I came across the above tweet on Saturday, and couldn't help but notice how many people thought it was stupid. Of course, the question comes from a place of ignorance, but this is one of the most thought provoking things I have seen online recently.

Ebola: The Facts

Unlike the flu, Ebola is not an airborne disease. It is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of a person suffering from it. It therefore cannot be transmitted through casual contact, or through coughing/sneezing. People infected with Ebola also cannot spread the virus until the symptoms begin to show. What are the symptoms? They include, but are not limited to, diarrhoea, vomiting, body aches and haemorrhaging. Pretty hard to miss.

Many people have suggested banning flights to affected areas (such as Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia) even when this has been repeatedly said to be a bad idea. Others have gone even further to suggest banning flights to the entire African continent. This is entirely unnecessary given the facts above. A person in the contagious stage of the disease would also likely be too ill to board a plane, anyway.

Concerns about Ebola and its spread have led to many outrageous suggestions, but these are a thin mask for the real problem: the continued discrimination by the rest of the world against people from the African continent, and people with black skin; and the continued thought that these people are subhuman, a “them” that need to be kept very far away from “us”.

Africa is a Country

How do I know this?

Soon after the outbreak began, a South Korean bar stopped accepting Africans “due to Ebola virus.” Two Rwandese students have been stopped from attending classes in the USA “due to Ebola fears.” Also in the USA, children were pulled out of school because their principal had recently travelled to Zambia. A college in Texas rejected a Nigerian applicant, citing that “the college is not accepting international students from countries with confirmed Ebola cases.” (Well, I hope they are also rejecting American applicants, seeing as there have been confirmed cases there). A university in Florida cancelled its African journalists program “because of Ebola fears.” A Ghanaian student was arrested and quarantined in the Czech Republic, yet he only had a common cold. Such stories can be expected to continue streaming in.

American leaders continually refer to Africa as a country. Mashable also saw it fit to call Rwanda “An African country” in a tweet about their screening of incoming visitors from the USA. Why not just say Rwanda? Would they refer to Spain as “A European country”? Or the USA as “A North American Country”? I think not.

This is not surprising. In fact, such discrimination is predictable and extremely banal.

Rwanda, Ghana and Zambia have had no Ebola cases, and Nigeria (and Senegal) has beaten Ebola in a way that will continue to be studied and cited for years to come as a best case practice. West Africa is comprised of 17 countries, only 3 of which the WHO thinks you need to worry about when it comes to Ebola. Africa is huge: as a whole it comprises of 54 countries, but this is too much for the rest of the world — we must not confuse them with facts. They prefer to think of Africa as a homogeneous land mass full of black people indistinguishable from each other. I have written at length about this before.

Graphics like these should not have to be made, but here we are in the 21st Century, making them.

Africa has long been portrayed in two ways by the rest of the world: as a scary, dirty, hard to understand place, and as this place where the rest of the world comes to “do good” because the continent, sorry “country”, desperately needs help, be it through colonization, development work or Christianity: this is the root of the white saviour industrial complex. The continent is a playing ground for the fears of the rest of the world. Its people have long been treated as savages because of the colour of their skin, and their different cultural practices. Newsweek even ran an issue with an ape on the front page when talking about Ebola.

This has led to the continued homogenization and othering of Africa. The fear and stigma created also lead to further marginalization of African migrants and travellers, an already marginalized and maligned group. This is why the aforementioned cases happened: because the people concerned were black, and from Africa.

This mass panic over Ebola is reminiscent of the panic of the 80s/90s over AIDS, in which Africa became AIDS, and AIDS became Africa. People began to theorize that Africans were hypersexualized perverts, hence why the disease was so prevalent on the continent: they had too much sex with too many people. The good thing is that since then, attitudes towards Africa and AIDS have somewhat improved, though occasionally one will encounter bigots who still conflate Africa with AIDS.

Is Ebola a Country?

For now, to be walking around with black skin and holding a passport from an African country is to be travelling dangerously. It is exposing oneself to marginalization and stigma at any point, wherever you are. It is to risk being quarantined for showing symptoms of the common cold, or being given poor treatment while showing symptoms of Ebola. It is to be blamed for tarnishing “the rest of the world” with this “African scourge.” It is to inspire irrational fear. It is to be seen as an agent of suffering, only good for causing the suffering of “others” who are more human, and more deserving of good health, sympathy and humane news coverage. It is to be unwelcome everywhere you go — viewed as a nuisance; a pestilence — and, like a pestilence, it is to have people look forward to your demise and rejoice in your suffering. It is to have the plight of innocent human beings compared to terrorism.

And when this is done, guess what? We will find yet another reason to make life for black people unliveable. It was AIDS in the 80s/90s, it is Ebola now, and as sure as the rising of the sun, “the rest of the world” will come up with something new — new reasons why black people are unwelcome in certain spaces, why their bodies are disposable, and why their lives don’t matter. Africa will continue to exist in order to offer a backdrop against which to contrast the “model civilization” that is the West — as a warning as to what happens when “everything goes wrong”. We will continue to build our civilization on the foundation of black suffering.

To the lady who asked the question, I would say yes. Ebola is a country — a “country” formerly known as Africa.