African Realities Versus Stereotypes

I just returned from the Association of African Student's Africa Night at PSU, and I was again struck by the strong contrast between the reality and the stereotypes of African culture.

I met wonderfully warm and caring and engaged people from Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Ethiopia.  Yet most Americans associate these places simply with pain and suffering.  We seldom realize that there are many positive developments in these countries, and that most of the people in them and from them are very hard working and gracious.  There was an an old saying in the Peace Corps that went something like this:  Volunteers in Latin America came back radical;  volunteers in Asia came back meditating; volunteers in Africa came back laughing.  Of course Africans, like the continent itself, are very diverse.  But the great majority of Africans I have had the pleasure of knowing are delightful--exactly the opposite of the Hollywood stereotype of AIDS, starving babies, and wild-eyed young men with machine guns.

It made me realize what is at the heart of our Yo Ghana! project: giving students in the U.S. and Ghana the opportunity to learn about each other directly.

Africa to America: Your Life Is Not Your Own

Last Saturday I had the great pleasure of spending a day at the Teach Africa conference run by the World Affairs Council of Oregon talking with people about Yo Ghana! and meeting with scores of people from and interested about Africa.  I made some good contacts.  More importantly, I was reminded of what Yo Ghana! (and the rest of life) is all about.

What I kept hearing from the various presenters and people I spoke with was this consistent message: your life is not your own.  It's a profoundly un-American sentiment.  We are constantly told that we are "captains of our own ship," that we owe it to ourselves to pursue happiness as fully and relentlessly as we can.  That might bring us into contact with others.  Or it might not.  And it is fine and dandy for us to rid ourselves of friends, spouses, even children we find irritating, boring, or overly demanding.  Our only sacred duty is to self-actualize.

Most of the rest of the world doesn't think this way.  Certainly most Africans do not.  The Ghanaian pupils who write letters to students here in Oregon often comment, with pride, on how they help their teachers and family members.  The first thing that Stephanie does when she gets home from school in Akropong is to ask her family what they need.  Then she provides it.  Studying is very, very important--but not as important as one's social duties.

The scores of happy people at the Teach Africa conference revealed why caring for and about others is so important: it's what we are designed for.  Service is not simply about helping others; it's also the path to a deeper and more permeable self.

Fickle Fame

Part of what makes "Searching for Sugar Man" so intriguing is its description of fame.

In the modern U.S., it seems as if everyone wants to be famous, wants to be set apart and recognized as being special.  Part of what made us enjoy the Harry Potter series so much was the notion that each of us could be "the Special One," endowed with special powers, destined for great things.

Rodriguez, discovered in Detroit in the early 1970s, actually is endowed with special powers, had this rare capacity to write lyrics and music that cut to the core of the human condition.  But only a few people saw it--until his music found its way to South Africa.  How interesting that his music resonated in a place so foreign to him, even as it was ignored where he lived.

It's also interesting that Rodriguez seems almost indifferent to fame when it finally arrives.  He's delighted to play before tens of thousands of adoring fans.  But he's also just interested in meeting people, connecting with them.  And when he returns to Detroit, he gives most of the money away, lives in the same modest home.  His friends have a hard time believing that he's a star in South Africa, wonder if the photographs of him in front of huge audiences have been "photoshopped."

I would think that the great majority of us, if we became famous, would expect and then demand to be treated differently from everyone else, would gradually lose the best parts of who we had been, would demand to be hoisted onto fame's shoulders and carried far away from those who had known and loved us.

See This Film!

"Searching for Sugar Man" is the most inspiring film I've ever seen.

Imagine a man who is a musical genius, beloved by record producers and hard-core music fans--but he just doesn't catch on.  It's the early 1970s.  He's a Latino singing and playing sort of folksy protest music.  He doesn't try hard to please, sometimes plays with his back to the audience.  So as his chance at fame slips away, he goes about his work as a laborer, takes some philosophy courses, raises some children.  End of story, right?

But a world away, this man, known simply Rodriguez, has become a sensation.  His music is inspiring the heart of the young, white, anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, for it speaks freedom and equality to the establishment's narrow and racist Calvinism.  Rodriguez, one later recalls, was "the sound track to our lives."

In this corner of Africa, Rodriguez is bigger than Elvis or the Beatles.  But South Africa is a very insular and isolated country, so his fans know next to nothing about him.  He is widely believed to be dead.  Details vary, but most think he committed suicide on stage.  In the U.S., Rodriguez is known in his poor Detroit neighborhood as kind, progressive, eccentric, humble, and hard working.  You'd never think of him as some sort of rock star.  What will happen when these two worlds--the aging Detroit musician whose career fizzled long ago and his hundreds of thousands of South African fans--collide?

New York Times link

Victorian Stereotypes of Women and Men are Alive and Well

A recent article in The Atlantic discusses how Republican and Democratic operatives alike are looking hard for women candidates.  This isn't just because the gender gap played such a large role in Democrats' success in the last election.  Researchers find that voters are likely to view women candidates as more trustworthy than male ones, as being more likely to challenge the "boys' club" of insider Washington politics, to represent faithfully the interests of ordinary people back home.

But a sidebar to the same article notes that gender stereotypes usually don't work in women's favor.  People who view resumes that are identical except for the names of the applicants (Heidi versus Howard, for example) are much more likely to rate the male candidate as more qualified, whether the job is as a software engineer, researcher, or violist.  The differences are not small.  One study found that female musicians were 50 percent more likely to audition successfully if listeners did not know their gender, if they only heard the music and did not see it being played.

In other words, we tend to assume that women are nicer but less intelligent and talented than men.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/a-womans-edge/309284