Image of Africa Response

I find Achebe's indictment of Western society's assumption as to the lack of African society to be both interesting but also very important; we can even see these cultural problems within Severn. The history curriculum focuses on US and and European history, with the only African history education I've ever received having been for a few weeks during Honors World Civ in freshmen year (non AP students take Global History as sophomores, which may discuss more African History, though it is still little compared to Western history, and the fact that this is taught to less advanced students but not considered important enough for AP students is also insulting). What's more, I imagine the elitist undertones typically reserved for discussions of culture (things like the fine arts, music, etc...) that connect it with wealth have further acted to erase African culture in the western mindset. This is because Africa as a continent has been continuously stripped of its wealth because of colonialism, while this same colonialism has also augmented the wealth of Western powers (especially the US, which was built on African slavery). The fact that pre-colonial African history has also only tangentially influenced Western history (as opposed to things like Greece, Rome, and European history since the Renaissance) has also probably led to scholars undervaluing it, despite the immensely powerful and interesting civilizations that developed (like the city state of Benin, which was at one point described as surpassing European cities at its time in cleanliness and architecture before it was destroyed).