(My family are Irish and Ghanaian. It is not entirely uncommon for people to do this about the Irish, in fact - go watch P.S. I Love You to see some bizarre Celtic exoticisim. But mainly I see it with regard to a kind of generic image of Africa, so there I concentrate.)
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... actual study of the history of Asanteman would show it to be, for centuries, a multi-ethnic trading empire, with all that entails, possessing a pretty interesting and morally complex political arrangement (I once reviewed a book on related matters: http://www.whyeverythingcostsmoney.com/the-political-system-of-asanteman.html …)...
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...But this kind of patronising "noble people more attuned with their bodies and the land" nonsense persists, applied en masse to an undifferentiated `Africans', often by folk who take themselves to be sympathetic, sometimes even by black folk who don't know our actual history...
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...and it is just intensely annoying. I realise, of course, I am not saying anything new here: patronising noble savage myths may seem benevolent but actually they're bad! But, hey, twitter is for venting, and since people persist in doing the bad thing it does seem worth noting.
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