Black Africans

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Children in Khorixas in Namibia

The terms black African and black African originated at the time of European colonialism to differentiate people from so-called "black Africa" south of the Sahara from those living in the Orient and the fairer-skinned populations of North Africa such as the indigenous Berbers . The early ethnology ( ethnology ) took over the designation black Africans for the supra-regional differentiation of peoples in cultural areas or larger cultural areas ; in modern science the term is avoided. General Linguistically, there is a tendency to favor the foreign and own label Black ( english Black people ) and geographic sub-Saharan Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) .

In the language of the colonizers, the northern part of White Africa was named and highlighted as " civilized ", also because of its history as a border area of ​​the West (compare the Roman province of Africa ; see also Eurocentrism ). At times, black Africans were also called " Moors " or " Negroes ". As an imaginary “connecting race” between the people of the “two Africa”, the “ Sudan Negro ” was constructed as a separate race ; this term was used in the 20th century for the black, non-Arab population of South Sudan and in 2004 in German-language school books.

Meaning of the term according to Frantz Fanon

The French thought leader for decolonization Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), who came from Martinique , wrote in 1961 about the meanings of the word Black Africa and Black African: “Africa is divided into a white and a black part. The substitute designations: Africa south of the Sahara can not disguise this latent racism . ”With this“ idea that arises from the Eurocentric view of the world ”, it is conveyed that white Africa has the tradition of a“ millennial culture ”, that it is more or less“ Mediterranean ”and that Europe becomes reflect and participate in occidental culture . This is contrasted with a black Africa that is portrayed as "sluggish, brutal and uncivilized - a wild region":

"Black people appear to be inferior from the white's perspective, but conversely, white people with their" achievements "  civilization , culture , or intellect for short , are worth imitating."

Fanon also wrote that "black people" are thrown into a neurotic situation if they live in a white society that proclaims its superiority over the black population. Fanon criticized that the "black person" had to wear a "white mask" in order to be taken seriously in a colonized world.

Anti- colonialist -revolutionary concepts of “ Africanity ” oppose such derogatory foreign names ( ethnophaulisms ) ; they emphasize African identity and strengths - a variant of dealing with colonial trauma , such as the Négritude movement of the Senegalese politician Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001), which advocates “black self-confidence” and “distancing yourself from white society”.

Sub-Saharan Africa: Land of the "Others"

The derogatory image of black Africans in the sub-Saharan part of the African continent was based not only on the effects of European colonialism, but also on the European trade in slaves from the areas. Residents there were also objects of the slave trade in Islam , going back to the first centuries of the spread of Islam . In contrast, the companions of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century proudly acknowledged their African origins. Even in Europe in the 10th century, the dark-skinned Saint Mauritius was still venerated under the ruler Otto I , and the appearance of the biblical Three Wise Men still shows that dark-skinned people were on an equal footing.

The French medieval historian Jacques Heers (1924–2013) examined in his history of the slave trade from the 7th to the 16th century how the Islamic conquest pushed further and further into the African continent from the north, but Sub-Saharan Africa remained excluded from the conquest and only was exploited as a pagan reservoir for slaves. This reservoir was also the target of the Arab advance in the east along the Indian Ocean , whereby only trading places were called on the coast, the interior of the continent was spared and mainly islands such as Zanzibar and the Comoros became Arab bases (see also the Swahili Society ).

As a basic justification for enslavement, Islam has invoked since the 11th century what Noach's curse meant to his youngest son Ham , namely that he and his descendants would be doomed to serve. From Islam, the appeal to the Old Testament passed into European tradition with a similar effect when the Atlantic slave trade had to be justified (see also the Code Noir , a French body of law that regulated slavery in the French colonies).

Muslim scholars such as Avicenna , al-Idrisi or Ibn Chaldūn (1332–1406) were involved in spreading the bad reputation of the blacks, whereby they referred to the climate theory developed by the Greek geographer and philosopher Claudius Ptolemy (around 150 AD) without any view of their own . Chr.). It is the heat that opens the people in these areas to the influences of the planets Venus and Mars alike and gives them a glowing temperament without the moderation of self-control. According to Jacques Heers, the Arab and Berber Muslims were the only ones who accepted slavery because of their position on the human rank ladder, where they were classified in the vicinity of the animals (see also the Zanj slaves in Iraq) . The slave hunt in sub-Saharan Africa was never called into question in Islam, which was all the easier to sustain when African middlemen provided supplies for their own benefit (see also the history of slavery in Africa ).

Black Africa in European and American Literature

The oldest novel partly set in Africa is probably Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe from the year 1720. In it Defoe shows astonishing knowledge of inner Africa for his time, which he probably owed to the careful evaluation of contemporary travel reports. It was not until 1863 that Jules Verne resumed literary preoccupation with the continent with his first novel Five Weeks in a Ballon . Verne largely followed the explorers' reports.

Carl Falkenhorst , Otto Felsing and August Wilhelm Otto Niemann wrote adventure novels in Africa towards the end of the 19th century, in which, among other things, the slave trade and the Boer War were discussed. Under the title Ten years in dark Africa wrote Otto Friday a dozen tapes of novels that take place in Egypt, the Obernilgebiet and East Africa. The Africa novel Afrikas Semiramis by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch from 1901 is decidedly erotic .

In England it was mainly H. Rider Haggard who shaped the image of Africa for the average Englishman. The crime author Edgar Wallace delivered twelve Africa novels from 1911 on about the district commissioner Sanders, Lieutenant Tibbets and the African Bosambo.

From 1912 onwards, Edgar Rice Burroughs published a total of 36 Tarzan novels , which convey an adventurous image of Africa. The black Africans are an anonymous mass and therefore not even able to be pronounced angry. With Tarzan with the Apes , the first film was shown in 1918, followed by numerous others.

Other fictional works about Africa are The Green Hills of Africa (1935) by Ernest Hemingway and Africa, dark alluring world (1937) by Karen Blixen - filmed in 1985 as Out of Africa .

Use of names and alternatives

The fact that skin color is used to describe oneself and others is also a peculiarity of African languages. In the Bambara language of Mali, for example, Europeans are called farajè (“white skin”) or tulobilènin (“little red ear”), while the African is called farafin (“black skin ”). In the San language of Burkina Faso , seeci means “black person” for Africans and seefu “white person” for Europeans. In many of the Bantu languages ​​of East, South and Central Africa, Muzungu means "white person" (in Swahili mzungu , in Kikongo mundele , whereby the origin of the word does not indicate a color) and Mweusi means "person with black skin color".

A study in the city of Vienna showed that black people from Africa are most likely to want to be referred to by their proper name, otherwise as Africans or as citizens of their respective country. Alternatively, terms adopted from the USA such as Afroamerikaner ( English African American ) or the equivalent Afro-German are used. Most of the English also use the term People of African heritage ("people of African origin", literally "African heritage") and is also a self-term in the sense of the common cultural heritage . In the course of the US civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Self-designation Person of color (plural People of Color ) introduced. The term “black people” emphasizes a certain political identity, whereby the adjective is capitalized to make it clear that according to the statement of an initiative “it is not about 'biological' characteristics, but about socio-political affiliations”.

literature

  • Marimba Ani: Yurugu. An African-centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. Africa World, Trenton 1994, ISBN 0-86543-249-X (English).
  • Susan Arndt (Ed.): AfrikaBilder. Studies on racism in Germany. Unrast, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-89771-407-8 .
  • Susan Arndt , Antje Hornscheidt (Hrsg.): Africa and the German language. A critical reference work. Unrast, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-89771-424-8 .
  • Frank Böckelmann: The yellow, the black and the white. Eichborn, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-8218-4475-2 .
  • Erwin Ebermann (ed.): Africans in Vienna. Between mystification and demonization. Lit, Münster 2002, ISBN 3-8258-5712-3 (1st chapter as PDF file; 193 kB; 19 pages and further reading samples on afrika-wien.at).
  • Frantz Fanon : The damned of this earth. 6th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-518-37168-1 (French 1961: Les damnés de la terre ).
  • Grada Ferreira: The colonization of the self - the place of the black. In: Hito Steyerl (Ed.): Does the subaltern speak German? Migration and Post-Colonial Criticism. 2nd Edition. Unrast, Münster 2012, ISBN 3-89771-425-6 , pp. 146-165.
  • Tidiane N'Diaye : The Veiled Genocide. The history of the Muslim slave trade in Africa. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2010, ISBN 978-3-498-04690-3 .
  • K. Oguntoye, M. Opitz , D. Schultz (Eds.): Confess your color. Afro-German women on the trail of their history. 2nd Edition. Orlanda, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-922166-21-0 .
  • Heinrich Pleticha, Siegried Augustin: Lexicon of adventure and travel literature from Africa to Winnetou , Edition Erdmann, Stuttgart, Vienna, Bern 1999, ISBN 3 522 60002 9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susan Arndt : Colonialism, Racism and Language: Critical Considerations of German Africa Terminology. In: bpb - Federal Agency for Political Education . July 30, 2004, accessed June 13, 2018.
  2. ↑ Susan Arndt , Antje Hornscheidt (ed.): Africa and the German language. A critical reference work. Unrast, Münster 2004, p. 204.
  3. ↑ a b Frantz Fanon : The damned of this earth. 6th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1994, p. ?? (French 1961: Les damnés de la terre ).
  4. ^ Spiegel editorial team: Sudan / Civil War: Victims of the North. In: Der Spiegel . No. 13, March 24, 1969, accessed on June 13, 2018: "The Sudan negroes, led by their Christian educated intelligentsia, are revolting against a state whose Arabized Muslim majority in the blacks of the south are still" our natives. " sees and understands Sudan as an Arab country. "
  5. ↑ Chapter “Mohr / Mohrin”, “Neger / Negerin” and “Black Africa”. In: Susan Arndt, Antje Hornscheidt (Hrsg.): Africa and the German language. A critical reference work. Unrast, Münster 2004, pp. 168–208.
  6. ↑ a b Philip Dorestal: Acts of violence or revolutionary humanist? On the topicality of Frantz Fanon on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In: ak - analysis & criticism. July 19, 2005 ( online at linksnet.de).
  7. ↑ Frantz Fanon: Black skin, white masks. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-51837-686-1 , pp. ??.
  8. ↑ Jacques Heers : Les négriers de terres d'Islam. La première traite des Noirs VIIe-XVIe siècle. Perrin, Paris 2007, pp. 156-157.
  9. ^ Tidiane N'Diaye: Le génocide voilé. Inquiry historique. Gallimard, Paris 2008, pp. 233-234.
  10. ↑ Jacques Heers: Les négriers de terres d'Islam. La première traite des Noirs VIIe-XVIe siècle. Perrin, Paris 2007, pp. 158-164.
  11. ↑ Jacques Heers: Les négriers de terres d'Islam. La première traite des Noirs VIIe-XVIe siècle. Perrin, Paris 2007, p. 179. Note: In West Africa, for example, the export ports for transatlantic trade were consistently under the control of African sovereigns and slave traders (Heers, pp. 263–264).
  12. ^ Heinrich Pleticha, Siegried Augustin: Lexicon of adventure and travel literature from Africa to Winnetou . Edition Erdmann, Stuttgart, Vienna, Bern 1999, p. 59
  13. ↑ Erwin Ebermann (ed.): Afrikaner in Vienna. Between mystification and demonization. Experience and Analysis. 3. Edition. Lit, 2007, ISBN 3-825-85712-3 , p. 3 ( PDF file: 193 kB; 19 pages on afrika-wien.at).
  14. ↑ Erwin Ebermann (ed.): Afrikaner in Vienna. Between mystification and demonization. Experience and Analysis. 3. Edition. Lit, 2007, ISBN 3-825-85712-3 , p. 383.
  15. ^ Glossary of political self-names. Migrazines. Retrieved July 4, 2020 .
  16. ^ Glossary - New German Media Makers. Retrieved July 4, 2020 .