By: Rae Sharman Sampson-McMillan, LCSW-R
September 8, 2026
For generations, many of us have looked at a map of the world without questioning what we were seeing. Africa was there. Europe was there. North America was there. Their relative sizes seemed to be matters of geography rather than interpretation.
A map was simply a map.
But maps, like many of the institutions and systems we inherit, are not necessarily neutral.
In September 2026, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly supported an African-led resolution encouraging the use of world maps that more accurately represent the relative size of continents. The initiative challenges the continued dominance of the Mercator projection, developed in the sixteenth century for navigation but still widely used to represent the world.
The Mercator projection significantly enlarges land masses farther from the equator while diminishing the relative visual size of equatorial regions. Greenland, for example, can appear comparable in size to Africa, although Africa is approximately fourteen times larger.
That distortion raises a question extending far beyond cartography:
What else have we learned to see without questioning who created the picture?
More than two decades ago, I developed Oppressiveisms™ as an umbrella term for naming systems of oppression together rather than addressing racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, xenophobia, linguicism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression as though they operate independently.
My years in social work taught me something fundamental:
The systems do not take turns.
People rarely experience one form of oppression neatly separated from another. Racism can intersect with classism. Sexism can be reinforced by economic inequality. Xenophobia can operate alongside racism and linguicism. Ableism can intensify the consequences of poverty.
But the same principle applies beyond individuals and communities.
Nations do not experience systems of domination one at a time either. Neither does history.
Africa provides a powerful example.
European colonialism was not simply the occupation of African land. It involved control over resources, labor, political institutions, education, language, religion, cultural practices, and systems of knowledge. European powers also drew borders across the continent, often with little regard for existing ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political relationships.
Colonialism therefore involved more than controlling territory. It involved the power to name, classify, divide, represent, and define.
Africa was studied. Africa was categorized. Africa was divided. Africa was mapped.
And much of what the world learned about Africa was filtered through institutions possessing the political, economic, and military power to define it.
This is where Oppressiveisms™ becomes particularly useful.
Colonialism cannot be completely separated from racism. Racism cannot be separated from economic exploitation. Economic exploitation cannot be separated from the extraction of natural resources. Resource extraction cannot be separated from global systems of wealth and power. Migration cannot always be separated from conflict, climate change, poverty, borders, and global inequality.
These forces are interconnected, and understanding their cumulative impact requires us to examine the relationships among them rather than treating each as an isolated phenomenon.
One of the most enduring characteristics of oppression is its ability to become so deeply embedded in institutions and everyday life that what was constructed begins to appear natural.
A map hangs on a classroom wall.
A textbook tells history primarily from the perspective of the colonizer.
A child’s accent is interpreted as evidence of limited ability.
A community shaped by decades of discriminatory policies is simply described as “poor.”
A border drawn by colonial powers becomes an unquestioned national boundary.
Eventually, we stop seeing the decisions, histories, and systems behind these realities.
We simply see reality.
That is why the movement to represent Africa at its true size matters.
Changing a map will not erase colonialism, redistribute wealth, resolve conflicts, return extracted resources, or eliminate racism. But representation matters because representation shapes consciousness. Maps influence how generations of children imagine nations, continents, power, and their own place in the world.
There is something profound about African nations collectively declaring:
You have not even been seeing us at our true size.
That statement is geographical, but it is also historical, political, educational, and psychological.
For centuries, Africa has been diminished in ways extending far beyond its representation on a map. Its civilizations have been minimized, its intellectual traditions overlooked, its resources extracted, its people enslaved and colonized, and its cultures too often interpreted through stereotypes created elsewhere.
Perhaps correcting the map, then, is also part of correcting the story.
Oppressiveisms™ asks us to look beneath what appears normal and examine the overlapping systems of power that helped make it so. It asks us not only to name oppression when it is obvious, but also to recognize it when its consequences have become so familiar that they escape our attention.
The question before us, therefore, is larger than which map projection we should use.
It is about who has historically possessed the power to draw the map, define the borders, name the people, control the resources, produce the knowledge, and tell the story.
And it is about what happens when those who have historically been mapped, named, categorized, and defined by others reclaim the authority to define themselves.
Africa is not asking permission to appear at its true size.
It is insisting on being seen as it truly is.
About the Author
Rae Sharman Sampson-McMillan, LCSW-R, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker based in New York with a career spanning NYC Child Welfare and Emergency Domestic Violence Services in clinical, management, and executive leadership roles, including having served as Chief of Staff in the Division of Child Protection within the NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) — one of the largest child welfare agencies in the United States. She holds a Master’s
Degree in Social Work (MSW) from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s Degree (BSc) from
Fordham University, and is the recipient of the NASW-NYC Mid-Career Exemplary Leadership Award. She is the originator of Oppressiveisms™, a word she coined in 2002, and the developer and author of its framework — A Transformative Framework: Magnified, Collective, Clarified and Inclusive for Social Justice and Public Well-Being — further explored at
oppressiveisms.com. She has authored and published related Oppressiveisms™ articles. She currently works as an independent consultant on the Oppressiveisms™ framework.
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