A Rather Important Difference

A Rather Important Difference

I'm rather surprised to see this July 14, 2009 CNN report so openly discussing this very un-PC issue:

African immigrants to the United States say cartoonish caricatures and a Western media penchant for reporting on Africa's disease, hunger and war -- rather than the continent's successes -- trivialize their cultures. They complain they have trouble dispelling the stereotypes once they arrive in the States.
They concede, though, the myths run both ways and some say they were surprised to find their values more often aligned with those of white Americans than African-Americans.
...
N'daw emigrated from Dakar, Senegal, in 2001. She works in a hair-braiding salon and has met African-Americans who share her values of hard work and family, but in most cases, "we are raised differently, taught different values and held up to a different moral code."
...
If the Western media are doing Africans no favors, then the African media are also a disservice to African-Americans because it portrays them as criminals, some immigrants say.
Sandi Litia, 19, a Piney Woods graduate from Limulunga, Zambia, said she was initially scared of African-Americans because the African media show them "wearing clothes like gangsters and killing each other."
Nkosi concurred that African media "made it seem as if they were these aggressive people that did nothing constructive with their lives except occupy prison space."

Of course, much of the American media present American blacks in that same way. Another African student expresses his surprise at the racism he found here:

In Athens, Ezeamuzie found his ideals at odds with those who shared his skin color at Clarke Central High School, his first stint in a public school.
On his first day, he donned khakis, a button-down dress shirt and nice leather shoes. He caught the African-Americans' attention upon stepping into the cafeteria, he said.
"They give me the look," he said. "Why is this guy dressed like the white folks, like the preppy guys?"
Ezeamuzie didn't understand why so few black students were in his advanced-placement classes. He didn't understand the de facto lunchroom segregation or the accusing glances he got for eating with white classmates. One classmate called him a traitor and asked, "Do you not like black people?"
"My whole life I had reaped benefits from being in different circles and bridging them," so he wanted to fit in, he said.

And here's a statement that if a white person said, it would be a sign of racism:

Ezeamuzie and other Africans say they feel African-Americans too often dwell on slavery and the racism that has persisted for more than a century since the Emancipation Proclamation.
"We have all been tortured," said iReporter Vera Ezimora, 24, a Nigerian student living in Baltimore, Maryland. "Now that we are free, holding on to the sins of white men who have long died and gone to meet their maker is more torture than anything we have suffered."