How alarmist, racist coverage of Ebola makes things worse. A dressing down of the latest #NewsweekFail.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

The recent Newsweek Cover showing a Chimpanzee for the article, Smuggled Bushmeat Is Ebola’s Back Door to America, has received a lot of criticism for being factually inaccurate, but also for it’s portrayal of Africa that taps into deep-rooted cultural anxieties about Africa in United States.  Western writers have use many cultural conventions to talk about “the Dark Continent” stemming from a long colonial tradition.  Africa had been developing rapidly in the last decade and how Ebola fares seems to be a referendum on the continent for many cultural commentators.  This great Washington Post article is less about Ebola, but uses the outbreak to analyze how we think about Africa, and sometimes it isn’t a pretty reflection.  The Ebola outbreak is teaching us how we perceive Africa as much as it is about Africa itself.

 

Tags: Ebola, Africa, colonialism, regions, perspective.