Anti-African sentiment

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This article is about negative sentiment towards African peoples and societies, regardless of race. For negative sentiment towards Black people, see Anti-Black sentiment.

Anti-African sentiment, Afroscepticism, or Afrophobia is prejudice, hostility, discrimination, or racism towards people and cultures of Africa and of the African diaspora.[1]

Prejudice against Africans and people of African descent has a long history, dating back to ancient times, although it was especially prominent during the Atlantic slave trade and the colonial period. Following the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Africans were often portrayed as uncivilised and primitive, with colonial conquest branded civilising missions. Due to the use of oral tradition, and subsequent lack of written histories in most African cultures, African people were portrayed as having no history at all, despite having a long, complex, and varied history.[2] In the United States, Afrophobia influenced Jim Crow laws and segregated housing, schools, and public facilities.[3] In South Africa, it took the form of apartheid.[4]

In recent years, there has been a rise in Afrophobic hate speech and violence in Europe and the United States. This has been attributed to a number of factors, including the growth of the African diaspora in these regions, the increase in refugees and migrants from Africa, and the rise of far-right and populist political parties.[5][6]

In October 2017, the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD) told the Human Rights Council that the human rights situation of Africans and people of African descent remained an urgent concern, citing racist violence, police brutality and killings, and systemic racism.[7] Earlier that year, WGEPAD had recommended the term Afrophobia be used to describe "the unique and specific form of racial discrimination affecting people of African descent and African Diaspora".[8]

  1. ^ Kivuto Ndeti; Kenneth R. Gray; Gerard Bennaars (1992). The second scramble for Africa: a response & a critical analysis of the challenges facing contempory [sic] sub-Saharan Africa. Professors World Peace Academy. p. 127. ISBN 9966835733. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  2. ^ Cooper, Frederick (2000). "Africa's Pasts and Africa's Historians". Canadian Journal of African Studies. 34 (2): 298–336. doi:10.2307/486417. JSTOR 486417.
  3. ^ Greene, Frederick Dennis. "Immigrants in Chains: Afrophobia in American Legal History-The Harlem Debates Part 3." Or. L. Rev. 76 (1997): 537.
  4. ^ Ochonu, Moses E. (2020-12-31). "South African Afrophobia in local and continental contexts". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 58 (4): 499–519. doi:10.1017/S0022278X20000543. ISSN 0022-278X.
  5. ^ Michael, Lucy (2017), Haynes, Amanda; Schweppe, Jennifer; Taylor, Seamus (eds.), "Anti-Black Racism: Afrophobia, Exclusion and Global Racisms", Critical Perspectives on Hate Crime, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 275–299, doi:10.1057/978-1-137-52667-0_15, ISBN 978-1-137-52666-3, retrieved 2024-10-15
  6. ^ "US racism on the rise, UN experts warn in wake of Charlottesville violence". UN Human Rights Commission. 2017-08-16. Retrieved 2024-10-15.
  7. ^ "Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent to the Human Rights Council: the Human Rights Situation of Persons of African Descent Remains an Urgent Concern". United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2022-10-02. Retrieved 2024-08-14.
  8. ^ "Statement to the media by the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, on the conclusion of its official visit to Germany, 20-27 February 2017". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2017-02-27. Retrieved 2024-08-14.