Saving Africa in blackface

A German UNICEF ad will help repair 350 schools and educate 100,000 African children. It's all just great - except for the blackface part.

"I am waiting for my last day in school; the children in Africa are waiting for their first one," reads the slogan hovering alongside a young German girl who's just cute as a button. It would be just another run-of-the-mill solidarity campaign, were it not for the puzzling fact that her face, stretched into a farcical grin, is covered in mud. Let's save Africa. In blackface.

I was a bit appalled, but laughed in spite of myself. I can appreciate satire. Lord knows after Kate Moss's Nubian makeover and Gwyneth Paltrow gone native - OK, more Cherokee Indian than Chewa, actually, but why get lost in the details? - the debate over celebrity advocacy for Africa could use some.

But an email exchange with UNICEF headquarters in New York revealed that this children's minstrel show was not, as I had hoped, the latest in a long tradition of internet hoaxes trafficking in bad taste. It was an actual ad campaign to promote an actual plan to give African children an education: UNICEF Germany's "Schools for Africa" initiative. All I could do was shake my head.

But I'm not here now to jump up and down on people who have good intentions but painfully miss the mark. ( Once is enough.) Rather, I'd like to present the results of a highly unscientific survey of fellow bloggers, family, neighbours and Gchat friends who were all asked the simple question, "Are these ads effective?" I've lumped all of them into oversimplified categories so as not to tax your brain and to save time. No offense intended:

Liberal, politically correct Brits and Americans from major urban centers: Weird blackface children's minstrel show. Is the idea that children in Africa have mud on their faces? Let's make general statements about Africa as if the whole place were just one big desert or tropic where everyone wanders around naked. When everybody's white, blackface is a hoot! Shockingly racist. How do organizations like UNICEF still not get it in 2007? Poor Germans. They mean well.

Germans, Europeans from elsewhere on the continent, and white people from just about everywhere else where black people aren't: I don't get what the big deal is. They are helping. They are building schools. To be offended by these ads is to draw negative meaning out a clearly positive effort, and to grossly misunderstand their point. These ads have the potential to shake certain types of people out of their stupor and thus raise awareness for the cause. The message is clear. The young kids are showing their solidarity with Africans. It must be so bad for these poor children. I would love to donate some money.

Afro-Europeans, African Americans and African Africans (of all colors): WTF? When will this sh*t end? It's awful when monstrous racist imagery like this proves the racism of "liberal," "do-gooder" organizations like UNICEF much more than even the most scathing satire. I might have understood a little beer-fest group being this culturally hamfisted but not them! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Condescending. Makes the children in Africa sound like non-agents. Mad! Angry! Freaking insulting, but I'm not surprised. Reminds me of old school movies from the Charlie Chaplin era when black people were painted black. Bullsh*t. I give up.

Clearly we're not all on the same page.

When I contacted UNICEF in New York, a spokesman told me that the German campaign had raised funds from private donors to construct or repair 350 schools and train thousands of teachers, with an impact on 100,000 children. Those children didn't actually get to have a voice in my little survey. I'd like to think if they did, they'd say, "We want to go to school."

In a letter, the German Committee for UNICEF, which pulled the advertisements last week, explained that it "did not receive any negative reaction from the German public" and that the message they wanted to communicate was "children may look different but are equal."

The ads reached their target audience, without causing offense. Money was raised. New schools will be built. If lives are going to be changed for the better, does image matter?

Actually, it does. There are a million ways to communicate a positive message without unwittingly reinforcing the same tired stereotypes: Africa is a continent, poverty is black, it's up to whites to represent, and to save, Africa. If we are not sensitive to basic differences in attitude and perception, to how Africans might react to images of themselves, conjured by media they do not control, how can we begin to know enough about the needs of the people we want to help to do no harm, let alone offer right solutions?

The cultural ignorance separating Africans from their saviours cannot be bridged by trite attempts at solidarity. You don't get inside a man's head, show you care, or help an indifferent public to relate by painting yourself his colour. Adopting his babies won't help either. What separates us is culture. And the only way to understand a man's experience of his life, from his perspective, is to know him.

But I have a nagging suspicion that many of the people trying to save Africa - including the architects of this and other ad campaigns - don't really spend a lot of time hanging out with Africans. Or black people for that matter.

If you're an A-list Hollywood actress or a housewife from Bavaria, and you're reading this now, I don't want you to stop saving Africa. But know that we will never get it right until we actually start listening.

Don't know where to go out and buy an African? Media and celebrity may be white, but there are plenty of Africans already out there, telling their own stories, even if their megaphones aren't quite as loud as some.

Saving Africa is fashionable, and is likely to remain so for a good while. But raising awareness is not enough. We've got to educate each other and move beyond simplistic representations of the challenges we face. We can be smarter than this.