In many African nations, access to women’s healthcare is better than it is in Texas.

[kpete]

Looking Past Our Racist Assumptions To See Africa



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If it’s not Ebola or Boko Haram, if there’s no one getting shot or starved to death, if photogenically miserable little black children aren’t staring piercingly into your soul while obviously dying, you people never click the fucking link.

This is because you are, on the whole, pretty damn racist, and you don’t really like your visions of African misery challenged by reality. You also don’t like it when someone tells you that Africa has more than just black people in it, in fact it’s a racial and cultural cornucopia. I know, people are going to see this and be all “hashtag-not-all-Americans-slash-Europeans” but I have to call bullshit. Western interest in the real lives of the people of the many African societies is so diminishingly small many of you still think it’s a country.

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Here’s a few key things to know about Africa:

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5. In many African nations, access to women’s healthcare is better than it is in Texas. That is, admittedly, a damn low bar, and they should do better.

6. Africa has had eight women as heads of state. Continental North America has had one, in Canada, for 5 months. (There was also Acting President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot of Haiti, but if there’s somewhere you regard even more as a smoking crater than Africa, it’s Haiti.)

7. There isn’t much famine in Africa. In fact, in many countries, obesity is becoming a public health crisis. Sound familiar, America?

8. When you get down to it, we’re all Africans. That’s where the human species comes from. So it’s fair to say Africans, on the whole, have done pretty well around the world. Certainly better than all the other hominids we’ve encountered.

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Africa is the region of the planet most expected to grow in the next 50 years. It’s the home of some of the last untapped natural resources, in particular, ones that drive our technology. It has a history of leap frogging technology, and there’s no reason to think it won’t keep doing that. It’s a place with diversity in governance, monetary adaptability, and cultures that often teach a kind of resilience we’re all going to need in the coming age of climate-driven civil decline.


This is a very, very good and interesting article with LOTs of new info:
https://medium.com/message/looking-past-our-racist-assumptions-to-see-africa-f5bddab648ea

[Supersedeas]

1. there is room for growth and room for growth