It's all about perspective

by Keith Noel

Reading history, or even sometimes simply watching the History or Discovery channel on cable television, can be an eye-opener.

We all have shared the anguish of Mogadishu. We have lamented the tendency of African tribesmen to wage war on each other and, in doing so, to commit acts of such brutality that we question their humanity. All of us have grown up reading and listening to news reports that convince us of the innate brutality of Africans. Looking back, we remember the Biafran war, and further back, the Mau Mau Rebellion.

What we read in the Western press, of the way that these conflicts were waged, solidified in our minds the idea that, when first come upon by Europeans, Africans were savage cannibals who were not much superior to the animals in the 'jungles' in which they dwelt.

I have heard young people suggest that slavery, bad though it was, may have saved us as a people, because our living in the West under European rule has resulted in us being educated and acculturated in such a way that we would never commit the types of atrocities of which we read.

Truth about the 'truth'

Yesterday, my daughter, jaw dropping in disbelief, spoke to me of information she had gathered on the French Revolution from the History channel. Our history books told us of this courageous, poorly armed proletariat, inspired by philosophical middle-class intellectuals, overthrowing the oppressive upper class and royalty under the rallying cry of "liberty, equality and brotherhood".

Somehow we don't quite remember being told that the crowds became bloodthirsty mobs baying for the gory sight of heads being chopped off by guillotines, and that in a three-day period, more than 1,200 people were summarily beheaded! Some of these were members of the oppressive nobility; some were seen as supporters of the nobility; while a few seem to have been thrown in for good measure!

It seems that human beings have an innate bloodlust that comes out in times of war. Once an enemy is identified and 'hatelines' are established, when blood begins to flow an atavistic brutality comes to the fore. Horror stories abound which support this theory.

What was it that made the average Roman citizen find entertainment in watching people run, terrified, around an arena, while they were chased and eventually caught and eaten alive by lions? Despite its being romanticised by the TV series Spartacus, we have to ask the question: What was enjoyable about watching captured persons fight to a gory death in an arena?

What made people in Europe and early America gather in the squares to watch people being burnt alive because someone accused them of witchcraft and they could not prove otherwise? Why is the brutal rape of women almost an accepted part of warfare, be it ancient or modern?

Skewed reporting

Then there are those photographs that are now once more on display, albeit for a different reason, that show crowds of people, including women and children, looking on gleefully as black men were lynched, burnt alive or tied up and then covered with hot tar! And remember those American GIs in Mi Lai who turned their guns on old men, women and children?

In the last century, this horror has happened in Europe, in Asia, in the Americas, in Australia and in Africa. The only difference is that the horror is made to seem at its worst in Africa. And this is the problem. The actual acts of brutality, horrible as they are, seem, on deeper consideration, no worse than any of the others. It is the reportage that is different.

In reporting on its occurrence in Africa, words like 'savagery', 'barbarism' and 'inhuman' fill the lines of the reports in the Western media. The tendency is to use words which suggest a kind of subhuman motivation in the African. Interestingly, the first two were not used in the recent cable channel description of the bloodlust of the French Revolution.

But this is par for the course. Sometimes one has to wonder whether it is a matter of perspective, or is it more? Could it be a deep-rooted need Europeans nurse to convince both themselves and the people of the erstwhile conquered nations of a natural European superiority?

Keith Noel is an educator. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.