words apply to Richburg; he was The

Washington Posts' version of Homer Bigart who had been sent to Africa by

The New York Times three decades earlier. (See Part

One [2] of the series, January 24.)

Next week, Part Seven:

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the

Racist image of Africa

Published by The Black Star Publishing Co.

P.O. Box 64, New York, N.Y., 10025

www.BlackStarnews.com [1]

61 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers

Created the Racist Image of Africa

Part Seven

By Milton Allimadi

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star

News [1], based in New York City. He has graciously

given BAR permission to serialize his work.

Time Magazine Denigrates Congo Nationalism

Time magazine was once the mouth-piece for Western

domination of Africa, serving as apologist for the British

in Kenya during the Mau-Mau uprising, and later in the

Congo when Patrice Lumumba [2] was agitating for

independence, and later when he was fighting for his life.

One memorable Time magazine article was published on

December 4th

, 1964, when the Simba guerrillas were defeated by a

mercenary army backing the Belgian stooge, Moise Tshombe, who led the

secessionist Katanga province. Time magazine's cover carried the

photograph of Paul E. Carlson, a 36-year-old American doctor, who had volunteered

to work in the Congo and had reportedly been murdered by the Simba. He had been

killed along with 26 other whites in Stanleyville (now Kisangani), in the

north.

"Lumumba was demonized by Western media as a pro-Soviet

Communist leader."

The Congo at that time was torn by chaotic civil war

following Lumumba's murder, with at least four rival administrations in place.

Belgian mining and business interests, determined to continue their colonial

exploitation of the Congo's resources, had backed Tshombe and other

secessionists amenable to their business interests. Tshombe, in turn, had

declared himself prime minister of mineral-rich Katanga. He was favored by the

Belgian mining companies and backed Western occupation of the Congo, so he

became a darling of the Western media.

Lumumba, the elected leader of the central government and a

nationalist, was demonized by Western media as a pro-Soviet Communist leader.

This paved the way for the military intervention of Colonel Joseph Desire

Mobuttu (later Mobuttu Sese Seko) and Lumumba's eventual murder with backing

from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Belgian government.

62 | P a g e

The United States assisted Belgium when it mounted a

paratroop mission to "rescue" 1,300 Europeans reportedly trapped in

Stanleyville as a result of the fighting reported by Time magazine. After the paratroopers landed

on the outskirts of the city, the Simba rounded up 250 whites, Time

reported. Also foreshadowing the use of radio to incite violence, as occurred in Rwanda 30 years

later, Radio Stanleyville broadcast a simple message, "Ciyuga! Ciyuga! (Kill them all),"

according to Time, and the targets were presumably meant to be whites.

The message was from a "major Babu," described by Time

as a "deaf-mute ex-boxer addicted to hemp." The article added, "Babu's order

could not have been a scream, but in its strangled, inarticulate, ferocity must

have expressed the blood lust of the Simbas." According to the article, all but

60 of the whites were rescued by the paratroop operation. Twenty-five of the

dead were identified as Belgians, along with two Americans, including Dr.

Carlson - the others were not accounted for.

Perhaps recognizing that it needed to explain why one

American's death commanded so much attention in the publication, while an

entire country was aflame and disintegrating, Time magazine explained it

this way: "A single life, or even a hundred may not appear to mean much in the

grim reckoning of Africa. The tribes butchered each other for centuries before

the white man arrived and in colonial days when white soldiers killed

countless, nameless Africans. Dr. Carlson's murder, along with the massacre of

another hundred whites and thousands of Blacks, had a special tragic meaning."

"Time magazine: ‘The rebels were, after all, for the most

part, only a rabble of dazed, ignorant savages.'"

Why was this? "Carlson symbolized all the white men - and

there are many - who want nothing from Africa but a chance to help," the

article stated. "He was no saint and no deliberate martyr. He was a highly

skilled physician and who, out of a strong Christian faith and a sense of

common humanity, had gone to the Congo to treat the sick." Then came the punch

line that the magazine had wanted to deliver all along: "His death did more

than prove that Black African civilization - with its trappings of half a

hundred sovereignties, governments and U.N. delegations -- is largely a

pretense. The rebels were, after all, for the most part, only a rabble of

dazed, ignorant savages, used and abused by semi-sophisticated leaders."

When Tshombe's brutal mercenaries, led by major Mike Hoare,

described by Time as "a starchy South African," committed atrocities

when they retook Stanleyville, the magazine glossed over their violence. "They

were not above searching bodies for cash or blowing a few safes in the

Stanleyville banks," the article stated. "But a great many of them are fighting

for Tshombe's government out of conviction. Certainly, the ‘mercenaries' are no

63 | P a g e

more mercenary - and far less brutal - than the African soldiers on either side

of the Congolese civil war."

The article added, "Tshombe's tough Katangese gendarmes

hunted down Simbas. Black residents of Stanleyville took to wearing white

headbands to show their allegiance to the Leopoldville government, but that did

not always work, and many a headband was soon stained red."

The article also accused every African of "insanity" because

African presidents had backed the Simba "without even a hint of condemnation

for their bestialities." It continued, "Virtually all these nations echoed the

cynical Communist line in denouncing the parachute rescue as ‘imperialist

aggression.' When this happened, the sane part of the world could only wonder whether Black

Africa can be taken seriously at all, or whether, for the foreseeable future, it is beyond the

reach of reason."

Finally, anyone who knows anything about Africa will attest,

no Western writer ever departs from a visit to Congo without invoking that

racist novel, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. "Stanleyville, the

‘Inner Station' of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, stands at the very center

of the continent," the Time magazine article stated, obligingly. "As

Conrad wrote of the journey upriver to Stanleyville, ‘It was like traveling

back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rotted on earth

and the big trees were kings. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. You

thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known

once - somewhere - far away - in another existence perhaps.' So it must have

seemed to the soldiers who last week made the

voyage to the Inner Station." One

can almost envision the Time writer flipping

feverishly through Conrad's

novel to lift a suitable section for his article.

"Tshombe was praised effusively by the writer as

the

antithesis of the savage African."

Tshombe, on the other hand, was praised effusively

by the writer as the antithesis of the savage African

because he pursued a "patient

formula" and recognized that white men "will hold

as many positions as possible for as long as it takes

to mold an effective army and administration." For

that reason, Tshombe was "beyond the pale of his

peers in other African nations."

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Thankfully for the rest of the world, concluded the article,

"Africans respect a winner and so Tshombe banked on his firm stand against the

rebels in Stanleyville. If he succeeds, the Congo could become a watershed in

the history of emerging Africa. For five years, African politicians have

indiscriminately whip lashed the Western world with such airy phrases as

‘African personality' and ‘African socialism.' Tshombe - that rarest of

Africans who seems to have no complexes about being black - recognizes the

brutal side of the African personality, and the phony side of African socialism."

Africa's Coming Anarchy & Doom

Responding to the spread of civil conflict in Africa during

the 1980s and the early 1990s major Western publications including The New York Times

intensified their tribalization of Africa. Finally, the series of disastrous wars in Africa had

paved the way for frustrated racists to openly express themselves again.

An article by Alan Cowell - the same Cowell the Zimbabweans

had denied permission to cover their country while based in South Africa - was

published in The New York Times Magazine under the headline "Mobuttu's Zaire: Magic and

Decay," on April 5, 1992. The article began with the author informing readers about his

adventures with "new friends" through La Cite which he described as a "reptilian slum" in

Kinshasa where the "music throbbed with primal energy."

"All the worn truths about modern Africa," Cowell explained,

"it's myriad tribes and fake boundaries, its recourse to tyranny; the absence

of hope or accountability - seem to tumble together in the streets of Kinshasa,

the hot moist capital."

"The bush has grown over the Belgian-built roads so that no

one can even find them," he continued, without noting that Belgium was more

notorious for chopping off the hands of Congolese rather than building the

country. "There is no single highway or railroad connecting north and south.

The best route to the interior is by a river ferry laden with whores and

traders dabbling in parrots and monkeys and booze and dope. Somewhere out there

are Pygmies and rebels, diamond smugglers and jungle."

"There are many others like him," Cowell wrote, of Mobuttu,

without focusing on the fact that this kleptomaniac and

Patrice Lumumba's

assassin was created and sustained by the United States. "In

Zambia, before his

fall in 1991, President Kenneth Kaunda devised ‘one-party

participatory

democracy' and decreed that the country's currency bear his

portrait, as a

65 | P a g e

symbol of national unity. In Guinea, President Ahmed Sekou Toure's image

likewise adorned the national currency, which was called the Syli (pronounced

silly) - a frivolous sideshow to a bloody despotic rule."

Cowell's portrayal of Zaire was not any different from

Homer Bigart's contemptuous representation of the Congo and Nigeria more than

30 years earlier. "Julius K. Nyerere in Tanzania became the Teacher, although

the lessons were only in how to run an economy to the ground. Kamuzu Hastings

Banda in Malawi - the conqueror - waved a fly whisk. At festivals, he had

big-bottomed women dance around his diminutive figure so that all the spectators

could see was the fly-whisk - the wand of power - held magically, quiveringly,

irrepressibly aloft."

"The author lamented that British colonial rule in Africa

had ended prematurely."

Western writers cannot resist the temptation of dumping on

Pygmies whenever they write about the Congo. In his article, Cowell recalled

that many years earlier, in 1977, he had gone in search of Pygmies when he

learned that Mobuttu employed a crack military unit to help fight rebels. "When

later in the campaign, in the town of Kasaji, I found a man of no great stature

clad in government uniform, carrying a bow and poisoned arrow," Cowell wrote,

"I felt obliged to ask him: Are you a Pygmy? ‘No,' he replied, politely but

firmly and with wry dignity. ‘I am a small Zairian.'"

On April 18th

, 1993 The New York Times Magazine published an article under the

pernicious headline, "Colonialism's Back - And Not A Moment too Soon." The

article, by Paul Johnson, praised the intervention by the United States and the

United Nations to try and restore order in Somalia, a mission initially

supported by many Somalis and other Africans. Might not this intervention serve

as a model for other operations in African countries facing similar political

collapse, the writer wondered? The author lamented that British colonial rule

in Africa had ended prematurely.

It never occurred to Johnson to argue that preparation for

self-rule had never been part of the agenda in all the years of colonial

misrule. After dominating the Congo for more than a century, Belgium managed to

produce only a half-dozen college graduates to take over a country of millions

when they left the vast territory. In almost four centuries of contact with

Mozambique and Angola, the Portuguese were unable to produce educated Africans.

Now, suddenly, these countries were to be blamed for their political, economic

and social malaise after 30 years of self-rule, following more than a century

of ruin in some cases? "There is a moral issue here," Johnson insisted, in his article. "The

civilized world has a mission to go out to these desperate places and govern."

66 | P a g e

When editors believe there is a vigorous organized

constituency, they often solicit an opposing opinion when they publish

controversial, pernicious, or outright racist viewpoints. By 1993, with several

African countries engulfed in conflict, with images of starvation, death and

destruction flashed all over the world, editors felt no need to offer

counter-balancing arguments. After all, Africa was simply reverting to its natural state -

barbarism.

The Times' magazine article paved the way for the publication of similar articles. "The Coming

Anarchy," by Robert D. Kaplan, the most apocalyptic of them all, was published by The Atlantic

Monthly magazine in its March 1994 issue, and years later, it was published as a book.

"Kaplan wrote that people in West Africa no longer

resembled human beings."

Kaplan's gloomy Malthusian observations and doomsday

prognoses were similar to those found in Richard Burton's Wandering In West Africa

(1862), a book he happily consulted, and quoted from. "Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked

crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increased erosion of nation-states and

international borders," Kaplan warned, "are now most tellingly demonstrated through

a West African prism." Things became so bad that people in West Africa no longer resembled

human beings, he emphasized.

Wherever he traveled in a taxi, Kaplan wrote, young men,

with "restless scanning eyes" surrounded him. "They were like loose molecules in a very

unstable social fluid, a fluid that was clearly on the verge of igniting." In order to protect himself

against the diseases, the author complained that he had spent $500 in inoculations. Even

then, he was not sure whether this precaution was sufficient since mutation in

malaria and AIDS made Africa more dangerous today than in 1862 when Burton

traveled there before antibiotics were available. As Burton had observed in the 19th

Century, and

as Kaplan repeated in 1994, the health conditions in Africa were "deadly," "a golgotha," "a

jehanum."

The Rwanda war, beginning with the 1990 invasion by

Uganda-backed Tutsi insurgents, and the subsequent genocide four years later,

offered the best case study of stereotypical Western reporting on Africa. The

Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) insurgents, many of whom were soldiers in the

Ugandan national army, cultivated and exploited the sympathy of gullible, or

culpable, Western reporters, years before the 1994 genocide.

One of the earliest apologias that romanticized the RPF

insurgents, "Rwanda's Aristocratic Guerrillas," by Alex Shoumatoff, appeared in

The New York Times Magazine on Dec.

13th

, 1992. As already demonstrated in a previous essay,

historically, Western writers portrayed Africans with "European" features

relative to those with emphatic "negroid" features more sympathetically. In the

67 | P a g e

Rwanda conflict the Tutsis, with their leaner frames and narrower facial

features relative to the Hutus' became "honorary" whites.

Shoumatoff traveled to Uganda where the RPF had its

headquarters and had been met at Entebbe airport by RPF officials who led him

to areas inside Rwanda that they controlled. Shoumatoff comfortably resorted to

the 18th

Century travel writers' style, contrasting the "noble"

Africans (Tutsis in this case) with the "true negroes" (the Hutus). He wrote

that the Tutsis were "refined"

with "European" features, while

the Hutus were "stocky" and "broad nosed." Once the article was

placed in this context who do you imagine the majority of white readers all

over the world wanted to prevail in this conflict?

"In the late 19th

Century," Shoumatoff continued, describing the Tutsis, "early ethnologists were fascinated by

these ‘languidly haughty' pastoral aristocrats whose high foreheads, aquiline noses

and thin lips seemed more Caucasian than Negroid, and they classed them as

‘false negroes.' In a popular theory of the day, the Tutsis were thought to be

highly civilized people, the race of fallen Europeans, whose existence in

Central Africa had been rumored for centuries." He added: "They are not a race or a tribe, as

often described, but a population, a stratum, a mystical, warrior-priest elite, like

the Druids in Celtic society." As for the Hutus, they were far from resembling warrior priests;

they were the "short, stocky local Bantu agriculturalist."

The New York Times was irresponsible and had no justification for publishing

such racist nonsense, particularly when the editors knew that Shoumatoff was

married to a Tutsi woman who was a second cousin to an RPF spokesperson.

Shoumatoff may have as well been an RPF press agent posing as an independent

journalist; he employed all the ugly words that have historically been used to

denigrate and dehumanize Africans for centuries. Shamefully, he was aided and

abetted by one of the world's most influential and powerful media companies.

Shoumatoff published a second article in another major American magazine, The New Yorker, on

June 20th

, 1992. On that occasion, he wrote about how he reflected

upon the difference in physical features between Tutsis and Hutus while he was

in Burundi that year. While traveling in a taxi in Bujumbura, the capital, he

turned around and "checked out the ethnic mix" of the passengers,

he recalled. "There were three obvious Tutsis. Tall, slender, with high foreheads, prominent

cheekbones, and narrow features," Shoumatoff wrote. "They were a different physical type from

the five passengers who were short and stocky and had the flat noses and thick lips typical of

Hutus."

"Shoumatoff employed all the ugly words that have

historically been used to denigrate and dehumanize Africans for centuries."

68 | P a g e

The Hutus were thoroughly and effectively demonized by

Shoumatoff, and many subsequent writers covering the conflict followed this

racist theme. Suddenly there was no need for Shoumatoff to explain a critical

point to his readers: How would the RPF, essentially a Tutsi insurgency, govern

effectively, were they to seize power in Rwanda where Hutus made up 85 percent

of the population? Shoumatoff had reduced the conflict to simplistic terms that

uninformed readers in the West could relate to; a contest between the

"beautiful" versus the "ugly." So many Western writers, following a similar

simplistic theme, ignored the critical role that Ugandan president Yoweri

Museveni's militarism and expansionism played in the conflict, with his

training and arming of the RPF.

Shoumatoff had simply resurrected the Western writers'

tendency to venerate "European" looking Africans, which has been employed for

centuries, including in Aphra Behn's 17th

century novel, Oroonoko,

The Royal Slave. In the more recent era, three decades before

Shoumatoff's articles about the Tutsis, the notorious Elspeth Huxley used

similar linguistic skills while glorifying Tutsis in her reports from Africa. "Their small, narrow

heads perched on top of slim and spindly bodies," Huxley wrote, in a report in The New York

Times on February 23rd

, 1964, "remind one of some of Henry Moore's sculptures." She went on

to compare the original Tutsi conquest of Hutus in the 16th

Century to the Norman invasion of

Anglo-Saxon England.

Next week, Part Eight: Why Africans Are Not Tribesmen

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the

Racist image of Africa

Published by The Black Star Publishing Co.

P.O. Box 64, New York, N.Y., 10025

www.BlackStarnews.com [1]

69 | P a g e

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa

Part Eight, Conclusion

By Milton Allimadi

Mr. Allimadi is CEO and Publisher of The Black Star News [1], based in New York City. He has

graciously given BAR permission to serialize his

work.

Why Africans Are Not Tribesmen

Both Homer Bigart and Emanuel Freedman

[racist writers featured earlier in this series]

were dead, by the time the research for this

study was conducted; Freedman died in 1971

and Bigart, in 1991. However there

were other New York Times writers,

and former writers, who were able to share their

experience with me.

"There is no need for a conspiracy," Tom Johnson, who had

been the first Black reporter sent by the Times

to Africa, in the 1970s, told me over a lunch interview on January 9th

,

1992. "The people who make news decisions are middle aged white men who aren't

close to the continent."

By the time we spoke, Johnson was running his own public

relations company, Thomas A. Johnson Associates, near Madison Square Garden. He

had been the Times West Africa bureau chief from 1972 to 1976.

"By the time the people who make decisions in the newsroom

come out of school they know a great deal of European history and nothing about

Africa," he continued. "They couldn't care less for Africa. If I had done

nothing during my assignment, they wouldn't have cared. It's part of the

thinking. Blacks are considered inferior, here and wherever they are."

"Times reporters couldn't care less for Africa."

Africa was also neglected by The New York Times

because United States government officials did not treat it as an important

continent, Johnson told me. He recalled a conversation he once had with Shirley

Temple Black, whom he referred to as a "conservative white Republican who was a

real supporter of Africa." At the time, Black was the United States ambassador

to Ghana. "She told me how she once asked Henry Kissinger what he was going to

do about the Namibian problem," Johnson

70 | P a g e

told me, "and that he responded ‘What's a Namibian?'" At the time, Namibia was

then widely referred to by its South African occupiers and the outside world as

South West Africa.

"Journalism is a business," Johnson continued. "What pays

dividends is good. When The New York Times go from calling people

negroes to Blacks it's not out of concern. They don't care what you call

yourselves. They only care that you don't picket or march and draw public

notice to what your are doing."

But even if the media were to address the problem of

distorted and racist coverage of Africa, another critical issue Black people

had to tackle was their own perception of themselves. "We are products of

European ethnocentricity," he said. "We look at things the way Europeans do. One hundred years

ago, and today. Even beauty. Look at Black American magazines. The standard of beauty is

whitish-black."

Roger Wilkins, who is also Black, and was a professor at

George Mason University by the time we spoke, was once a member of the Times' editorial

board. "Is it racism?" he asked, rhetorically, referring to the Times'

coverage of Africa, when we spoke, on January 30th

, 1992. "Look,

there is a fundamental racism in this country. Many Americans are racist

without even knowing it. It's just the way they are brought up. That's the

culture, that's how America works. We are a culture that is interested in

Europe. Reporters are deployed all over Europe."

He conceded that African coverage had improved and that

the tone of the writing was "not as contemptuous as it used

to be," because younger reporters were now sent to the

continent. "But you still get this thing about

tribalism or black-on-black violence. That's not what you

hear about fighting in the Balkans or Yugoslavia. It's never

white-on-white violence." Wilkins was

optimistic about the future, predicting that the quality of

African coverage would continue to improve: "When

people say ‘tax and death are the only two

sure things, I disagree. I say add change to that. When I was

a child, colonialism looked like it would last forever. Well

colonialism is gone."

"Africa is relegated to the backwater."

Michael Kaufman, once a Times

correspondent based in East Africa, and who was deputy

foreign editor by the time we spoke on January 12th

, 1992, had dire observations.

"Africa will once again have to prove to the world that it deserves to be in

71 | P a g e

the news," he told me. "We're back where we started. Africa is relegated

to the backwater."

He said that Africa had to compete for news space with

Western Europe and the former Soviet Union. Moreover, readers had become

satiated by the images of famine from the continent and newspapers preferred to

cover pressing problems such as the Haitian refugee crisis, closer to the

United States. "It's fascinating to me that the era of Idi Amin and the obvious

dictators has ended in Africa. The story today in Africa is religious. The rise

of Islam. The story is ecology. It's a tough story because it involves a lot of

stories. We generally send younger people who don't know too much. After four

years we call them back. I defend this approach because we are not Africa

specialists. There are publications that specialize in Africa. We deal with a

general readership."

Kaufman recalled that while he was in Nairobi, Kenya, he

favored two approaches to African coverage: A thematic approach, with articles

that were relevant across national borders, and the "ooga-booga" approach.

"When I was growing up and Tarzan was about to attack Africans, they would make

him speak his fake African, ooga-booga, ooga-booga. That's what I call

ooga-booga reporting. It is the National Geographic approach. It captures the

thing that is unique to the place. Ooga-booga stories are titillating. I

enjoyed it and readers did," he said. Basically, there were two ways of

covering Africa, Kaufman insisted: ‘"Look they're just like us,' or ‘look

they're completely different.' So you waver between the two. When writing about

places like Nairobi with its tall modern buildings, you can't forget the Masai

walking in their robes."

Bill Kovach, a former editor with The New York Times' Washington bureau was the head of the

Niemann Foundation at Harvard when we spoke in 1992. "You have to start with the

understanding that when dealing with Africa or any other country outside the

United States, international coverage by a newspaper in the U.S. is strongly

reflective of government policy and interests," he said. "If a government is

interested in a region and American investment pours into the region, then the

United States is interested. If taxpayers' money is going into the region you'd

have to be foolish not to be interested. But this means the interest is

transitory and episodic. There is coverage when there is a problem in the

region."

On the other hand, South Africa was the only country on the

continent where the Times and other major Western news organizations had sustained interest,

Kovach said. "Joe Lelyveld the managing editor of the Times, who is probably going to be

the next executive editor, built his career in South Africa," he said.

"Elsewhere, coverage focuses on civil war. A battle here, a war there."

72 | P a g e

Kovach complained that major news organizations did not send

Black correspondents to Africa much earlier. "When the Baltimore Sun sent a

Black female reporter to South Africa, she rented a home in a predominantly

white neighborhood and wrote articles about how people

thought she was a maid.

These are the kind of stories we could have had 10 years

ago."

Ultimately the problem boiled down to a double standard

when dealing with African coverage relative to Europe

and other places, Kovach said. "There is a large

immigrant population from Europe in this country and

the presumption is that they are interested in news from

home. There is a failure to understand that there is a huge

forced or voluntary immigrant

population from Africa."

"Some reporters complained that they'd have to get new

wardrobes for Africa. Others feared they'd get shot."

Lloyd M. Garrison, a descendant of the great American

abolitionist was The New York Times'

first West African correspondent during the 1960s. He

covered the Nigerian

civil war and was expelled by the military government there for alleged bias in

favor of Emeka Ojwuku's Biafran secessionists.

Garrison was director of communications at The Ford Foundation when we

spoke on February 5th

, 1992 and agreed that, apart from South

Africa, coverage elsewhere focused on famine. He complained that there were

many good stories being ignored from Africa, including the rise of African

soccer and women's liberation. "The best thing the Times ever did in Africa was

to send two people from New York to go and cover AIDS in Africa two years ago,"

he said. "Correspondents can't afford to go and cover AIDS from the villagers'

perspective. They fear getting beat by the wire services."

Garrison said he made a proposal, after Abe Rosenthal became

the Times editor, that occasionally specialists in science, medicine, law and other fields be sent to

Africa on a regular basis to cover stories correspondents could not. Although Rosenthal

accepted the proposal in 1969, nothing ever became of it, Garrison recalled:

"The medical expert thought in his absence a new drug for heart disease could

be discovered. Some reporters complained that they'd have to get new wardrobes.

Others feared they'd get shot. They all tended to go to Europe instead of Africa."

In an enlightening essay entitled "What is a tribe?" in his

book African Religions in Western Scholarship (1970), the late

Ugandan scholar, Okot p'Bitek denounced Western media's use of the word "tribe"

73 | P a g e

exclusively to describe Africans and argued against its continued usage. "Western scholarship,"

p'Bitek wrote, "sees the world as divided into two types of human society: one, their

own, civilized, great, developed; the other the non-western peoples,

uncivilized, simple, undeveloped. One is modern, the other tribal."

The word "tribe" when used by Western media to describe

Africans always has a negative connotation, p'Bitek correctly insisted.

"Corrupt practices by government officials and others, such as giving

employment not through merit but by kinship relations, or by concentrating

public utilities such as hospitals, schools, etc., in one's own home area,

which have been known throughout history and in all corners of the world, are

described as ‘tribalism' in Africa," he wrote. "And, even normal demands for

equitable distribution of the national wealth, in terms of areas, have been called ‘tribalism.'"

It will not be easy to eliminate the use of the word "tribe"

in Africa, but it can be done, and must be done. Many Africans, whether they

are Acholis, Gikuyus, Zulus or Igbos, ignorantly refer to their "tribes." But

this doesn't mean that things can't change. After all, Africans once had been

conditioned to regard themselves as "savages," and "natives" just as in the

United States, Black people were conditioned to see themselves as "negroes," or

"colored." Yet, modern Africans and African Americans no longer tolerate these

pejorative terms.

Okot p'Bitek enumerated additional reasons why the use of

the word "tribe" was demeaning and intolerable. "It means people living in primitive or barbaric

conditions. And each time it is used, as it is in the sentence, ‘I am a Kikuyu by tribe,' the

implication is that the speaker is a Kikuyu who lives in a primitive or

barbaric condition. And when we read of ‘tribal law,' ‘tribal economics,' or

‘tribal religion,' Western scholars imply that the law, economy or religion

under review are those of primitive or barbaric peoples."

To be sure, historically, and in rare instances, some reporters did care enough to express concern

about how to characterize Africans in their reports. Milton Bracker, a reporter sent to Southern

Africa by The New York Times in 1959, wanted guidance from the foreign news desk. "If it has

not been determined already," he wrote to foreign editor, Emanuel Freedman, on April 8th

,

1959, "I think some style guidance should be furnished on the desired usage of a word to mean

African negro."

"When we read of ‘tribal law,' ‘tribal economics,' or ‘tribal religion,' Western scholars imply

that the law, economy or religion under review are those of primitive or barbaric peoples."

"In the Congo, such a man is a noir. In parts of French Africa, he is an indigene," Bracker's

letter continued. "In Kenya, Tanganyika and the Federation [Northern Rhodesia, Southern

Rhodesia and Nyasaland], he is an African. In the Union of South Africa, he is a Native. I

disregard the contemptuous Kaffir, or the racial collective Bantu."

74 | P a g e

"It is curiously difficult," Bracker concluded, "for a reporter to handle

this one consistently in a paper with none of the taboos that determine the

various usages listed above. I would appreciate guidance on this point; and if

it is not already a matter of fixed style, I suggest it ought to be." Bracker was asking for guidance

from the wrong person.

Knowledgeable African and American readers of The New York Times also protested

against what they believed was distorted or biased African news coverage

through letters to the newspaper's editors.

An article under the headline "Two Leaders in Kenya Boycott

Parley that Seeks Tribal Unity," was published on August 12th

, 1962

under the byline of Robert Conley. This was one year before Kenya's

independence from Britain and Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Kenya African

National Union (KANU) was jostling with Ronald Ngala, head of the Kenya African

Democratic Union (KADU) for the post of prime minister. Rather than explore

some of the factors that contributed to and fueled the rivalry, the conflict

was tribalized in the Times' article.

The leaders of the two parties had failed to show up for the

unity meeting because of "tribal bickering" the Times

reported. KADU wanted "regional governments to insure the

autonomy of the tribes and to protect them from domination

by the Kikuyu, from whom the Mau Mau terrorism emerged

in 1952," Conley wrote. The Kikuyus,

Kenya's largest ethnic group were once again maligned as

"terrorists" for having fought for their stolen lands.

A Kenyan living in the United States, Julius Waiguchu

protested in a letter to a Times editor dated August 15th

, 1962, accusing Conley of feeding

readers with "cheap propaganda that will do nobody any good." Waiguchu believed Western

leaders and publications favored Ngala because he was considered more accomodational to their

interests than Kenyatta was.

"He does not say that the discord that exists today in Kenya

is due to the fact that imperialist subversion has more to do with it than

tribal rivalries," Waiguchu wrote. "The imperialist-built and supported

elements with Tshombe-type mentalities is the cause of all that." His reference

to Tshombe was to the leader of the Belgian backed seccesionist in Katanga

province of what had been Belgian Congo. "I think he would do some good to his

people," Waiguchu continued, "to come back and then report to us the

rivalries of Jim Crow and K.K.K. in Georgia."

Emanuel Freedman, the infamous Times foreign editor, forwarded the letter to Conley, who then

wrote back to his editor in a letter dated October 3rd

, 1962: "If

75 | P a g e

Mr. Waiguchu thinks there are no tribal difficulties in Kenya, he is

misinformed. If he denies there are, he is deluded. We did not invent the

difficulties."

Moreover, the "abusive" tone of Waiguchu's letter proved

that he was a "crank" Conley concluded. "At least there is one solace," he

added. "The Africans call us ‘imperialist' and the white settlers say we libel

them, which shows that we are in league with neither."

"To call these people a ‘tribe' is

about as accurate as calling the Scots or the English a tribe."

On November 22nd

, 1966, Marvin Harris, a Syracuse

University professor wrote to a New York

Times editor, protesting the newspaper's reference to the Bakonde in

Mozambique as a "tribe," in an article about the guerrilla war. "Incidentally," Harris wrote, "to

call these people a ‘tribe' is about as

accurate as calling the Scots or the English a tribe."

The professor also complained that the Portuguese colonial

authorities in Mozambique had convinced the reporter that the freedom fighters

were mere "savages," who were resisting civilization. At one point, Harris

noted, the Times' reporter, Lawrence

Fellows, had also quoted "Portuguese officials and settlers on the fictitious

cannibal heritage of the guerrilla fighters."

Additionally, in his haste to convey the Portuguese' opinion

of the freedom fighters, Fellows in his article had characterized them as

"relatively primitive," "feared," and "detested." Fellows "neglects to state what

the guerrillas think of the Portuguese," Harris wrote.

The professor also wondered why the article had not

discussed the United States' role in supporting a discredited colonial system

and how the State Department had ignored appeals for help from the guerrilla

leader, Dr. Eduardo Mondlane. "We are driving him steadily toward the left," Harris wrote,

"against all his sentiments and learning, for we give him no other alternative." Moreover,

Fellows had not treated Mondlane respectfully in his article, Harris noted. "It is well known that

the Portuguese have done everything in their power to prevent the development of an African

elite. The odds against Dr. Mondlane obtaining a doctorate can be stated quite precisely: one in

six million. On behalf of his many friends and respectful colleagues in the United

States," he wrote, "I urge Mr. Fellows to take his words more seriously." Mondlane had a Ph.D

from Syracuse and the Portuguese apparently took his words more seriously than Fellows and the

State Department did - so much so that they assassinated him with a letter bomb in the 1970s

while he was living in Tanzania.

76 | P a g e

How did The New York Times respond to Prof. Harris' observations and counsel? In a letter dated

December 22nd

1966, George Palmer, an assistant to the managing

editor, wrote to Fellows asking whether he wanted to respond based on their

"guidance" or for the foreign desk to write on his behalf. "Professor Harris

touches so many bases after swinging his critical bat that I feel you should

see what he has to say," Palmer wrote. "There is no urgency but I think he

deserves more than my bare acknowledgment of his letter."

The most interesting documented complaint about the use of

the word "tribe" came from Garrison, while he was the West Africa

correspondent. In a letter dated June 5th

, 1967 from Nigeria,

Garrison complained about the edited version of his story published on May 31st, 1967.

The Times' editors, presumably with the approval of the notorious Freedman, had maliciously

fabricated some "tribesmen" and inserted them into Garrison's news article. "The reference to

‘small pagan tribes dressed in leaves' is slightly misleading and could, because of its startling

quality, give the reader the impression there are a lot of tribes running

around half naked," Garrison wrote, complaining about the concoction by

his editors. He protested to the numerous use of the derogative term in the

story, and added: "Tribesmen connote the grass leaves image. Plus tribes equals primitive, which

in a country like Nigeria just doesn't fit, and is

offensive to African readers who know damn

well what unwashed American and European readers

think when they stumble on the word."

Garrison knew he was fighting a difficult battle but he

was ready to fight. "If it is not enough to say Yorubas

or Ibos, as one would the Welch or the Walloons, then

use the word tribe," Garrison wrote. "But

not tribesmen, please. The first is less offensive, the

second invites the image of savages dancing around

the fire."

"Tribes equals primitive, which in a

country like Nigeria just doesn't fit."

Some of the writers who complained to the Times

editors were angered when their stories were tampered

with, distorted, or censored. Joseph Lelyveld was

based in South Africa twice. During the 1960s, his

tour was cut short when the apartheid

regime expelled him for suspected liberal leanings; he

returned as a correspondent during the 1980s.

Lelyveld wrote a series of articles about South Africa's

segregated education system and how it discriminated against Blacks by denying

77 | P a g e

adequate funding to their schools. When the articles were distorted, he fired

off angry letters to the foreign desk. In one letter, dated January 6th

, 1983, Lelyveld complained that "virtually all the original reporting"

conducted over a one month period had been omitted. In one story, the subject

of white control and racial hierarchy in the education system was deleted, he

complained. The printed version of the article was like "a salami sandwich

without the salami, just slabs of stale bread," Lelyveld wrote, or "if you

prefer a baseball image, the wind up without the pitch, in other words a balk."

When another article was censored, Lelyveld sent another

angry letter, dated April 18th

, 1983, to foreign editor Craig

Whitney. "I wrote the following sentence: ‘the idea of a referendum among

blacks was never considered for the obvious reason that it would be

overwhelmingly defeated.' That became: ‘officials made it clear that the idea

of a referendum among blacks... etc.' To what officials did the rewrite person

talk? How does he or she know they made it clear? This exact phrase has been

written in my copy before. Officials make damn little clear here."

After the end of his South African assignment, Lelyveld

wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book about the corrosiveness of apartheid. He

later became managing editor of the Times in the early 1990s, and then executive editor, as

Kovach had predicted, before retiring in 2001.

Conclusion

The foregoing material surely must convince every honest

reader that historically America's and Europe's major print media - newspapers,

magazines and books - have been guilty of racism toward Africa, Africans, and

Diaspora Blacks in their representations. Racism has been long evident to Black

people all over the world. However confronting it is always more effective when

one is armed with conclusive evidence such as the material assembled in The

Hearts of Darkness.

We were able to show how journalists and other writers

who many people assumed were truth-tellers and disseminators, were in fact not.

They were, and often still are, vehicles of racism and inequity. Maybe that

should not come as a surprise; why should one expect such people to be above

the pervasive racism in their societies?

"One is

left with a sense that the world has been governed - and is still governed - by

maniacal and clueless people."

Another impression emerges from this journey into the

history of Black representation in Western media. Generals, diplomats,

statesmen, "explorers," and journalists who shaped the perception of Africa in

78 | P a g e

the West were ignoramuses. One is left with a sense that the world has been

governed - and is still governed - by maniacal and clueless people, and those

who just plow ahead for profit, regardless of what they know. This is not a

happy thought - but the statement of it may do some good in chipping away at

the wall of bigotry.

The only way to effectively combat the

stereotypical and racist representations of

Africans and people of African descent that still

persists in some Western media is by exposing

how these representations evolved

and the various agenda behind them.

To be sure, there has been appreciable

improvement in the tone, substance and context

of African news coverage and representations of

Africans in most major Western media. After

African countries won formal

independence during the 1960s many students and diplomats traveled to Western

countries. The increased interaction dispelled some of the racist perceptions

of Africans and also made it difficult for media to continue publishing false

stereotypes about Africans. In the United States, academic interest in Africa

coincided with the civil rights movement and the creation of departments of

Black Studies and African Studies in universities.

During the 1960s and the 1970s, African countries were

comparatively stable even though the economies were disrupted by the 1980s

after the shock of the oil price increase of the 1970s. During the 1980s when

the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified,

countries that were allied to the West such as Samuel Doe's Liberia and

Mobuttu's Zaire were covered less critically, despite the corruption and

despotism of these leaders.

With the end of the Cold War both Washington and Moscow

abandoned their African client regimes, a few dictators, including Doe and

Mobuttu were swept aside and weapons became readily available in the rural

areas as some national armies collapsed. When a number of African countries,

including Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Sierra Leone, Angola and

Liberia, suffered anarchic conditions, articles recalling the glorious days of

colonial rule began to appear in major Western media.

"The dissolution of the former Soviet States or war in the Balkans was not

accompanied by pejorative news reports about ‘white-on-white' violence."

79 | P a g e

During the same time period in the 1990s, similar anarchic

conditions prevailed in the Balkans, separatist Chechnya, Georgia and several

other former Soviet Republics. Yet, in contrast to the coverage of African

conflict, the dissolution of the former Soviet States or war in the Balkans was

not accompanied by pejorative news reports about "white-on-white" violence.

In these regions the news reports explored the roles of unsustainable military

spending, combined with the desire to settle old ethnic and religious scores

and agitation for democratization, as factors behind the conflicts. In African

countries the wars were presented as the natural way of life.

To say all this is not to justify tyranny or incompetent

leadership in Africa. No doubt prolonged bad leadership, lack of political

accountability, and the absence of enduring institutions of governance have

blocked development in many African countries. But all this should not provide

license for continued biased representations of Africa, including by some

Western media that promotes the political and commercial interests of their own

governments - the best example is the BBC's distorted coverage of the land

reform program in Zimbabwe, simply because the British government reneged on

its promise to finance the acquisitions of land from white farmers by Mugabe's

government.

Some of the most persistent and vocal critics of tyranny in

Africa have been African writers such as the late Ugandan writer, Okot p'Bitek,

the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'O and the Nigerians Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe.

At one time or another they were all either imprisoned, tortured or exiled from

their countries. Yet none of these writers have described Africans in

pernicious racist terms. Western writers must free their minds from the racist

perceptions created and perpetuated by their forefathers through the centuries.

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist image of Africa

Published by The Black Star Publishing Co.

P.O. Box 64, New York, N.Y., 10025

www.BlackStarnews.com [1]