Bhatia 1

Assignment
Foundation Writing Workshop
Course: L-EA-0067
Professor: Lisa Thomas
Submitted by:
Amshul Bhatia
B.B.A.LL.B.
Section E
JGLS (JGU)
21012322

Debunking African
stereotypes in queen
of kwate and similar
media
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Are Africans living such dark lives as much as we are made to stereotypically perceive them?

Africa has gained a dual identity in the world. One of which is the myth that flows around the

world majorly, created by the western media which has worldwide reach. And other is the

truth of Africa which is embedded in the inhabitants and reached to some few by realistic

authors and responsible media persons. Since the colonial period, Westerners have developed

stereotypes and assumptions about Africa, its people, and its culture. “African stereotypes

have their roots in historical events and media portrayals of the continent. Many African

stereotypes stem from colonialism, racism, and media portrayals.” (Wikipedia contributors)

In this essay, I am going to talk about how African countries are shown as heavily deprived in

terms of their lifestyles and basic amenities like food clothing, and housing. They are

depicted as uncivilized, dirty, and hopeless. In this way discriminate against the western

portal of Africa as they also did in the movie the Queen of kwate.

One of the most common misconceptions about Africa is that it is home to the world's most

primitive and impoverished cultures. There are many misunderstandings about Africa,

including the belief that everyone is poor and that there are no new businesses or prospects.

“In Sub-Saharan Africa, 47% of the population subsists on less than $1.25 a day. Although

this number is decreasing, conditions are improving. It is estimated that one in three Africans

are considered "middle class," whereas many Western countries are in trouble. Six of the

world's ten fastest-growing economies are in Africa, according to the World Bank.” (Kelland

and Sánchez) Though agreed that African countries have a large amount of poor population
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but I am dissatisfied with the western media which only highlights the slums and doesn’t

even bother to give one look at the development and the prosperity.

The African land is depicted and perceived with a wave of simplified images of what is going

around. There is nothing one can say which is directly fed into our heads but is we are

passively brainwashed by the media depiction of the continent wherever we get a glance into

it. Though the movie queen of kwate based on the rise of the glory of a poor slum girl as she

excels in the game of chess focuses on her story. But I believe in this real-life story of her the

side-line depiction of the world around her has been exaggerated according to the stereotypes

of the west in conditioning the mind of the people to show the living conditions more

vulnerable than they really are. It is shown that all children have to do labour. They do not

have access to clean drinking water. their homes have no roof. All the people are perceived to

be diseased. No one gets a stomach full of food. They have negligible access to health and

educational facilities and those that have the quality are highly degraded. So overall all basic

amenities are highly scarce, degraded, and expensive. (Queen of Katwe.10:00-30:00). The

best depiction of it would be when the protagonist’s brother had to take stitches in the

hospital and had to survive without pain pills as a hospital is shown to lack the basic amenity

of pain medications for one day. Not only this the movie passively showcases the society to

be uncivilized and corrupt. It also depicts their culture and lifestyle to be filthy.

As the author depicts in his article and similar is shown in the movie the Queen of Kwate that

there are examples of society being corrupt and women being uncivilized. The people in

Africa are shown to perform unfair and corrupt practices. The western media shows the
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“African women to be easily lured into sex work.” (“Five Common Stereotypes About

Africa”)This can be depicted by the scene where the protagonist’s coach had to repeatedly

visit the office of the supervisor of the chess tournament to make his team of slum kids able

to compete in the chess tournament. Society is proven to be uncivilized when it is shown in

the movie how the Protagonist’s sister enters sex work and how many other women fancy it

and her mother is also offered to sell herself for money. As there has been a change the

change also needs to be depicted. Everything in this universe is dynamic and so are identities.

There may have been a time when Africa was not in such good health but now it is in better

conditions.

The planet continues to grow and change in awe-inspiring ways. Video conferencing has

made it possible for individuals across the globe to quickly connect with each other, and

computers are now capable of thinking like human brains. On a worldwide scale, there is still

a significant lot of unfairness and misinformation in society, even though mankind has

progressed tremendously. Six percent of the Earth's surface is covered by Africa, where more

than 1.1 billion people call home. “Many individuals across the globe think that African tales

are factual. Rather than being founded on fact, these myths are the result of people's

preconceived notions, misunderstandings, and prejudices. Stigmatization is a threat to

society's progress since it encourages the widespread belief in falsehoods.” (Mascarenhas) so

there needs to be an affirmative action and both sides of the coin be revealed and the true

Africa needs to be unrevealed.

 REFERENCES

 Wikipedia contributors. “Stereotypes of Africa.” Wikipedia, 28 Mar. 2022,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_Africa.

 Mascarenhas, Michelle. “Debunking Common Myths About Africa | Learn About

Africa.” Aperian Global, 2 June 2021, www.aperianglobal.com/debunking-common-

myths-stereotypes-africa.

 Kelland, Zoe, and Erica Sánchez. “Debunking 15 Common Myths and Misconceptions

About Africa.” Global Citizen, 12 Jan. 2018, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/africans-

are-all-poor-and-15-other-myths.

 Nair, Mira. Queen of Katwe. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2016.

 “Five Common Stereotypes About Africa.” ThoughtCo, 30 May 2019,

www.thoughtco.com/common-stereotypes-about-africa-2834943.