RRR"The Percerption of Africa"

In Chinyere Ohuoba’s personal experience “The Perception of Africa” (2016) she asserts that the media uses mass communication to convey a negative look on Africa. Ohuoba explains that Africa is more developed then the media shows. Ohuoba uses facts in order to inform readers that media control the way we look at Africa and other places. Based on this personal experience the audience is anyone who is from Africa that shares her experience or is influenced by the media.

This passage gives so much information on how negative images and especially stereotypes are built into people minds, to depict how they think of certain things. I enjoyed this passage because it shows me that stereotypes shouldn’t be real because it shows nothing positive or true about the object. Myself experience a lot of stereotypes that are not true about my skin color. Most people say that black people are ignorant, ghetto, and loud. When in reality I am the complete opposite, which opened my eyes to show that there is a bright side of everything and everybody.

     Most people tend to pay more attention to the stereotypes of many cultures that the real unique values they bring to this world and depict their thoughts on what the media allow them to see instead of seeing for themselves. As stated, “Many Americans use stereotypes to classify a place in a general aspect, but not every assumption rings true for each country within Africa” (Paragraph 3). This passage mostly shines a light on the negative views of Africa. Africa was a continent where slaves came from, and some places are empty and dry. People only focus on the bad of Africa but nobody knows the positive views of Africa and how much of a good impact on this world. Stereotypes come from what people are shown like “images of Dirt Roads, collapsing buildings, and starving children” (Paragraph 3), those images are what people see and that’s what the media allow them to see, but otherwise if you actually see what the place has to offer in person, all stereotypes will go away. “We traveled to Nigeria and stayed for two months. The length of time that we visited helped me truly experience what my country had to offer” (Paragraph 4). Getting information from the media is a whole different story than getting the information hands on.