• Black people are ignorant / uneducated:
Black people & education has always been a thorny issue because the very Western education we're given almost always clashes with our lived realities. So most black people often dismiss education as unnecessary because they are being given knowledge they will likely not use in the real world of taxes, fluctuating markets, government documents & affidavits. A black African needs to know just six things things; national law, the national language, how to read, how to write, how to count & basic geography of his/her country. The twelve grades Frankish Charlemagne education system the world has adopted is not always ideal for African societies so we may need our own education curriculum to be taught to all African scholars. Education & knowledge systems need to be Africanised so they don't seem so foreign & frightening to educators & students, respectively. This will eliminate the "ignorant", "uneducated" tag from our societies.
Ignorance is also a matter of perspective, you can't expect a carpenter to know climatology concepts. Likewise, Africans can't be expected to be familiar with Western concepts so the ignorant tag will always apply to someone from a different culture.
• Black people are loud:
I think being loud among black people comes from the sense that our existence (since colonisation) has made us lack peace. The most uncolonized places are inherently the places where you find the most peaceful/quieter black people.
• Black people don't know how to be civil / criminal behaviour:
This also comes from the fact that our recent existence has been filled with turmoil, so we respect authority less & tend to get in trouble with Western legal systems because of our disdain for the lands we live in.
• Black people are lazy:
I think this stereotype depends on what cultures consider lazy. For example, a lot of black people in rural South Africa consider office work "lazy". Whereas in Western society, productivity or laziness depends on the outcome, infrastructure & visible results of your culture & society. So what is lazy is largely cultural. Unemployment in black societies where black youths are found loitering around on the streets may be seen as "lazy" by Westerners who do not consider a failure of governance in black lands a factor as to why youths are unemployed or unwilling to work. You usually get motivated to work for something that works for you in return, when the system you are meant to work for is against you - it feels futile to work for anything in that system/culture.
• Dark skin & kinky hair:
Dark skin & kinky hair has nothing to do with any biblical curses or references to hell. The "Curse of Ham" in the bible refers to Hamitic people (ancient Egyptians) & not black people. On the equator where the first homo sapiens lived by, it gets very hot & naturally our bodies adapted to that. Likewise, Nordic people adapted to life with less sun & more cold. The whole of Africa is mostly sunny & hot except mountainous regions, so Africans naturally adapted melanated skin & kinky hair.
• Stealing Eurasian culture:
We can't really steal something we are constantly encouraged & forced to adopt. When you're indoctrinated in Western systems, you subconsciously look to Europe as a compass in your life. African spirituality, knowledge systems, sociocultural traits & scripts are undocumented & not understood in detail by the world so are seen as unserious, obscure & unsupported by any serious institution. For example; there is no digitised African version of Wikipedia with the knowledge from the Timbuktu library or even a reputable organisation for any African faith/spiritual belief.
• Can't govern themselves / Africa poor:
Whenever Africans govern themselves well, it seems like some foreign power always wants to come in & claim some of that success or disrupt the progress Africans made. It happens so frequently that you almost expect good African governance to constantly be fending off attacks from foreign powers. This is why Africa is seen as poor; wars & destabilising objectives are constantly being funded by outsiders, leaving us almost always on a constant economic & development backfoot. The last few people to promote African sovereignty in economy & agriculture were ripped to shreds (reputational, health & financial ruin), if not killed by foreign powers. We're going to have to defend ourselves against sabotage if we truly want to develop.
• Living in huts / dirty / smelly:
I'll be honest; in the heat, it's harder to stay clean. Things rot faster in the heat also. Huts are still basic shelter & provide protection from the elements so are not nothing. Most of Africa has modernized though & adopted modern construction techniques. Most Africans no longer live in huts & deodorant has been introduced to Africa as well since it's invention in 1888. We have adopted modern hygiene methods also.
• Punctuality:
I honestly don't know why black people are said to be "never on time" but I guess it depends on the importance of the occasion because I know of black people who are very punctual for things that matter like work & job interviews etc. but come thirty or forty minutes late for events & get-togethers with their friends. I guess it has to do with consequences, if there are no consequences for arriving late - many black people will take their time.
Conclusion:
We simply need to look at ourselves & compare ourselves to developed lands & ask ourselves what it will take achieve a certain level of development. I feel that if we can feed ourselves, house ourselves & our people as well as express ourselves in our lands fully in our own languages - it would be the best outcome of any situation Africans are in. It would create a generation which has faith in it's land & more eager to comply with national law & national institutions. If we can re-Africanise / decolonise our lands while being fully capable of feeding ourselves & sheltering ourselves, it would be the greatest triumph any African generation before us — since colonisation — has ever achieved. I imagine that these above-mentioned stereotypes can often sound so damning as a young, black individual. Being made to feel responsible for the behaviour of an entire race when it's not the responsibility of any one person but rather the collective responsibility of every member of that race to do an introspection as to whether or not they are contributing towards the hatred other races have towards us.
