That Newsweek cover story is from last August, and so is this criticism of it, "The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place," which I saw this morning (I think) on the "Most Read" list in the sidebar at The Washington Post.
I see that the Newsweek cover also has the words "Post-Post Racial America" (referring to a different article) and the choice of a chimpanzee rather than a fruit bat (the creature most closely associated with the current outbreak), so Newsweek does seem to be trying to insinuate itself into the magazine-buyer's subconscious. Also: "back door." What's your first association? I asked Meade, and his was the same as mine, and I asked Google too, and it agreed, putting this as the top hit. The ape threatens rape... anal rape... fatal anal rape.
Now, let's read The Washington Post article. It's written by 2 assistant professors Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne, who study, respectively, "African politics, conflict, and development" and "identity, public opinion, political behavior, and policy aimed at improving the human condition, with a focus on African countries." They review the history of depicting "Africans as hyper-sexualized savages" and they define and deploy the term "othering":
Newsweek’s use of a chimpanzee to represent a scientifically invalid story about an African disease is a classic case of othering. It suggests that African immigrants are to be feared, and that apes — and African immigrants who eat them — could bring a deadly disease to the pristine shores of the United States of America....
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....
The long history of associating immigrants and disease in America and the problematic impact that has on attitudes toward immigrants should make us sensitive to the impact of “othering” African immigrants to the United States in the midst of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Scare-mongering about infinitesimally small risks in one context serves no purpose to the greater good of trying to curb disease transmission and relieve people’s suffering in another context.
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Could I call this typical leftist normal-shaming? I think so.
The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place
Sorry, but anybody who has traveled to Africa or for most any part of the equatorial zone will tell you that they have lots of diseases, that are unknown in the first world, hard to treat, and easy for a Westerner to catch. And lots of people diseased with those diseases.
My shot record for SE Asia had so many items on it, the ones I did recognize were scary enough, Cholera, Yellow Fever, Blubonic Plague.
Dirty speaks for itself.
It's Newsweek. About as relevant and influential as Susan Sontag.
This is just Newsweek being Newsweek: Still blaming Bush for everything and even has his picture on the cover 6 years after he left office.
Funny how the authors of the WP article note that "Ebola’s jump from its animal reservoir to humans is an incredibly rare event", yet the article they link to says "Transmission from the reservoir species to man or other end hosts might therefore be an
infrequent event". How do you get from infrequest to incredibly rare?
@dbp - nicely done!
When I first went to India (2005) for work it was not clear that I wouldn't be out in the boonies, so I got about seventy-eleven inoculations, including Japanese Encephalitis. That last was a $200 shot and I kind of balked.
The ID doc gently explained that India had every other disease in the world (much like Australia has a version of every dangerous animal) and that many of them would kill you even if you got to a world class medical center. So I got the shot.
I love going to India, but it is generally dirty, there is a lot of disease, sanitation is hit-or-miss even in world class hotels, and it's a long way from home.
I understand Africa to be even more challenging but can't wait to go there - after i get all my kids through college.
_XC
The picture is adorable, the article is stupid. Typical Newsweek.
Newsweek’s use of a chimpanzee to represent a scientifically invalid story about an African disease is a classic case of othering. It suggests that African immigrants are to be feared, and that apes — and African immigrants who eat them — could bring a deadly disease to the pristine shores of the United States of America....
There is a story in Spillover where the guy is talking to one of the villagers from a town that was hit hard by Ebola. He said they got it because they found a dead, rotting chimpanzee in the forest and brought it home for dinner. They learned from that experience that it was a bad idea to do that. My understanding, though, is that the biggest danger is for the people who actual butcher the meat.
Lyme disease is pretty nasty. I urge Africans to avoid the Northeastern US like the plague. Newsweek is a known neural toxin so I would also suggest it is to be avoided at all costs.
Life proliferates most abundantly in conditions that are best suited for life. Africa and other warm areas have more biological diversity than colder and dryer areas so why would one expect them to have the same number of disease organisms (who are also life forms ) as the colder and dyer areas?
Funny how the authors of the WP article note that "Ebola’s jump from its animal reservoir to humans is an incredibly rare event",
Wait what???? Somebody needs to go back to school. Or read a book. Or three.
The comments at WaPo are quite distracted by something the authors called a "Sidenote": "on the word bushmeat: why don’t we just call it 'wild game,' the same term we use for non-domesticated meat animals sometimes hunted and consumed in the United States – some of which has also been known to threaten human handlers with disease (e.g., deer, elk, armadillos, rabbit, etc.)?"
Commenters try to school the authors on the distinctive meaning of "bushmeat," which just can't be what our American hunters are bringing home. More "othering," no?
I almost bought Newsweek. But they didn't have change for a five and I left my checkbook at home.
"Lyme disease is pretty nasty. I urge Africans to avoid the Northeastern US like the plague."
Speaking of the plague, watch out for the American West. Prairie dogs.
A close-up picture of a fruit bat would have been more frightening to me.
Wasn't it Newsweek that darkened OJ's mug shot for the cover?
Liberians call bushmeat "bushmeat" by the way.
The Drill SGT said...
Sorry, but anybody who has traveled to Africa or for most any part of the equatorial zone will tell you that they have lots of diseases, that are unknown in the first world, hard to treat, and easy for a Westerner to catch. And lots of people diseased with those diseases.
Sounds like somebody didn't pay enough attention to the army training videos. :)
One of the guys in my training group in the Peace Corps (in Liberia) developed a weird neurological disorder about two months into our time there. Affected his vision. The doctors basically said, these are the weird tropical things we just don't try to figure out. You get a ticket home, pronto.
Another guy got these weird deep boils all over his back. Disgusting. Evidently he sweated a lot and somehow that caused the boils.
"The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place,"
Have the authors ever been to Africa? Everything I have read and seen supports the idea that Africa is dirty and disease ridden. That's what living in abject poverty means.
Yes, immigrants of different ethnicities can never be blamed for importing diseases not native to a region. Just ask the Mohawks.
Oh, and, sadly, yes, Irish immigrants did import typhus and Italian immigrants did import cholera, and other European ethnic groups brought other contagions with them. Why in the hell do you think they had quarantine hospitals at Ellis Island and other immigration hubs?
Liberians are generally a very clean people. They usually bathe twice a day. Their clothes are always washed and pressed (using a charcoal powered iron). But it's tough to stay clean when the dirt roads get wet.
Always wear shoes - always. Little kids poop by the sides of the paths. Every day I came upon little stinky piles of shit, usually very soft and runny.
Crap, I had a whole thing about how people catch it from eating chimps and accidentally lost it. But yeah, bats are a reservoir, but it devastates chimp and gorilla populations.
AS far as I know, we don't know how this outbreak got started but there are multiple cases of people getting it from monkeys, chimps, bats, etc.. It could be any of them.
While it may be an open question as to whether we get to hang the scarlet "V" for vector sign around the neck of fruit bats or chimps in the case of Ebola, it's seems to be clear that a taste for bushmeat led to the transmission of another lethal virus from animal to man.
And just so Ebola MC doesn't feel neglected, it was African slaves that transported yellow fever to the Caribbean and Central America.
Funny, if Newsweek had run an article on rednecks and roadkill, Ann would probably never have mentioned it...
Thanks Expat(ish),
When our kids found out how many shots they needed before going to India, they went into open rebellion mode--which we crushed, as gently as we could.
They loved it there, especially the empty and perfect beaches in Karnataka and Goa--they do not burn, so it is all fun and no consequence for them. My favorite was Rajasthan.
Like the Drill SGT, I had to get a plague shot when I was in the Marine Corps; to which I objected and submitted to. I was studying microbiology and knew that 1. The vaccine is ineffective and 2. Plague is easily treated with common antibiotics. 3. The shot made me feel sick, though I only knew that afterwords.
Liberians call bushmeat "bushmeat" by the way.
Precisely. So if I call it "bushmeat," I'm guilty of "othering," but if I call it "wild game," I'm guilty of linguistic, and therefore cultural, imperialism. Paralysis!
Not rejecting the point of this post. It is worth adding that this is also a key narrative element of white colonialization.
Everywhere the white people went they brought their diseases, killed off the locals.
Of course, a lot of those diseases Europeans first got from Asia. The circle of diseased life.
So, there is a racial component but it really extends to foreignness in general.
It's not an entirely irrational fear. Race alone is meaningless, but when race denotes different place of origin it means different diseases and antibodies.
I'm always a little nervous when I go to Oregon to visit my wife's family, or someone comes to visit us. I tend to often get a cold or flu or something.
From Zulu (1964):
"Surgeon Maj. Reynolds: You know what you've got there, my malingering Hector?
Pte. Henry Hook: No, sir. Hook's the name, sir.
Surgeon Maj. Reynolds: You've got a fine glistening boil, my friend. There's one glistening boil for every soldier in Africa. You may not get any medals in this campaign, Hook, but you'll certainly get more boils. For every gunshot wound I probe, I expect to lance 3 boils.
[brandishing a lance]
Pte. Henry Hook: A spot of medicinal brandy would set me up, sir!
Surgeon Maj. Reynolds: Brandy's for heroes, Mr. Hook. The rest of you will make do with boils on your skin, flies in your meat and dysentery in your bellies."
Liberians also call tribes "tribes". Evidently some people object to that.
there is a racial component but it really extends to foreignness in general.
And the only reason there is a racial component is because those 'other' places tend to have a bunch of people who look different. Populations who have lived with a disease for a certain amount of time include a bunch of people with some type of immunity: Not so when introduced to an entirely new group. Which is why when we went and visited that never before seen amazon tribe, one of them got the flu.
The ape threatens rape... anal rape... fatal anal rape.
For God's sake why is this the first place you go to? I'm in no way, shape, or form a computer programmer, but the first place I went to was getting around security.
The left seems more prone to practice "othering" than those they accuse. Maybe that's why they are the only ones who can hear all of the supposed dog whistles that they claim flood our culture.
"19 Comments".
"Comments are closed".
Lol. There's nothing funnier than lumpenintellectuals venturing outside of their hugboxes..
My family and I lived 20 years in Africa, much of it the tropical portion. Every one of us has had malaria and many other insect-borne tropical diseases, even though we tried to take Aralen regularly. I have had numerous other parasitic diseases including one for which the recommended treatment had to be imported from Canada because it is not approved (not enough demand) in the US.
Yes, Africa has lots of diseases. And yes, bushmeat is the accepted term for wild game in most of English speaking West Africa.
And no, that ape photo did not make me think of anal sex. Nor do I think of Africa as being hyper sexual -- just an interesting place that I loved, even with all the diseases.
But the real issue for me is -- people still read Newsweek?
Fruit bats can weigh 3.5 pounds, or about 40% more than a Walmart rotisserie chicken. They are considered a delicacy.
Since well before Bedtime for Bonzo, chimpanzees have evoked warm, friendly feelings in Americans. A picture of a disgusting fruit bat on Newsweek's cover would have been denounced as stigmatizing West Africans and marking them as irredeemably savage.
"It suggests that African immigrants....could bring a deadly disease to the pristine shores of the United States of America...."
Liberals love to say "reality has a liberal bias".
I guess it does.....in the sense that reality seems to enjoy hitting liberals in the face like the handle of a stepped-on rake.
"For God's sake why is this the first place you go to? I'm in no way, shape, or form a computer programmer, but the first place I went to was getting around security."
Yeah, I know that one too and figured that would be some people's first association, even when confronted with the eyes of [r]ape.
Many people might think of the old song "Back Door Man," which is, of course, about a man who uses the back door of the house to avoid detection as he engages in sex with other men's wives. And many people, on the other hand, think that song is about anal sex.
By the way, did you go to the link on that top Google hit for "back door"? It's a GQ article — "The Modern Gentleman's Guide to Going in Through the Back Door" — with a ludicrously bad illustration.
Still blaming Bush
No - blaming Bushmeat, not Bush.
chimpanzees have evoked warm, friendly feelings in Americans
Exactly. The one on the cover has soulful eyes, gazing up and begging you not to eat him.
Bats, otoh, are rats with wings.
One of these was an idea developed by Frederick Coombs, author of Coombs’s Popular Phrenology. In the book, Coombs expounded a then-popular (and completely wrong) idea that the size,
The rest of phrenology is baseless, but brain size has about a .4 correlation with IQ. It's one of the things Gould is well known for lying about.
shape and other physical characteristics of a person’s skull determine that individual’s intelligence. Coombs and his fellow phrenologists started with the assumption that non-northern and western Europeans — namely, southern Europeans (who were not considered to be racially “white” at the time) and people of color — were inherently less intelligent than northern Europeans with light-colored skin.
Which turns out to be true.
These MSM "look at all the dumb things people used to think" articles are usually pretty funny. And full of false statements.
Is War on disease now politically incorrect if non-whites are part of the problem?
Everyone knows that Malaria is easily stopped by DDT spray, but Fairytale land says DDT is dangerous to some wild birds, maybe, well not really, if reality now counts again.
"Shanna said...
Bats, otoh, are rats with wings."
Bats are not rodents.
Madison Man, get thee to a funnery.
(or have your sarcasm meter checked.)
Bats are not rodents.
I know that, don't be so literal.
Also, squirrels are rats with bushy tails. Many birds are flying rats too. Just fyi.
The long history of associating immigrants and disease in America and the problematic impact that has on attitudes toward immigrants
"Until the coming of the Europeans, the New World was free of smallpox, typhus, cholera, and measles--the focus of this article." "Long history" indeed.
Fernandinande: These MSM "look at all the dumb things people used to think" articles are usually pretty funny. And full of false statements.
And don't forget their apparent complete ignorance of anything that's happened in these fields in the last 50-70 years. But I guess they have good reason to stay busy analyzing old phrenology papers with each other.
Did not think of ape rape or butt rape, fatal or not. Or fatal ape rape of any orifice.
Thought of a restaurant serving illegal exotic meat to weidros who want to eat weird shit. And they all have to be discreet about it, bringing the meat and the weirdos in the back door. Hush-hush.
Anglelyne said...
And don't forget their apparent complete ignorance of anything that's happened in these fields in the last 50-70 years. But I guess they have good reason to stay busy analyzing old phrenology papers with each other.
I think they have some sort of awareness, which is why they vilify, condemn, exile and falsely claim "discredited" to people like Watson, Richwine and Herrnstein/Murray.
As for African diseases "Africa, especially the western regions, was known as the 'White Man's Grave' because of the danger of two diseases: malaria and yellow fever. During the eighteenth century only one in ten Europeans sent out to the continent by the Royal African Company survived. Six of the ten would have died in their first year. In 1817 two French scientists, Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, extracted quinine from the bark of the South American cinchona tree. It proved to be the solution to malaria; Europeans could now survive the ravages of the disease in Africa."
Everything I have read and seen supports the idea that Africa is dirty and disease ridden.
Not true.
I've been to Africa three times. I've been swimming in the Zambezi river. I've slept in tents on the Serengeti. I've traded in the markets of Arusha. It's Mexico with spectacular vistas, and wildlife.
Kenya, Tanzania, the other USA, Zambia are highly recommended. If you get a chance.....GO!!
What is racist is the idea that medical care in the multicultural U.S. is better than in Africa. There's an assumption that we will do a better job of treating Ebola and containing its spread than black physicians in Africa can. So far this has proved to be a false premise. U.S. CDC should be put down its cultural biases and start learning from Nigeria.
Harvard has a School of Tropical Medicine.
Raaaaaaaacists!!!!!!
(I had to go there once to leave a "specimen" to diagnose something I got in India. It turned out to be a seven inch intestinal worm, ascaris lumbricoides. Most likely I picked it up a non-veg restaurant.)
It has a complex and fascinating life cycle --- google it.
It's Mexico with spectacular vistas, and wildlife.
A friend of mine from college moved to South Africa a few years ago and posted pictures on facebook. They were absolutely gorgeous and made me want to go.
Africa is a big place, it makes little sense to generalize so broadly.
Africa is a diverse continent full of native white, black, brown, and yellow people. Would Indians be considered red? Perhaps some red people, too. The reflexive association between black and Africa serves to marginalize native Africans. Perhaps that's why they get lost in the narrative.
Yeah, dehumanizing chimpanzees is ridiculous.
What is this insipid crap masquerading as intellectual activity?
wholelottasplainin' said...
...ascaris lumbricoides. Most likely I picked it up a non-veg restaurant.)
Fun facts: "The vulva is located in the anterior end and accounts for about one-third of its body length. Uteri may contain up to 27 million eggs at a time, with 200,000 being laid per day."
...
"The eggs may get onto vegetables when improperly processed human feces of infected people are used as fertilizer for food crops."
++
No mention of catching it/them from eating meat.
Ann Althouse said...
. . .
Many people might think of the old song "Back Door Man," which is, of course, about a man who uses the back door of the house to avoid detection as he engages in sex with other men's wives. And many people, on the other hand, think that song is about anal sex.
The old blues masters understood double entendres.
"The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place"
Oh, you mean like when the CDC claims Ebola is pandemic in Africa largely because of poor sanitary practices?
Racists.
I wish authors and professors would stop "othering" white people like me.
Awww, poor Africa! Constantly smeared and demeaned, despite its great contributions to modern society!
http://www.economist.com/node/333429
The problem is a disease that kills 70% of the people it sickens. That's what I worry about. If we stop that, we stop all the other ugliness that goes with it. The root cause here is a real disease, not a prop for talking about prejudice.
This isn't the time to talk about racism, because all that will do is confirm people in their preexisting beliefs at a time when it is least helpful. If anyone changes their mind, it's going to be in a way that promotes racism. People aren't ready for a rational conversation when confronted with a disease with a 70% mortality rate.
What I've found is that people are racist based on how they process events that happen to them personally. No amount of slogans, no amount of reason, can break through personal experience. Lying to people is the way to convince them of the exact opposite of what you are trying to push. Lying about this disease is going to do more harm than anything else.
Yes, it's from Africa. No way around that. Quarantine is the only way we can stop it right now. Both these things are true, and talking about anything else is going to make things worse.
The most racist thinking I've seen about Ebola is the assumption that it's not a big deal because it's only killing Africans. However bad it is in Africa, that's not a reason for concern, because We're Different.
For some reason, they think it can't kill people in America, against all evidence. The people that won't take it seriously are the real racists.
The epidemic in Africa started with one person in December. Why do we think that we can't have an epidemic here? The disease picked one hospital at random and it spread. It may still be spreading. And we're supposed to be confident?
I believe we do have the resources to successfully quarantine Ebola, but we have to actually do it. Stop pretending this isn't a problem, stop blaming Africans for dying to an incredibly dangerous disease, and stop taking our health for granted.
Gahrie,
"Have the authors ever been to Africa? Everything I have read and seen supports the idea that Africa is dirty and disease ridden. That's what living in abject poverty means."
Living in a racist country seems not to make a dent in that fucked-up mind of yours, ever, does it?
Incredible,...
"Have the authors ever been to Africa? Everything I have read and seen supports the idea that Africa is dirty and disease ridden. That's what living in abject poverty means."
Clearly, you have never been to Africa. Yes, Africa has lots of poverty and tropical diseases. But it also has incredible natural beauty and culture. Most of Africa isn't different from other third world countries in terms of sanitation. But you have likely only heard one story about Africa and therefore can't even imagine that large and diverse Africa with its 800 million people and over 50 countries is any different than you have imagined. It isn't your fault though, because unless one makes a conscious effort to get a more balance view of Africa, one ends up with exactly the view you have because that is all you see on TV.
Didn't Smuggled Bushmeat and Ebola's Back Door do a twinbill at the Fillmore in '67? Good times...
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