Dark or black connotes fear, foreboding, and evil. For example, a recent U.S. ex-president, is a principal in a mining operation in Zaire, a country the size of the U.S., West of the Mississippi. Subsequent research has rebuffed such unsubstantiated theory. However, just recently, an article appeared in a local newspaper citing DNA studies of a man in Zaire who had AIDS in 1959. Headlines suggested Africa is a country rather than fifty-four sovereign nations.
Most people have no understanding of world geography, let alone specific nations in Africa.
Ostensibly, such detailed coverage was important so as to heighten a sense of national empathy. Local residents were interviewed to add authenticity of how real lives were utterly disrupted or destroyed by the heinous crime. The media industry practice of consistently practicing the opposite is deeply troubling. Dark Continent is an oxymoron of the highest order. Ptolemy the geographer, living in Egypt during Roman times, meaning Egypt was under foreign domination and not in control of her own national affairs, suggested southern Africa was connected to Asia by a land bridge.