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It is important that progressive people of all colors and cultures, including people of European ancestry, learn about the violent, pernicious history of European colonization of Africa and its peoples. Milton Allimadi’s recently-published book, Manufacturing Hate: How Africa Was Demonized in Western Media, is an excellent, well-written, concise and accessible source to learn about some of that history.
Allimadi combines a broad historical sweep with specific stories of European/African interactions, from major military battles to recorded, individual African-to-European conversations. He is extremely critical of Western mass media reporting of the realities of African societies. He explains how all of the systematic white supremacy for power and profit has impacted African people all over the world negatively in both personal and societal ways.
His account begins by going back over 2,000 years to the writings of Greek author and historian Herodotus, who lived between 484 and 425 BC: “From the earliest period predating the seventeenth-century type of racism, Europeans were intrigued by what was considered as an aberration, black skin color. Herodotus claimed in Histories that the strangest creatures inhabited the African continent; this notion became a well-established theme in Western writings about Africa. He wrote: ‘This is where the huge serpents are found, and the lions, elephants, bears, asps, and horned asses. Here too, as the Libyans tell us, are the dog-headed creatures and the headless creatures with eyes in their…
