Manufacturing Hate: How Africa was Demonized in Western Media

ABOUT MANUFACTURING HATE: How Africa Was Demonized In Western Media is the book to read if you want to know the history of demonization of Africa, and by extension descendants of Africa, in Western media—books, newspapers, and magazines— from the 17th century to our contemporary era, and the lingering ramifications of centuries of demonization.

ABOUT MANUFACTURING HATE: How Africa Was Demonized In Western Media takes the reader on a sweeping journey, critiquing the so-called “journals” of the European trespassers who traveled to Africa beginning in the 17th century to “discover” and arrogantly rename lakes, rivers, mountains, and even countries that already had African names.

The early European travelers were agents of imperialism. They mapped out Africa for later colonial conquest. Their “journals” demonized Africans in order to justify conquest, colonization, and exploitation of Africa—the people and the resources—under the false narrative of “civilizing” Africa. This “civilizing” mission was carried out by genocidal killings. An estimated 10 million Africans perished in Congo alone while King Leopold II of Belgium enriched himself by plundering the resources. ABOUT MANUFACTURING HATE: How Africa Was Demonized In Western Media critiques dozens of articles, dating from decades ago, in publications such as The New York Times, National Geographic magazine, Time magazine, and The New Yorker. It shows how these media outlets inherited their racist depictions of Africa from the European travelers’ “journals.” The book analyzes letters exchanged by New York Times reporters sent to Africa beginning in the 1950s and a long-serving foreign news editor. These letters, unearthed from the Times’ archives during the author’s research, document the racist animus toward Africa harbored by the Times foreign news editor and some of his reporters. The Times even fabricated incidents that never occurred in Africa in order to depict the continent as “backward.” The book will enlighten any reader who wants to know how Africa, and African descendants, became the “other” in Western media.