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67 Stereotyping Africa: Surprising Answers to Surprising Questions the years of ill-health are weighted according to severity, and subtracted from the expected overall life expectancy to give the equivalent years of healthy life…. All of the bottom 10 countries were in sub-Saharan Africa, where the HIV-AIDS epidemic is rampant. In ascending order beginning with 191, those countries were Sierra Leona (sic) 25.9years, years of healthy for babies born in 1999; Niger, 29.1; Malawi 29.4; Zambia, 30. Botswana 32.3; Uganda 32.7; Rwanda, 32,8; Zimbabwe, 32.9; Mali, 33.1 and Ethiopia 33.5" (“Africa: Life Expectancy”) So, in all, whereas some people live long lives comparatively speaking, there are others whose lifespan is really short. Some texts have put Africa’s life expectancy at 59 by 1990, but I have come to lose faith even in statistical so-called details about Africa as I am now convinced that figures are man-made and can be cooked up by different bodies to serve whatever purpose they have in hand at the time. Such statistics will reveal the life span, like much else about Africa, to be dismal if that’s what they want it to be at the time. Before the AIDS epidemic, death was known to be a guest in the quarters of the aged only, but the trend is certainly no longer the same as even the very young die nowadays due to AIDS. The Diaspora 35. Do Africans dislike African-Americans? No, contrary to what seems to be the consensus, Africans do not dislike African-Americans; this is unthinkable. I must observe here that earlier writers had made such suggestions in the past, and this, no doubt about it, strained the feelings of brotherhood and sisterhood that did exist, still exists, and ought to exist between Africans and African-Americans since both groups were (miss)educated to think they disliked each other. Victor C. Ferkiss is one such writer, and one cannot help wondering the source of such views when he claims in response to the question “…whether Africans really liked and respected American Negroes [,]” (313) that “Negroes tend to insist that they have a special rapport with Africans 68 Emmanuel Fru Doh based on a common racial background, while many Africans are privately highly critical of American Negroes whom they regard as lacking in ability and in pride” (313). For Ferkiss to have stated this is unfortunate. Why would Africans have aired these views privately as if, like kids, they were afraid of somebody giving them a good spanking, such that it was Ferkiss who had to leak it out for them? By the 1960s when Ferkiss was spreading such damaging views, Africans were themselves in no better position than the African-American, as the former were still fighting to free themselves from the yoke of Western colonialism (they are yet to succeed). Where then did they get the time from, or the feeling of superiority to be able to grant such a perspective to Ferkiss, of African-Americans as “lacking in ability and in pride?” Ferkiss must have forgotten that Africans are still aware of the fact that it was their very best who were captured and who could make it across the great waters, mindful of how they were treated like animals. In fact, at the point in time when Ferkiss wrote this, AfricanAmericans had a lot to pride themselves for: they had been snatched away from their homeland and enslaved for generations by the Westerner, but they were far ahead in the struggles to free themselves, whereas Africans who were at home were barely beginning similar struggles towards freedom, otherwise termed independence. The results of a study by Francis T. McAndrew and Adebowale Akande confirm my claims. The duo observes that their study attempted to further the understanding of the basis of American stereotypes held by non-Americans by asking a large number of Africans for their perceptions of African and European Americans. Because of previous studies which had indicated that AfricanAmericans were usually stereotyped negatively by others, they wanted to determine the extent to which this was true of people with whom they share a common ancestry. According to the twosome: “The results indicated that the Africans surveyed did not hold negative stereotypes of African Americans. Indeed, with the exception of being seen as more superstitious, African American stereotypes were more positive than those of European Americans, with African Americans perceived as more friendly, polite...

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