What Do You mean by "African"?

Please observe the following statements:

“You can see the northern lights from all over Europe.”

“There are black sand beaches in Italy.”

“I went to Spain last winter. It was fun skiing in the Spanish Alps.”

If you have a minimal knowledge in geography, you probably found these sentences absurd, might have even laughed and wondered what kind of idiot says stuff like that. And yet, it came to my notice that at the mention of “Africa”, images of dry deserted land with half naked dark skinned people desperate for kind ‘white’ help come to the minds of people who had supposedly received a higher education and “learned stuff” throughout their lives.

Let me try again.

“Once you step foot in Europe, all you will see is blond people with green and blue eyes.”

“Every last European, American and Canadian out there is RICH! They all have cars and successful businesses. No one is ever hungry in Europe or in Northern America. It’s the developed world after all!”

“All of Europe speaks Latin, and only Latin.”

Again, absurd? Stupid? Weird? Yet I was told on more than one occasion that I was a liar for claiming to be African. Why? Because I didn’t have a black skin. I was asked if everyone I knew was poor or starving. I was asked if we had any roads where I’m from. (Gosh, I wish I was exaggerating. I really wish I was.) I was asked about a desert I have never seen in person. And I was asked if I spoke African. Yes, African. The language of the famous country, Africa. Never hear of it? Me neither, to be honest.

So what is Africa? A desert? The Sahara desert makes approximately only 25% of the size of the continent. So that can’t be. A logo or marketing campaign for the charities of the developed world? A strategy for certain countries to suck the life out of the continent while they give the whole world the impression that they’re helping this continent, because everyone here is “poor” and “in desperate need for their help”? It can’t possibly be the richest continent with huge amounts of gold, petrol, and precious raw material if everyone in it is starving, right? It’s always those images of the Nigerian civil war or the Somalian famine that are widely spread. Images of savagery and hunger. Never the images of economically thriving Ethiopia, gorgeous Cameroon, or Democratic Tunisia (Yes, we, objectively, have a democracy. I don’t care about anyone’s opinion. A5taw waldayya.)

And things actually get worse when dealing with “woke” people and “intellectuals”. I find myself from time to time reading books by people who claim to be progressive open minded intellectuals who use sentences like “she was sharp like the African sky”, “he was brave like a true African” or expressions like “African beauty”. What IS that? What do you mean by “African”?

Why should an African sky be any different that the sky anywhere else in the world? And if you’re talking about the weather… the equator literally cuts the continent in half? We literally have all types of weathers?

Why should a true African be “brave”? And if I was Asian or European, I’d be a coward?

And last but not least, what in fucking hell is African Beauty? There are 54 countries in Africa. Each has multiple cultures, multiple ethnicities, and multiple tribes. Each has different beauty standards. Each prefers a certain skin color, a certain body type, a certain eye color, a certain face shape, and so on and so forth. So what do you mean exactly? No, wait… I actually do know, because it’s almost always used to refer to a female with a dark skin tone, wide black eyes, occasionally large curly hair or full lips or whatever… almost straight out of a racist cartoon. That female is supposed to represent and BE every African woman out there to the eyes of these “woke” “pro diversity” authors’ readers. Because African beauty isn’t supposed to refer to the beauty of the ebony, the brown, the light brown, or the white women all over the continent. No, those don’t exist. Remember, Africa is black, Africa is a desert, in Africa we speak African and act like savages. But hey, at least we have “African Beauty”, right?