SPECIAL REPORT: The corrosive legacy of Live Aid

[duckgirlie]

Like most people of my generation, I can still recall with utmost clarity the moment a bunch of denim-clad rockers strode on to the Wembley stage and struck up a song that never seemed more fitting: Rockin' All Over The World

Comments

[roseofjuly]

This was a really interesting article, thanks for posting. I was immediately struck by this:

To begin with, there was the lack of African artists invited to perform at an event that urged the world not to ignore Africa...And second, by denying African artists a platform, it demonstrated a mindset that the West knows best - that it is our voice that really counts, even when dealing with other people's problems.

And about the fact that a good proportion of Britons don't know that it rains in African or that Timbuktu is a real place...I remember growing up and thinking Timbuktu was a fake place, too (I'm from the U.S.) We just used it as a placeholder for a really far away place. I was surprised to find that out later - and that it was once the seat of a great African empire. This was about the same time that I found out that there even were African empires other than Egypt (which of course was populated by tanned white people). In school we learned a little about the Chinese empire, a little about the Maya and Aztec people, and a whole fucking lot about a bunch of European empires. I mean, Ethiopia. 800 years. Never fucking mentioned in world history.

And all of this combines to make Westerners believe that the African people spontaneously generated, uneducated, stupid, and filthy, sometime around the 1800s when the Europeans "discovered" the continent and cut it up how they saw fit. And that they've always been poor. And then you get comments like this gem:

There's a saying in charity circles 'don't give me fish, show me how to fish'. Africans have been on the planet longer than anyone, so how come they don't yet know 'how to fish'? It seems they won't or can't grow their own food, yet they multiply exponentially. Someone should remind them of the other saying 'the Lord helps those who help themselves'. We've shown them how, we've given billions in aid money, we should now think about pulling the plug. Period.

Who don't seem to realize that Africans were thriving and making their own way before white Europeans invaded and tore the country apart - literally and figuratively - and honestly provided the seeds for a lot of the poverty and strife that's going on in the continent right now, before pulling the fuck out and then blaming the Africans - relying on everyone's short memories and the bad educational systems in the West to erase the realization that they were the major cause of most of the bullshit. It's worked pretty well.

[chrys20]

I'm curious do they teach colonisation in British schools? I was under the impression that they didn't, and that it contributes to the poor mindset I've noticed among many Britons. At least here in NL they teach it in secondary school and there is at least some amount of white guilt/the idea that they did bad things in Indonesia.

[acidosaur]

I never got taught about colonisation, and I studied history up to A-level (end of school). History mostly meant learning about WWI & II. I think they should make it a mandatory subject in British education, honestly.

[lucillebluth]

I learnt about decolonisation at A-Level but it was all from the UK's point of view and little about the legacy for the colonies. I do think it was kind of whitewashed, I didn't realise how brutal the British army was in crushing the Mau Mau rebellion even though we learnt about it in class.

It's only by doing International Relations at uni that my eyes have been open to just how damaging both colonisation and the West's current policies with the South are, e.g the UN forcing neo-liberal free market capitalism onto developing countries so they have to cut all welfare programmes to pay back debt from aid, and yet the west only uses free market capitalism when it's at their advantage (e.g. manufactured goods) but when it comes to agriculture (where a lot of African countries would actually out-compete the West in a true free market) the West give their farmers huge subsidies.

Untill they actually teach this in schools then ignorant comments are to be expected. I think a lot of people just think colonialism just amounted to a few British people going to live in Africa and India for a bit and then coming back again.

[decadent_chains]

At my school we did, our coursework from year 9 was "How should the British Empire be remembered?" following on from Niall Ferguson I presume. We looked at India mainly, but I do remember my teacher trying to convince me that Rudyard Kipling's 'White Man's Burden' wasn't racist (it was a source in the textbook we were using) because it was 'reflecting the time'. Yeah, a racist time.