The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/25/othering-ebola-and-the-history-and-politics-of-pointing-at-immigrant
This week’s Newsweek magazine cover features an image of a chimpanzee behind the words, “A Back Door for Ebola: Smuggled Bushmeat Could Spark a U.S. Epidemic.” This cover story is problematic for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that there is virtually no chance that “bushmeat” smuggling could bring Ebola to America. (The term is a catchall for non-domesticated animals consumed as a protein source; anyone who hunts deer and then consumes their catch as venison in the United States is eating bushmeat without calling it that.) While eating bushmeat is fairly common in the Ebola zone, the vast majority of those who do consume it are not eating chimpanzees. Moreover, the current Ebola outbreak likely had nothing to do with bushmeat consumption.
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Newsweek’s piece is in the worst tradition of what journalist Howard French calls “#Ooga-Booga” journalism, the practice of writing in exoticizing and dehumanizing ways about Africa. In case you haven’t read the #Newsweek story, here’s one summary, from a political scientist on Twitter:
siddhartha mitter @siddhmi
Africans! Bushmeat! Rituals! Immigrants! Smuggling! Contamination! Monkeys! The Bronx! Disease! Heat & Stench! Bats! Pandemic! FEARFEARFEAR!
4:26 PM - 23 Aug 2014
