‘I am not Ebola:’ African immigrants suffer from disease stigma

By Brian E. Muhammad -Contributing Writer- | Last updated: Nov 13, 2014 - 10:47:07 AM

Charles Cooper of the African Advisory Council of The Bronx, speaks as Amadou Drame, 11, second from left, with his father, Ousmane Drame, and brother Pape Drame, 13, right, listen to him respond to questions during a news interview Oct. 28, in New York. New York City school officials on Nov. 3 warned principals to be on the lookout for bullying of West African students after the two brothers from Senegal reported being taunted with chants of "Ebola" and attacked.

The epicenter of the Ebola scourge is thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa, but African immigrants are being stigmatized, targeted, harassed and physically assaulted in the United States.

One case was the cruel beating of Pape and Amadou Drame at a Bronx, N.Y. elementary/intermediate school on Oct. 24. The two 6th and 8th grade brothers emigrated from Senegal to the U.S. weeks earlier. Their father Ousame Drame, a taxi driver, said the boys were bullied and repeatedly called “EBOLA” while being assaulted. Advocates say it is not an isolated incident and part of a mounting climate of hysteria over Ebola.

Rev. Judy L. Brown, executive director of the Africa Refuge Center, discusses the problem of Liberian immigrants being stigmatized due to the current Ebola outbreak in Liberia at the community center in Staten Island, New York, Oct. 23. Staten Island is home to the largest Liberian population of any city outside of Africa, composed of refugees who fl ed the Liberian Civil War in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

“The stigmatization of Ebola is extremely high right now,” said Charles Cooper, chairman of the African Advisory Council of the Bronx, an advocacy group working with families and individuals affected by the hostility.

This issue is “widespread” and “impacting the community from every angle,” Mr. Cooper explained. He has heard reports of people getting evicted from their residences and African-owned businesses losing customers reluctant to be in an environment Africans frequent, erroneously thinking they will get Ebola. The advisory council is doing public awareness and town hall meetings to fight the “ignorance” about Ebola that’s fueling the stigma against Africans.

According to World Health Organization figures the current Ebola pandemic has killed nearly 5,000 people worldwide, including one death in the United States.

At a New York press conference on Oct. 27, U.S. Representative José Serrano (D-N.Y.) and State Senator Bill Perkins (D-N.Y.) denounced stigmatizing African immigrants and called the assault on the Drame brothers a hate crime. There is a call for more elected officials across the nation to speak out against stigmatizing African immigrants.

“This is the one time they can focus on us,” said Sylvie Bello of the Washington, D.C.-based Cameroon American Council to The Final Call.

Ms. Bello credits the N.Y. lawmakers for stepping up, but lays part of the blame for the hysteria on U.S. politicians and their handling of the Ebola crisis.

Ms. Bello has been pushing for better communication with government officials and relevant agencies like the Center for Disease Control and including African immigrants in the national conversation on Ebola.

The negative targeting is unsettling to African immigrants whose numbers have steadily grown over several decades. They count themselves as productive people making a way for themselves in America.

U.S. Census Bureau reports show the African immigrant population in the United States increased from 80,000 in 1970 to around 1.6 million between 2008 and 2012. Africans are among the most educated groups in the country with 41 percent holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to a recent census brief.

The economic strength of African immigrants contributes to the overall American economy. For instance, vigorous business and cultural sights and sounds are visible in African enclaves like “Le Petit Senegal” or Little Senegal in Harlem, N.Y., and “Little Ethiopia” in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Despite these positive gains, the Ebola panic indicates that America’s image as a great melting pot and land of immigrants is flawed and a great amount of xenophobia—an intense fear or dislike of foreign people and in this case African people—does exist. Some point to hypocrisy that exports positive cosmopolitan images of American life to Africa while marketing negative images of African famine, chaos, disease and turmoil to Americans. “That image has been repeated over and over,” said Ms. Bello.

When Americans think of Africa, it’s “famine ... diseases ... of folks who are just trying to get into the country,” she said. What isn’t seen is how many underlining issues troubling Africa are rooted in exploitative practices of American corporations as in the Congo and Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region that benefits America financially while Africans languish, said Ms. Bello.

Kofi Agyei, co-chair of the World Afrikan Diaspora Union, said stigmatization is part of a historical context where Black life is devalued by global elites angling for the vast resources of Africa.

“But most of the time the Africans are not aware of what is happening and we receive the brunt of it,” said Mr. Agyei.

Mr. Agyei feels the stigma can’t be adequately dealt with by excluding the view that Ebola is a weaponized virus developed for depopulation. Many Africans are not readily conscious of that reality, he said. “We are always at the receiving end of very great and evil people who have an agenda,” Mr. Agyei said. It’s about letting people know what is going on and having “collective energy to confront this together,” he said.

“The stigmatization that’s happening does not discriminate on what country you’re from. When folks look at a person—Africans, we’re all in the same pot, whether you’re from North, South, East or West,” added Mr. Cooper.

The stigma comes amid heated debates about travel restrictions on people coming from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea—the three hardest hit nations with Ebola. It’s also entering the Thanksgiving-Christmas season when Africans tend to travel to Africa and back. Because of the Ebola stigma, there is increased anxiety about overly assertive mistreatment of African travelers and concerns about cultural insensitivity. Some advocates called the current airport handling of Africans an Ebola “inhumane,” especially if travelers are coming from the three main West African countries hit by the disease.

“They are not culturally sensitive,” said Ms. Bello, referring to airport personnel. “Maybe this is the time for them to think ... we should actually hire Sudanese speakers ... Wolof speakers ... Hausa speakers who have African immigrant cultural sensitivity.”

For now African communities are unifying as difficult issues are placed on the table and a chorus calls for tolerance and informed knowledge about African immigrants as a viable community in the United States.

“I’m just hoping after all of this; after we beat Ebola, this synergy that we created continues,” said Mr. Cooper.

(Brian E. Muhammad can be reached at [email protected].)

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