Month: September 2019

Byzantine, Gothic, Baroque, Modernist… We are familiar with many different styles of ‘Western’ architecture because they are celebrated and rightly so. Ottoman-style mosques and the pagodas of East Asia are also instantly recognizable, as well as the temples of the pre-colonial civilizations that flourished in Central and South America.

However, the Great Pyramids Of Giza aside, the glories of African architecture are often shamefully overlooked. Sadly, this is a symptom of a larger problem overall, where the rich diversity and culture of the African continent is largely glossed over in international media. Most reporting from the continent focuses only on issues that reinforce negative stereotypes – those of poverty, disease and war.

Source: Guy Says African Architecture Isn’t Showcased Compared To European And Asian, Posts 44 Of Its Gorgeous Examples | Bored Panda

A Vietnam War veteran who was dying of cancer was found in his nursing home room covered in ants twice, leaving him with more than 100 bites, his daughter told Channel 2 Action News.

Source: Vietnam veteran found covered in ants before dying at nursing home

Despite the fact that he doesn’t do drugs, ColinResponse says on a weekly basis he gets harassed by people, “usually just white dudes,” who assume he’s selling them.

Source: Memo To White Dudes: Stop Asking Black Men With Dreads For Drugs – VICE

The number of young African girls trafficked to Europe for prostitution has increased by almost 600 percent in the first half of this year. In its report, which was released last week in Italian, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warns that the sexual exploitation of African migrants in Europe has reached disturbing levels, with the majority of victims being young girls who are already subject to abuse on their way to Europe.

Source: Number of Young African Girls Trafficked to Europe for Prostitution Reaches Alarming Levels

In 2016, Mexico’s government for the first time ever recognized the 1.38 million citizens of African descent living in the country. They weren’t counted in the national census until 2015. In Mexico’s 2020 national census, “black” will debut as an official category.

Afro-Mexicans, also known as Black Mexicans, are Mexicans who have both a predominant heritage from Sub-Saharan Africa and identify as such. As a single population, Afro-Mexicans includes individuals descended from Spanish colonial era transatlantic African slaves brought by force to Mexico, as well as others of more recent immigrant African descent, including Afro-descended persons from neighboring English, French, and Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean and Central America, and to a recent-immigrants from Africa.

Source: Black Mexicans Face Racism Daily in Mexico – Free Press of Jacksonville

When slavery is discussed in the media and is taught in schools, very little is mentioned of the strong and fierce resistance which Africans put up against the slavers and their accomplices.

Source: Story of Ghanaian Slave Woman Who Led the Biggest Slave Revolt in The West Indies In 1733

The Amazon fires are scorching the Earth’s most vital ecosystem at such a voracious rate that by the time you read this, thousands more trees will have turned to ashes. Brazil’s space research agency calculates that one-and-a-half soccer fields worth of rainforest burns every single minute. That destruction includes more than trees — it is engulfing everything that lives in the forest and cannot escape.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s gaslighting around global aid for his country to fight the devastating fires in the Amazon is a perfect — perfectly awful — example of what happens when nationalist demagogues take power, says Frida Ghitis.

Source: Bolsonaro’s ego stands in the way of saving the Amazon opinion) – CNN