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The paper challenges common misconceptions that reduce Africa to a single story, noting that Africans are not one group and the continent includes 54 countries and more than 1,000 languages. It examines microaggressions experienced by African immigrants and U.S.-born children, including stereotypes about giraffes, “African language” claims, and assumptions about English proficiency. 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The paper links these narrow portrayals to misconceptions that harm children’s and families’ social understanding.","Answer",{"name":114,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":115},"What examples of microaggressions does the article describe?",{"text":116,"@type":112},"It recounts classmates asking whether children are neighbors with giraffes and elephants, whether grandparents have real houses, and whether people in Africa wear clothes. It also includes remarks like “There is not an African language” and comments questioning how well someone speaks English.",{"name":118,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":119},"How does the article connect multicultural awareness to identity development?",{"text":120,"@type":112},"It explains that multicultural awareness involves appreciating and understanding cultures without creating superiority or inferiority. It presents healthy, knowledgeable, confident identities as a core goal of anti-bias education that supports children’s success in related goals.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":123,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":125,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":127,"site_id":62},601315,1792092390,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":130},{"doc_id":127,"user_id":131,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":132,"doc_module":4,"category_id":34,"category_name":35,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":133,"file_id":134,"file_url":135,"file_type":136,"file_size":137,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":34,"language":138,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":139,"faqs":140,"seo_title":141,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":128,"read_time":142},3985747859855,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Using Texts to Accurately Represent Africa’s Cultures and Promote Healthy Personal and Social Identities among Children  \nRuth Facun-Granadozo, Olawale Olubowale and Chukwudebelu Franklin Ejiogu  \nIntroduction  \nWhat picture or word comes to mind when you hear Africa? Is it a picture of Simba, Tarzan, jungle, safari, giraffes, or zebras? Is it poverty, famine, war, malaria, or charity?” What factors or experiences have influenced your associations between Africa and the said words or pictures?  \nMany are surprised to learn that Africans are not all Black people, and Africa is not a single country. It is the second biggest continent in terms of landmass, and it has a bigger land area than Europe and North America combined. It consists of 54 countries, each representing unique cultures that the world could learn from and appreciate. However, if at all, Africans are often misrepresented or under-represented in popular books and media. They are often presented as a single group of people; hence, other peoples’ formed notion of Africans represents a single story (Adichie, 2009) . This single story needs to change because it does not represent many Africans’ lived experiences.  \nMisconceptions about African Cultures and Microaggression  \nIn the United States, the number of immigrants from different  \ncountries in Africa has significantly increased (Anderson, 2017) . In 2000, Africans made up 24% of all the foreign-born Black population in the United States. This figure went up to 39% in 2016 (Anderson & Lopez, 2018) . Because of this immigration pattern, there are more African immigrant students in preschools and K-12 classrooms. Many of these students are second-generation Americans. They are U. S.-born, and they have limited experiences with their home culture. They may have briefly visited their parents’ countries or not at all. What they know about their cultures of origin is what they learn from their  \nhomes and schools. African  \nfamilies preserve their language and culture through their daily home experiences and gathering with other families from their countries. Children learn to be proud of their heritage through these activities. However, outside these contexts, they often receive a different message.  \nOne of the authors had spoken to a couple of girls whose parents are from Zambia and Zimbabwe. These girls shared that their classmates asked if they were neighbors with giraffes and elephants, if their grandparents have real houses, and if people in Africa wear clothes. These girls came home upset that day. They had a deep conversation with their parents about what they could tell or show their peers if they gave such comments. One of the authors’ graduate students from Cameroon shared a similar experience when she was student teaching in the United States. Her fifth-grade students asked if they have computers, cars, and stores in Cameroon and if they run across giraffes and elephants in the streets.  \nIt is surprising to the authors that even college-educated adults seem to hold inaccurate concepts about people from Africa. This limited knowledge could appear as inappropriate comments against Africans. A Zimbabwean friend of the first author shared  \n12 Dimensions • Volume 50/Number 2  \nsomething that happened when she was having a statewide meeting of early childhood educators. They were passionately talking about how they could work with children who speak another language at home, such as Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and African. Hearing that they had included “African” as a language, this friend said, “There is not an African language!” The continent boasts more than 1,000 languages and dialects.  \nAfrican immigrants in the United States also receive other forms of hurtful comments from well-meaning adults. For instance, while inflight, someone told one of the authors, “I am surprised that, coming from Africa, you speak English that well.” Another received an email saying,“To Whom It May Concern,” eventhou","cbCaiu8TLnsUGUWD","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiu8TLnsUGUWD","pdf",194329,"English","# Introduction\n# Misconceptions about African Cultures and Microaggression\n# Identity Development and Multicultural Awareness","[{\"question\":\"Why does the article argue that popular portrayals of Africa need to change?\",\"answer\":\"It states that Africans are often misrepresented or under-represented as a single group, which does not match many Africans’ lived experiences. The paper links these narrow portrayals to misconceptions that harm children’s and families’ social understanding.\"},{\"question\":\"What examples of microaggressions does the article describe?\",\"answer\":\"It recounts classmates asking whether children are neighbors with giraffes and elephants, whether grandparents have real houses, and whether people in Africa wear clothes. It also includes remarks like “There is not an African language” and comments questioning how well someone speaks English.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article connect multicultural awareness to identity development?\",\"answer\":\"It explains that multicultural awareness involves appreciating and understanding cultures without creating superiority or inferiority. It presents healthy, knowledgeable, confident identities as a core goal of anti-bias education that supports children’s success in related goals.\"}]","Using Texts to Accurately Represent Africa’s Cultures and Promote Healthy Personal and Social Identities among Children | PDF",18]