Racism Concerning Ebola

Eli Goodman

10/26/14                          Racism Concerning Ebola

I think we’ve all been aware of the Ebola epidemic, and it’s major presence in the news. Thomas Eric Duncan, a black, poor Liberian national traveled to the United States carrying the fatal virus unknowingly. 

What is Ebola?

Ebola is a virus, also known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever; a rare and deadly disease caused by infection of an Ebola virus strain.

Obviously this is a pretty frightening problem. The fact that can cannot handle it with American Medicine shows the type of league Ebola is in. Duncan is said to have contracted the disease while helping to transport a woman with the disease, a heroic and selfless act. However the American media is demonizing him. He has been turned into an “unsympathetic” figure contagious with disease. This has also made Africa look like a “diseased” continent, at fault for infecting citizens and innocent visitors.

When Duncan was looking to check into a hospital, he was turned down at a Dallas Hospital because he was an “uninsured Liberian immigrant” who simply suffered from a “low--grade virus disease”. It’s hard to think that this would have been the case if he were white. 

In a New Jersey school, Rwandan (a country 2600 miles away from an infected area) children were pressured to stay home, a high school soccer player of Guinean descent faced chants during an away game like, “Ebola!”, a building in Berlin went into lock down after an African woman fainted, and politicians are crying out for immigration restrictions. Racism and Xenophobia are strongly intertwined with this chaos. It shows the ignorance of knowledge of the location of African countries and it makes the entire continent of Africa look diseased rather than a few infected areas.