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August 23, 2002
Just give me a fucking target
I'm not quite certain what to make of this, to be honest.
BBC NEWS | Africa | Africa cocoa slavery 'exaggerated'New research says that reports of children being traded as "cocoa slaves" on plantations in West Africa have been heavily exaggerated.
Last year, Western lobbyists severely criticised multinational chocolate companies for using cocoa cultivated by child slaves.
But detailed research by the Nigerian-based International Institute for Tropical Agriculture says that while child labour is a major problem on farms in poor countries, very few of the children were traded or could be described as slaves.
Most children interviewed by the institute gave the realistic, but rather undramatic, explanation that they were searching for work and a better life.
On the one hand, it seems convenient, let us say, that a group based in Nigeria would dispute the original reports.
On the other, the Western media does tend to present Africa as a land of unrelenting horror -- haven't seen anything about Ethiopia and Eritrea releasing all POWs here, for example, because that's good news.
The unrelenting horror thing helps maintain the idea that those of us fortunate enough to have had ancestors enslaved here are far better off than Africans who actually live there, a notion WriteWoman noted Dinesh D'Souza expanding on on NPR a few days back.
It's like how reporting on slavery in the Sudan usually seems almost gleeful in pointing out how backwards and evil those people are. Leading some people here to act as apologists or deny it exists, which isn't really helping.
Screw it. Back to pop culture with me.
Posted by Aaron at August 23, 2002 08:30 PM
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