Anti-African sentiment

Anti-African sentiment, Afroscepticism, or Afrophobia is prejudice, hostility, discrimination, or racism towards people and cultures of Africa and of the African diaspora.

Prejudice against Africans and people of African descent has a long history, dating back to ancient times, although more prominently during Atlantic slave trade and the colonial period. Following the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Africans were often portrayed as uncivilised and primitive, with colonial conquest branded civilising missions, and, due to their reverence for the spoken word and emphasis on oral history, and subsequent lack of written histories, they were portrayed as having no history at all, despite having a long, complex, and varied history. In the United States, it was manifested in the form of Jim Crow laws and segregated housing, schools, and public facilities. In South Africa, it was manifested in the form of the apartheid system.

In recent years, there has been a rise in Afrophobic hate speech and violence in Europe and the United States. This has been attributed to a number of factors, including the growth of the African diaspora in these regions, the increase in refugees and migrants from Africa, and the rise of far-right and populist political parties.

In October 2017, the United Nations General Assembly held a high-level meeting on combating Afrophobia, with a view to adopting a resolution to address the issue.

Lexicology
Primarily a cultural phenomenon, Afrophobia pertains to the various traditions and peoples of Africa, irrespective of racial origin. As such, Afrophobia is distinct from the historical racial phenomenon of negrophobia, which is specifically based on contempt for negro peoples. The opposite of Afrophobia is Afrophilia, which is a love for all things pertaining to Africa.

By location
It has been observed that writing and terminology about racism, including about Afrophobia, has been somewhat centered on the US. In 2016, "Afrophobia" has been used as a term for racism against darker-skinned persons in China. In such usage, that is an inexact term because the racism is directed against darker-skinned persons from anywhere, without regard to any connection to Africa. Conversely, Chinese views for lighter-than-average skin are more positive, as is reflected in advertising.

Terminology
The terms "Afrophobia" and "Afroscepticism" are similar to Europhobia and Euroscepticism and can refer to three different ideas:


 * 1) Afrophobia, or Anti-African sentiment, is a perceived fear and hatred of the cultures and peoples of Africa, as well as the African diaspora, which is also a social struggle about who has the right to be cared for by the state and society and a fight for the collective balance of rights and economic resource allocation by the modern state.
 * 2) Hard Afroscepticism is a principled opposition to African integration and therefore can be seen in groups that think that their countries should not be part of it or whose policies towards the integration are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of African integration, as it is currently conceived and/or projected to be.
 * 3) Soft Afroscepticism does not have a principled objection to African integration but has concerns on one or a number of policy areas, which lead to the expression of qualified and justified opposition to the integration, or there is a sense that national rights and interests are currently at odds with the integration's trajectory.

Academic racism and colonial historiography
The academic discipline of history arrived with the discovery and colonisation of Africa and involved the study of Africa and its history by European academics and historians. Prior to colonisation in the 19th century, most African societies used oral tradition to record their history, including in cases where they had developed or had access to a writing script, meaning there was little written history, and the domination of European powers across the continent meant African history was written from an entirely European perspective under the pretence of Western Superiority. This predilection stemmed from the perceived technological superiority of European nations and the decentralization of the African continent with no nation being a clear power in the region, as well as a perception of Africans as racially inferior. Another factor was the lack of an established body of collective African history created in the continent, there being instead a multitude of different dialects, cultural groups and fluctuating nations as well as a diverse set of mediums that document history other than written word. This led to a perception by Europeans that Africa and its people had no recorded history and had little desire to create it.

Activism
To overcome any perceived "Afrophobia", writer Langston Hughes suggested that European Americans must achieve peace of mind and accommodate the uninhibited emotionality of African Americans. Author James Baldwin similarly recommended that White Americans could quash any "Afrophobia" on their part by getting in touch with their repressed feelings, empathizing to overcome their "emotionally stunted" lives, and thereby overcome any dislike or fear of African Americans.

In 2016, Tess Asplund made a viral protest against Neo-Nazism as part of her activism against Afrophobia.

In academia
Some Afrophobic sentiments are based on the belief that Africans are unsophisticated. Such perceptions include the belief that Africans lack a history of civilization, and visual imagery of such stereotypes perpetuate the notion that Africans still live in mud huts and carry spears, along with other notions that indicate their primitiveness.

Afrophobia in academia may also occur through by oversight with regards to lacking deconstruction in mediums such as African art forms, omitting historical African polities in world cartography, or promoting a eurocentric viewpoint by ignoring historic African contributions to world civilization.