The beautiful African Coastline in Ghana is studded with the haunted vestiges of slave fortresses built by European nations over a period of four hundred years. It is not unlike the history of the European Slave Trade in other parts of West Africa, from Mauritania to Angola, where more than six hundred slave ports were constructed by Europeans to support the rape of Africa. If one listens closely to Henry Louis Gates the entire project of slavery would not have occurred if it had not been for African involvement. Blaming the victim for the predicament of enslavement is neither historically correct nor morally valid.

"The Wonders of Africa" television series sponsored by the BBC and the PBS and hosted by Professor Gates is one more attempt to rewrite the history of slavery. Despite the magnificence of the African landscape and the vitality of its modern cities, Gates finds opportunity almost at every turn to reduce the history of Africa to petty warfare and the history of the enslavement of millions of Africans to African culpability. If Gates were a white traveler in Africa commenting as he did on African society, making jokes about dignitaries, and sowing seeds of divisions between African people, the NAACP, NABSE, and a host of civil rights leaders would have considered this production an insult and an assault on African people. However, because he is black we must call it a travesty. This travesty will set back the intellectual discourse on the African enslavement for fifty years if the narrative is not corrected to show that you cannot reduce the centuries of the Asante Empire, the Dahomey and Yoruba kingdoms to slave raiding.

Nowhere in "The Wonders of Africa" do we get the theme of African resistance to the enslavement when in fact Africans fought, if you take European accounts, more than three hundred battles with European slave raiders and occupiers both in the interior and along the coast of Africa.

There are several disturbing themes that flow from Gates’ core argument about slavery that must be confronted head-on. To allow these themes to go unchallenged would set an unacceptable scholarly precedent where misinformation, because it is distributed by the media, passes for truth. I will discuss each theme separately.

First, Gates argues that continental Africans are responsible for enslavement of Africans in the Americans and Caribbean. He marshals opinions from ordinary Africans about African involvement. What is true is that some Africans were collaborators with the Europeans much like some Africans were collaborators with whites in South Africa. However, we do not blame apartheid on South African Blacks and Gates would not claim that because some Jews assisted the Germans that Jews were responsible for the holocaust. Slavery was initiated and maintained by Europeans; Africans were always on the fringes of this monumental catastrophe. Indeed, like in any situation where people are seeking to liberate themselves you will have those who side with the oppressor. It is not just a historical reality it is a current fact.

Secondly, Gates seeks to trivialize the traditional rituals and practices of Africa. He makes snide remarks about African practices of state, medicine, and ornamentation. He would not dare remark on English royal traditions in the same vein. The disrespect shown to the traditional leaders of Africa left an indelible impression of arrogance and haughtiness, perhaps the results of a post-modern disparagement of culture and customs.

Thirdly, "The Wonders of Africa" reinforces the stereotypes first created by the European travelers going down the Niger River in their pith helments that Africa is backward, inadequate, scary, and not a place any African American would want to be. His vehicle breaks down and it is a major production. I have lived in Africa, traveled to the continent more than fifty times and this is not a common experience of African Americans traveling in Africa. Why was this event not edited out of the video since it is not a remarkable fact except if you want to leave an impression of African inefficiency?

How was this project sold to the white producers? Were they told that the video would show how Africans were responsible for our own predicament? The themes covered in the series rest on some disturbing sub-texts, such as, the undermining of a pan African sentiment, the reinforcement of negative stereotypes, the separation of ancient Egypt from the rest of Africa, the attack on the Swahili language and the undermining of the movement for African reparations. I see this series as a clear assault on the African and African American narrative of liberation. Much like Keith Richburg’s Out of America, Gates’ "The Wonders of Africa" is more about his own story than about Africa.

This is seen in an almost obscene assertion of American superiority and the beauty of being from Harvard while not once speaking to an African scholar at one of the elite universities on the continent. This is not a benign travelogue despite Gates’ flippant commentaries; it is a documentary which mocks African culture, distorts African history, reinforces stereotypes, and imports American racist interpretations to African situations. This is a truly Eurocentric enterprise. To say the least, I am sorely disappointed because I believe had he wanted to do better, Henry Louis Gates could have, and the thought that he did not want to do better haunts me and does great injury to Africa.

John Swope
Interim President
PBS
1320 Braddock Pl.
Alexandria, VA 22314

RE: "Wonders of the African World"

Dear Mr. Swope:

I am writing to express my outrage over your recent television series entitled "Wonders of the African World." The myths and stereotypes presented in the documentary were insulting to Africans and people of African descent around the world. It is unconscionable that you chose to end the Twentieth Century with such a devastating slap in the face to Black people everywhere.

The content of the program was bad enough. But to add insult to injury, the series was narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, whose questionable credentials are made worse by a history of degrading Black scholars, trivializing African history and demeaning himself and his discipline. For example, during an interview in the April, 1998 issue of Boston Magazine, Gates used the word "nigger" at least five times when referring to Black people. He also used the words "bullshit", "shit" and "big-dick motherfuckers". This is an appalling choice of words from a so-called scholar whom White America has chosen as an authority on Africa.

Among the infinite number of flaws in "Wonders of the African World," Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, the founder of Africentrism, has isolated and identified the following:

First, Gates argues that Africans themselves were totally responsible for the transatlantic slave-trade. He trivializes the traditional rituals and practices of Africa. He demeans the cultures of Africa as primitive and bereft of technology. He also ignores five thousand years of African history by separating Egypt from the remainder of the continent. Further, Gates conveniently ignores the legacy of scores of African and African American scholars, many of whom should have been interviewed in the documentary.

I hereby demand that PBS air an alternative documentary of equal length to that presented by Gates. No other action will correct the devastating global impact of "Wonders of the African World." If you choose to ignore this demand, I shall not hesitate to contact the chief executive officers of Kellogs, Sempra Energy, CIGNA, GTE, Mobil and your other sponsors to inform them that all of my relatives, friends and I plan to boycott their products in light of their having sponsored programming, aired on PBS, offensive to Black people. I shall also contact the Congressional Black Caucus and other interested Congressmen to review the propriety of funding a public entity so insensitive to their constituents. Furthermore, I shall join others in a national campaign to urge African Americans and others of goodwill to withhold donations from PBS.

PBS has produced outstanding programs on Black issues in the past, and it would be most unfortunate for African Americans to be compelled to resort to the above actions. To avoid this eventuality, I strongly suggest that you contact Ms. Nzinga Ratabishu Heru, Chairperson of the Association For The Study of Classical African Civilizations, to arrange for the production of an alternative series. She may be reached at (323) 730-1155.