It saddens me as a Pan-Africanist and a global citizen to always learn of incidences where people of colour and especially black people getting discriminated amidst a major global disaster, them being victims of double tragedies which are the disaster and racism. The worst about these incidences is that they happen in developed countries which we expect the perpetuators of such to also have developed thinking, to understand the state of emergency at hand and the philosophy of humanity and equality. Apart from that, there has also been concerns that most of the developed vaccines and medications are tested on black people. This is shameful of a world that calls itself civilized yet it oppresses other human beings and use them as ‘lab rats.’ Even animals have rights for that matter and before any procedures are done there must be ethical considerations that are strictly followed. What saddens me the most is that African governments and negro leaderships across the globe have been used as puppets by racist health institutions to perpetuate these inhumane acts. In other cases that these administrations are not part of the selfish agendas then they may be doing less to protect their citizens.
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How Coronavirus was used as a tool of racism
A case in example, we can use the recent Coronavirus or globally known as COVID 19 which broke out in 2019. This deadly disease started in China where the first case was reported. It soon spread to other countries and the whole world was almost brought to a standstill. There were rising concerns that Africa might be greatly affected. Some global health expert especially racists had their golden moments in the media explaining how Coronavirus would be very fatal in Africa considering the fact that most African countries don’t have the right professional and infrastructural prowess to combat this disease that had humbled the Western world. According to Worldometer, there has been 704,753,890 reported cases globally as of April 2024. Sadly, 7,010,681 of the patients globally have so far been reported dead. A sigh of relief is that 675,619,811 of the cases have been reported as recovered. Now from this statistics, the top 5 countries in the world that were greatly affected were, United States of America with 111,820,082 cases, India with 45,035,393 cases, France with 40,138,560 cases, Germany which had 38,828,995, and Brazil with 38,743,918 cases.
In that list, the only African country that was among the top 50 countries that were greatly affected by Coronavirus is South Africa with 4,076,463 reported cases. As you can see that Africa had less of the cases yet all eyes were focused on Africa with racists expecting hell to break loose anytime. To their shame, that didn’t happen. This is not a case of who has superior genetic make-up that is resistant to diseases and who has not. It is not a playground for racism for Coronavirus was a global threat that required the world to unite and fight it at a united front. To the racists, it was a case of seeing their victims suffer the most instead of them seeing it as a case where they would claim back their trust and love from the marginalized people of the world. In Africa, I would confidently say that people took serious precautions against the outbreak and spread of Coronavirus. It was not about them being invincible health-wise but them being cautious, following the safety guidelines, and most importantly maximizing on their traditional medications.
Amidst the global fears, one country came to the spotlight and that was Tanzania. Its president, the late John Pombe Magufuli was accused by the international media for being dismissive of the fact that his country was suffering huge losses from the virus. Again here, the international media had its usual opportunity to tarnish the name of Africa. Most of the media channels reported that Tanzania through its president had adopted prayers or rather religious intervention instead of scientific interventions in fighting the virus. AP News reported that “Tanzania's president says God has eliminated COVID-19 in his country.” What those media houses failed to report was how Africans both in towns and villages were increasingly making use of natural herbs. I remember in my locality, at the Kenyan coast, people were increasingly encouraging each other to make use of the Neem Tree which my people have been using as a medication for a very long time. The media and especial those headquartered in Africa should have joined forces with African governments in championing local solutions to the tragedy. Instead of us waiting for solutions from America or the West, we would have encouraged our Experts to get to work and produce a local vaccine that we would gladly share with the world. Our professors in Public Health would have made use of their expertise in this scenario.
Racist reporting of global health concerns in the international medias
The idea of everything bad associated with black people has been deeply engraved in the white supremacy system. According to Dr. Cress Welsing, a renowned African-American scholar, "the system cannot tolerate black people being strong, self-respecting and functional". This explains why most of the white media are biased when reporting on African issues. Sometimes back in 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed cases of Mpox mainly in North America and European countries but western media outlets could not hide their weakness in fighting the more dangerous vice of racism. Most of them depicted images of people of African descent suffering from the disease even when it had not yet been reported in Africa.
Various African journalists immediately expressed their displeasure with the reporting. A Kenyan group, from The Foreign Press Association, Africa, (FPAA) issued a statement dated 21st May 2022, condemning the idea of assigning any type of calamity to African people. “Shouldn’t it be logical that if you are talking about the outbreak of monkeypox in Europe or Americas, you should use images from hospitals across Europe or the Americas? Or in the absence of such use a collection of electronic micrographs with labelled subcellular structures?” Read a part of the statement. “… is the media in the business of ‘preserving White purity’ through ‘Black criminality or culpability’?” It continued. The issue of western media outlets associating so much negativity with Africa is not a new thing. Different African leaders including Kenyan former President Uhuru Kenyatta have been complaining about such. Those medias make it seem like all that happens in Africa is hell but the truth of the matter is that that’s just a fraction of the news from Africa, of which most that which is untold is positive.
In the case of Mpox outbreak and the racist reporting, Africans on Twitter could also not hide their dissatisfactions. Led by some public figures, they angrily expressed their disappointment with the said international media houses. As of 21st May, the WHO had received reports of 92 confirmed cases of Mpox from 15 countries. The countries included; Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. By that time when the international media was loudly mentioning Africa in the middle of the outbreak, no African country had reported even a single case.
There is a lot to be done in order to end these cases of racism in the global health sector. A recent commendable move by WHO is the adoption of the name Mpox instead of monkeypox because the later instigated many cases of racism. More justice-friendly and enforceable policies, sometimes affirmative action, should be put in place to cushion Africans from the effects of double tragedy as explained in this article. It is also necessary that the general public is educated on this challenging issue of racism. I can confidently say that racism affects everyone of African descent including those still unborn. If there are cases where pregnant black women are neglected in American or European hospitals while White women are prioritized, what more evidence is needed for my previous statement? While those in America and Europe suffer racism directly, us in Africa suffer indirectly where racists institutions step on our social, economic, and political necks, and just as George Floyd, we cannot breathe. With this regard, all people of African descent should be taught how to handle racist situation, both verbal and physical. Non-African people should also be discouraged from racism. We are all victims of a more threatening ‘pandemic’, that’s racism. While Africans are the victims of such, the perpetuators are victims of either ignorance, miseducation, hate, or all the three.
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