Rice students challenge Western misconceptions of African reality

Newly formed Increasing African Presence in Academia committee engages robust crowd at Multicultural Center

Where do students learn about African culture and history prior to arriving at college?

Rice students on the newly formed Increasing African Presence in Academia committee (IAPA) held a diversity dialog in the Multicultural Center (MCC) Feb. 15 with a wide-ranging discussion of “Western Misconceptions of African Reality.” (Photos by Katharine Shilcutt)

For some Rice students, the answer was in stories shared by their parents or grandparents; for others, it was a chance elementary school project or a Danai Gurira play about the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement. And if their information isn’t coming from a firsthand source, much of what students — indeed, many Americans — learn about Africa is skewed by being taught from a colonialist perspective or misrepresented through the lens of mass media that often lump African nations into a single, monolithic culture.

Rice students on the newly formed Increasing African Presence in Academia committee (IAPA) brought these topics to the forefront in the Multicultural Center (MCC) Feb. 15 during a wide-ranging discussion on “Western Misconceptions of African Reality.” Part of Rice’s Black History Month programming, the talk encouraged students, staff and faculty to examine their own preconceived notions and share their thoughts aloud as IAPA committee members provided a series of prompts in five areas of “myths” about Africa: economic, political, cultural, artistic and technological.

“These myths are very broad topics but with such breadth, you can have in-depth discussions with people,” said Duncan College sophomore Axel Ntamatungiro, one of several committee members who prepared and presented the discussion.

A neuroscience major whose family hails from Burundi, Ntamatungiro was already active in the Rice African Student Association (RASA) prior to the formation of the IAPA committee last April. That’s one reason Wiess College sophomore Zubaidat Agboola reached out to him when looking for fellow students to help form the committee, which emphasizes an increased focus on African studies.

“There’s often not much focus on Africa in Western education in general. Usually it starts and stops at the trans-Atlantic slave trade,” said Agboola, a kinesiology major whose family comes from Nigeria. “And being from an African background I see these false narratives propagated on TV shows, in movies, in literature even.”

Along with Ntamatungiro and the other IAPA committee members, Agboola approached Rice’s Office of Multicultural Affairs about hosting a diversity dialogue and presentation on just that subject, both to recognize Black History Month and to raise awareness of Rice’s own African studies minor.

During the Feb. 15 discussion, students from a variety of backgrounds shared the misconceptions about Africa they’d encountered in their lives.

During the Feb. 15 discussion, students from a variety of backgrounds shared the misconceptions they’d encountered while others talked about the ways in which specific Rice courses had shattered the myths and misunderstandings they’d previously held. Some shared their own perspectives as African-born students, with plenty of discussion of the uniqueness of the African experience in America versus the black experience in America.

“I like being in an environment where I can hear what my fellow classmates have to say,” said Jones College junior Azalech Hinton, who said she enjoyed the afternoon’s conversations about “the difference between being African, being black and being African-American and seeing that that’s something other people are starting to recognize. It was really important and kind of heartwarming.”

Fellow Jones College student Chidera Ezuma-Igwe, a senior studying sociology, said she doesn’t get to discuss Africa much in her own studies. This made the diversity dialogue a must-attend event for her.

“I’m Nigerian and I take a lot of pride in my culture, so I wanted to be here and talk about it but also hear perspectives from different countries as well,” she said. “I didn’t realize that the econ department had some developmental economics classes, so it was really cool to hear what students have learned through those classes.”

And although RASA facilitates many discussions about Africa among its members, Jones College junior Naod Araya said what’s equally important is having a broader audience for those talks. The crowd at the MCC provided just that audience.

“I was really interested in this event because we do a lot of these topics at RASA meetings, but I wanted to see how this conversation would carry over for the greater Rice community,” Araya said. “This diversity dialogue was a great example of that; it had a lot of people who were not RASA members — who were not African — but I wanted to hear what they had to say.”

For her part, Agboola was excited to witness students sharing their own firsthand knowledge.

The Feb. 15 diversity dialogue was just one approach the IAPA committee is taking in its efforts to raise awareness of Rice’s African studies minor.

“I hoped that this discussion would allow the African students to have a platform to express themselves and their experiences and the realities of Africa,” she said. “I knew a couple of them grew up in Ethiopia, and they were able to express the realities of their life that are often in contrast to how a non-African person would think of their country.”

The Feb. 15 diversity dialogue was just one approach the IAPA committee is taking in its efforts to raise awareness of Rice’s African studies minor. Right now, its members — under the auspices of the Student Association and with guidance from professors such as Kerry Ward, Elias Bongmba, Alexander Byrd, David Cook, Daniel Domingues and other Rice Africanists — are working on peer institution research to see how other universities administer their African studies courses, minors and majors and are crafting a strategic document with the end goal of creating an African studies major at Rice.

“I know it takes a while to develop a major,” Ntamatungiro said. “For the neuroscience major, it took over a decade.”

In the meantime, they’re enthusiastic about continuing conversations like the one in the MCC.

“Within RASA, we often examine and discuss these topics, but again, it’s only in our community,” Ntamatungiro said. “We want to foster dialogue with the rest of Rice.”