National Geographic, Somalia, and Rwanda

I noticed a very interesting and troubling trend while continuing my research in National Geographic this week. 

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s the magazine was treating Sub-Saharan African more respectfully than it had in the 1970s.  The photographs of black Africans were less exotic.  More black Africans were quoted in the articles and depicted doing modern activities: going to school, working as professionals, protecting national parks.  Even articles on big game and the need to preserve them also mentioned the need to balance the needs of humans and animals, recognized that humans were part of the ecosystem.  There was even a piece by Paul Theroux, the old Peace Corps Volunteer and arch anti-romantic, returning to Malawi to find the populace generally capable and optimistic.

Then the magazine's coverage of African people (as opposed to wildlife) plunged around 1992-93.  This was evidently due to two events.  First, the killing of several American marines in Somalia; second, the genocide in Rwanda.  The magazine had offered a pretty upbeat piece on the arrival of American soldiers in Somalia.  It offered no such treatment of the bloody aftermath.  The bloodshed in Rwanda also took it by surprise.  It published two pieces in the aftermath, both of which focused on the fate of the mountain gorillas made famous by Dian Fossey rather than the stunning loss of human life.  The following month the magazine published a cover article on Jane Goodall, the famous British researcher of African chimpanzees.

I think that these choices and silences speak very loudly to Americans' unease with African tragedies.  The easy way out is to ignore them--or to focus on the continent's charismatic mega-fauna. 

Western Photography and Black Africa

As part of my research for what I hope will some day be a book entitled something like: Africa Existential: American Quests on the "Dark Continent" I've been slogging my way through back issues of National Geographic.  This means examining scores of photographs of "tribal" scarification, pointy-breasted maidens, and vividly painted warriors.  National Geographic has long been drawn to the exotic, and through the 1970s it was a rare article on Africa that did not feature wildly dressed natives, stunning wildlife, or both.  Black Africans evidently spent most of their time dancing and holding ceremonies.

It was with no small amount of wonder and gratitude, then, that yesterday I ran across a 1979 article written by a woman from Uganda and her white Canadian fiance--the first I have found with a black African author.  She had left Uganda to go to college in North America shortly after Idi Amin came to power, met her future husband, and they determined to live in Uganda and run a medical clinic.  The article's opening photograph features the dark-skinned woman woman smiling comfortably at the camera while kneeling at her aunts' feet.  Of the hundreds of photographs I have viewed of black Africans since 1945 in the magazine's glossy pages, this was the first in which I felt that the subject was being presented as fully human.  It was as if a massive, if unspoken, barrier separating "us" and "them" had been breached.  A later photograph conveyed a similar message.  Here the young woman was wearing a more exotic costume and walking away from the camera with her white husband.  They were holding hands.

I have found two major sources of photographs that dwelt on the humanity rather than the (perceived) peculiarity of black Africans long before 1979: those by black African photographers and those by the black American photographers of Ebony.

Why Bother?

A very thoughtful friend asked me the other day why I was devoting so much time to connecting schools in the Pacific Northwest and Ghana.  And it's also occurred to me that the work is often difficult.  The electricity went out in Ghana for most of a month.  People get sick.  The mails are slow--in the U.S. and Ghana.  Teachers are already and always too busy--in the U.S. and Ghana.

But I believe that getting a letter from a place where people live very differently--in part because it's a place where electricity is always available or often disappears for a few minutes or weeks--makes us wise.  Most Americans live under the assumption and expectation that life is easy and comfortable.  For most people, even in today's world, it's not.  Learning about and becoming friends with people who assume that life is difficult is very unsettling and, I think, very necessary.  It helps us to get ready for the inevitable challenges and losses that even the most prosperous of us will face.  And it raises a very frightening and exhilarating question: what are we to do with our embarrassment of riches, with our anomalous access to money, knowledge, and influence?

Also, getting a letter from a friend from far away is just plain fun.  There's also that.

Teaching and Vulnerability

Professors--especially white men--can get away with a lot.  Students tends to assume that we know what we are talking about and that we are very busy.  Despite the ever-rising costs of college, most hesitate to "bother" us.  It's one of the reasons that being a professor can be a pretty soft job.  We don't spend nearly as much time teaching as high school teachers do, and we are treated with a great deal of deference.

So it has been with a certain amount of fear and trembling that over the past few years I've instituted a system of ongoing feedback in my classes.  In the fully online classes, I ask the students what they like and don't like.  In my face-to-face classes, I have a forum in which students can state what they found most interesting and confusing about the last class meeting.

Although I don't always agree with what students say about my courses, I find most of their complaints or suggestions very helpful.  Just as important, it reminds me that teaching, like the rest of life, is a work in progress, that it's always imperfect, in need of improvement, and that I must rely on others if I want to do my best.

Last night after my large history of the U.S. family course a student remarked that my teaching had improved dramatically during the term.  She wondered if this was all part of a master plan, a sort of metaphor I was acting out to show everyone how to improve.  Of course the answer to why I had improved as a teacher was much simpler than that: she and others had pointed out that the first two class meetings were too diffuse and confusing, so I adjusted.  But I wouldn't have discovered that without help.  In fact I had thought that the first two class meetings had been pretty good.  There are many times when everything that comes out of my mouth strikes me as brilliant; I can only maintain that fantasy if I don't invite honest feedback.

Our capacity for excellence is directly correlated to our willingness to seek and listen to criticism.