It Is Time to Let the ‘African Mother’ Jokes Go

However, I would soon come across another short form video. This time, in the vein of ‘what you say’ vs. ‘what African parents hear’. Before I tapped on the video, I asked myself whether African parents had a special characteristic that led them to hear spoken words differently. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such characteristic. When I watched the video, my eyebrows furrowed. Created by PatZMB, its premise seemed simple: parents may react strongly when you share a personal life decision with them. But the execution seemed to support tropes of African backwardness. In the video, he said, ‘Mom, I just got my ears pierced,’ and, according to him, what his African mother heard was ‘I’m gay’. And when he said he was going out with his friend, what his African mother heard was ‘I’m going out to sell drugs.’ I was aghast. Why was the African mother figure portrayed as a one-dimensional caricature who was prone to misunderstanding?