Individual or Issue Related to Africana Studies Essay

Individual or Issue Related to Africana Studies - Essay Example Similar to the arts of all individuals in the world, African art illustrate thought, attitudes, and values which are a result of African experiences in the past. Therefore, the study of African art gives an avenue for learning about the history of Africa. Through the study of African Art, individuals can find answers to the questions which have been engrossing the continent for long. Nonetheless, it is not only African art that can assist people get information on the past of Africa. Other elements, for example, lifestyle and stage of African development can also assist people gain additional information on the status of Africa in the globe. As individuals search information on Africa and its past, they must also take into consideration how Western view of racial and race differences has had an impact on views of the African history (Said 8). This paper will look at the impact of slavery and the slave trade era on the development of Africa. The ideas of race and racial differences ha ve always assumed, black people are inferior compared to their white counterparts. This notion begun in Western regions as the people from these regions attempted to rationalize their enslavement of Africans and the consequent colonization of the African continent. Historians and other professional studying African issues have now established that views of racial inadequacy have led to the conviction that African people in the past existed in a condition of primitive barbarism (Said 11). In addition, these professionals have also recognized that a large number of European works on the past of Africa, for example, stories by 19thcentury travelers and missionaries are stained by the similar view points of African inadequacy. This recognition has made historian and other experts studying the past of Africa to search for different sources of information that is less or not inspired by European or foreign concern with racial disparity. These different resources comprise oral traditions f ound in Africa, works by Africans, the physical evidence unearthed by archeologists, African art, and structures and vocabularies of the African language. These different sources, unlike European or foreign sources, will assist individuals comprehend the history of Africa from the African point of view.