GOOGLE - REMOVE BIAS AND MISLEADING WORLD MAP ON GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE
GOOGLE - REMOVE BIAS AND MISLEADING WORLD MAP ON GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE
- Do you know that Africa is the largest continent in the World?
- Do you know the current World Map is fake and inaccurate?
- Why do you think this lie has endured for centuries, and who looses from the truth?
¨Imagine what it means for Africans to know their actual strength, wealth, and place in the world... The world benefits from Africa, however, nothing but negative information is projected by powers like ¨Google¨. Why is this?¨
The Google Search engine supports and spreads negative views of Africa, Africans, and their descendants. A quick Google search on ¨Africa¨, and ¨countries in Africa¨, will result in information and images that are out-rightly untrue, disrespectful, and undignified of the African Continent and its people.
This petition is not directed at Google Maps, but rather it is focused on the Google Search Engine. We would like censorship of other websites that publishes the wrong World Map, due to its bias nature and the implication it has on Africa, and Africans.
History has been unfair to Africa, a place where more than 1.1 billion of the world’s population call home. Regardless, myths and stereotypes regarding this beautiful part of the World still endure while its people watch in silence, reminiscence of how their ancestors watched helplessly as the injustice of Slavery was dished out on them and their loved ones.
Africa´s oppressors enriched themselves with African wealth while creating racial theories to legitimize injustice and provide other reasons for Africa’s perceived backwardness and incapacity to develop.
These myths and stereotypes are untrue, however, companies like Google have unethically used their position to disseminate inaccurate information about the African continent and its people. Thus, we wish to do the following;
- have Google remove any Inaccurate World Map from its search results,
- provide accurate World Map information on the Web,
- sensitizing World Map authorities, academia’s, and other related institution, on the need to replace the current World Map with the correct version,
- research into the reasons behind the publishing of inaccurate data surrounding the World Map and the implications that this inaccurate World Map has had on the development of the African Continent.
These are preludes to so much discriminatory information published by the Google Search engines that we wish to address over time. thus, we seek for your support.
The people of Africa have been traumatized enough. European colonizers denigrated them for centuries as “subhumans” and denied them recognition of any meaningful intellectual, cultural, and historical accomplishments or experiences.
From the 17th century, the argument was that Africa was a place of suffering, war, disease, famine, and poverty; Colonialism went even further to call Africa – a land of fantastical beasts and cannibals, slaves, ‘backward races’ and so on – the colonial powers managed to convince themselves that they were subjugating Africans (and others) for their own good.
Unfortunately, these negative perceptions persisted throughout the 20th century and are still lingering in the minds of Westerners even today. However, Africa is a continent with much to offer the rest of the world. Six of the 10 fastest-growing economies are located in Africa, accounting for 46 percent of the world’s diamonds; 75 percent of the world’s Platinum Group Metals; 21 percent of the world’s total Gold exports; with the 7th largest oil exporter being Nigeria, which is one country in Africa.
The classification of African countries as belonging to LDCs/LICs and Third World countries, how Africa is portrayed in the media, films, and literature, and images used by NGO fundraising campaigns, however, we do not lay sole blame on the non-African agency as if Africans were passive in this phenomenon, and Any African-based NGO/CSO seeking funding from the West will usually strive to use derogatory labels and images in order to capture the attention and compassion of the donors. Local politicians will seek to report the negatives of the governments in power to the donors and the local media continues to cover Africa the same way mainstream Western media do. African governments continue to do all in their capacity to impress Western donors and investors so that they continue pouring aid and investment into the continent. All this shows how active Africans have been in determining and assisting the West to continue perceiving the continent negatively.
Conclusion
As long as Africa continues to behave the way it behaves now, negative perceptions will continue to persist in the minds of many people in the West. And as long as negative perceptions persist, Africa’s quest for a locally driven inclusive and sustainable development cannot be achieved. As such, Africa’s current and future development continues to depend on how Africans view themselves before how they seek to be viewed by the West. That is why we wish to take the lead in promoting a positive portrayal of the continent.
Reference
§ https://www.aperianglobal.com/debunking-common-myths-stereotypes-africa/
§ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/01/africa-history-western-eyes