One Powerful Illustration Shows Exactly What's Wrong With How the West Talks About Ebola
Hi everybody,
I just wanted to share with you an article I found yesterday about the way western countries are dealing with the ebola issue.
I found the illustration pretty interesting and powerful, so here come a post dedicated to that article.
A quote from the article : " The Ebola epidemic hit a particular nerve with the artist. "People in the African continent are more regarded as an abstract statistic than a patient in the U.S. or Europe," he said. "How many individual stories do we know about any African patients? None. They are treated as an indistinguishable crowd." "
Here is the article ! http://mic.com/articles/100618/one-powerful-illustration-shows-exactly-what-s-wrong-with-media-coverage-of-ebola
See ya
~Inès Allag
Hey, thanks for sharing this very interesting article. I just saw it after I read the Ebola news on Hurriyet, Turkish newspaper. It was about the building who was under quarontine in Paris. And after reading this article, I realized that even in Turkey, we do not see many news on Ebola unless it is in Europe or USA.
ReplyDeleteDuncan's "otherness" is an amazing point to look at. The idea about him bringing the virus shows the racial discrimination underneath. Just because he is African, people will assume the worst at first.However, I think it is also connected to 9/11 in a way. Because after 9/11, there was this huge fear against not only Arab-Americans but also all non-Americans. They are in constant fear of others. It also helps making him suspicious.
Ezgi ULUSOY
Great article--I as thinking the same thing as I was listening to BBC coverage of the man hospitalized who later died in Dallas, TX after arriving in the US. We knew his name, his background, where he was traveling from...but the deaths in Africa remain statistics. I will say that the BBC has, in general, very insightful coverage of this issues, including regular interviews with the German doctor who "discovered" the virus many years ago. He's genuinely interested in moving the conversation away from statistics and trying to get the Western world to mobilize around humane and culturally sensitive treatments in Africa. I can't recall his name at the moment...
ReplyDeleteAlso, anyone want to link this to the Hollywod film, World War Z, featuring Brad Pitt as a white, liberal "freedom fighter"? I see many parallels....
The scariest thing is that I had never realized the racism in it till you mentioned it! I think I can say it is one of the effects of Hollywood. It makes everything so great and attractive that you do not really realize what is going on really there underneath unless you watch it while keeping these things in mind.
DeleteI watched the movie again after realizing how many things I have missed during the two times that I watched this movie. I will only mention one thing to hear also other people's thoughts on this. Why the hell are all Doctors and important army members white? (Pitt's friend who does not have lots of place in the movie and also who has not enough power to keep Pitt's family on board. Even his celebration was through Pitt's achievement of finding the cure) I think this was one of the most apparent "white supremacy" idea in the movie
Ezgi ULUSOY