Jacqueline Bonds
African American History
June 1, 2014

My New Perspective On Africa

The dark continent. The hopeless continent. A scar on the conscience of the world. The cradle of mankind. African renaissance, African rising. Amazing Africa…

There have been countless attempts to define the world’s second biggest and second most populous continent, many in which Africa was misrepresented. For an example, the size of Africa has been prevaricated. In our educational system today, the Mercator map projection is most commonly use when discussing the layout of the World. The Mercator map projection depicts Africa to be much smaller than Greenland. Which in reality, Greenland is only 800,000 sq. miles and Africa is a “mouth-dropping” 11,700,000 sq. miles. I ask myself, “if I’ve been “disinformed” about the true size of this great continent, what other information do I not have knowledge of?! And how many people have been “disinformed” about Africa?

It’s time for me to look at Africa with fresh eyes. So far you’ve taught me that as an African American, I do not know where I come from, which is very sad to say. I have been disinformed on an ample amount of things when it comes to Africa and its history. I find this very shocking!!!

I am very interested about learning the truth about Africa. I want to see the good side. So, I did a little research of my own. On television here in America, Africa is depicted to be a very poor country. Well, I have found out that, that information is very inaccurate. Africa is enriched with natural resources. Nature has endowed the continent of Africa with many gifts. There are vast, fertile plains, watered like clockwork every year, that support millions upon millions of people. Yet there are other vast plains on which few people , but millions of animals, live. There are great mountain ranges yielding earth’s most precious treasures - gold, silver, diamonds, uranium, bauxite and every other conceivable mineral - in large quantities. There are also tremendous areas of perfect desolation, wastelands as large as continents. There are rainforests as thick and full of life as is earthly possible. Africa has many beautiful aspects.

It also perceived to only consist of blacks. From my understanding now, there are people of all races in Africa, ranging from the shortest to the tallest ethnic groups in the world! This is a very big eye opener for me. I never actually thought that there was any other race in Africa, this prove how disinformed I’ve been. Now I know that there are people with jet black skin to white skinned desert dwellers and all of the colors in between. And from people whose direct ancestors have inhabited Africa in an unbroken line from the origins of Mankind over a million years ago, to groups whose first African settlers arrived on the continent only a few short centuries ago. I also found out the the first homo sapiens were found in Africa. Which means to me that the very first upright walking human being was found in Africa. So, some way or another we all are from Africa. And I’m proud to say that. The truth about that have been misconstrued many times. I am glad that I know the real truth now.
I would like to go into a little detail about the African Diaspora. People of African descent can be found in large numbers all over the world. There are over 100,000,000 Black people in southern India, mostly of the Dalit group. More Black people live in Brazil than in the United States of America. The majority of people in the Caribbean are also of African descent. If one travels to the Pacific Islands, to Borneo, Fiji, Vanuatu, or the Solomon Islands, it becomes obvious that the original inhabitants of those lands came from Africa. Even the so-called Aborigines of Australia and New Zealand have African roots. Africans dispersed from the Motherland in many periods of history, not just during the Slave Trade.
As I stated above, the