Labels And Viruses - Chris 'Preach' Smith

Photo Credit: Slate/Reuters

Okay. I’m beginning this article with a disclaimer.

First off, I don’t plan on going into the impact of the
Ebola virus cases - all three of them confirmed - has
had on mainstream media in full detail. I will call out
one thing - the rampant fear-mongering that exists
that they fuel. And more importantly, how that adds
to the tide of ignorance that is a calling card of late in
this country. It all boils down to labels. 

I’ve been thinking about that, the knee-jerk labeling
that has gone on in these recent weeks. Look at the
case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who 
contracted the disease while helping a young woman
who was sick herself with it and then came into the 
country without fully disclosing he had been in contact
with anyone with the virus. As his condition was then
discovered and it worsened, you had officials in Dallas,
Texas look to possibly criminally charge someone on 
their deathbed. Think about that for a second. Rather
than cop to the fact that they were not fully prepared
for such a medical crisis as this(as evidenced by Nina 
Pham, an attending nurse becoming affected by Ebola)
they would rather crucify Duncan. I’m going to pause
here and say that he should’ve fully disclosed what he
was doing. But looking to criminally charge someone 
after the fact when that person is at death’s door is 
avoiding the real issues. I mean, even Governor Rick 
Perry would agree - if you could get him away from his
‘trip’ to Europe long enough. And as that happens, we
see a gradual direction of labeling Liberians and those
from other affected nations like Guinea and Sierra Leone
as ‘high risk’ to the point where we are now setting up
flight screenings and discussing travel bans. Nations in
the Caribbean have already begun. 

What it reminds me of is when HIV/AIDS had its rise 
in the United States back in the 1980’s. I was a young
child, but news about that disease hovered at the fringes
of my world. Labels came to the forefront then, too. There
used to be an insult thrown around on the playground:
‘African booty-scratcher.’ There were two cutting sides to
that. To be African was to be different in the eyes of some
who fell for the hype of what you were told those from the
continent were. The other sinister edge rose around that
time as some ‘scientific’ research tried to claim that the 
virus was due to the consumption of diseased monkeys. 
The fallout also hit Haitian emigrants as well - I distinctly
remember a local school coming under fire for not allowing
kids who had arrived here to go because they feared they
could be carriers of HIV. Now such labeling rears its ugly
head again because of the same old strain that we still
can’t fully address here in the United States - racism.

There’s close to 9,000 who have died in West Africa to
date because of the Ebola virus. Yet you still have people
who feel that Liberians & others have brought this on themselves
solely because of ‘cultural reasons’. Let’s break it down:
there have been incidents where people have been tricked
into thinking they could cure the disease through some
form of ‘bush medicine’. But the greater issue in the 
affected countries has been an infrastructure too weakened
by civil war and crippling corruption over the past few 
decades. But that information is drowned out because
that doesn’t garner ratings for networks. It doesn’t have
more value than clicks. As I write this, Nigeria has effectively
declared itself free from the virus. But there’s a nagging need
for outlets here to constantly degrade those of African descent
no matter what. And some of our own fall for it in different
ways. It’s compelled Liberians here to begin a social media
campaign with the hashtag ‘I Am Not A Virus’. And it’s a damn
shame it has come to that. The media at large has helped to
add to this labeling with near hysterical updates on an hourly
basis. You’ve got Navarro College in Texas issuing a statement
saying that they wouldn’t accept students from those affected
countries and only backtracking after the outroar online. There
are people who are believing that it’s a manufactured crisis by
the government. All this flying in the face of common sense.
Take into account that there’s an outcry of an ‘outbreak’ in this
country when the amount of confirmed cases are less in number
than the amount of people who run Young Thug fan clubs. You’ve 
got people flying on planes dressed in plastic now. And some
people being heavily germophobic when the day before they
would cough on your neck on the train without covering their
mouth. Don’t be surprised if you hear of immigrants from West
African countries getting assaulted in the next couple of months.
Why? Because there are those here who will always trumpet 
xenophobia as patriotic exceptionalism.

Am I telling you not to be concerned about Ebola? No. What I am
saying is, exercise some sense. Do your research and think critically.
Because diseases do spread. Labels spread. And ignorance spreads faster
than anything.