theroot | The Take turned to UCLA African American studies and Black Diaspora experts Dr. Peter James Hudson and Dr. Jemima Pierre
to offer some expert insight into how effective that strategy is,
whether it’s too militarized and if pharmaceuticals are calling the
shots. Hudson’s dissertation Dark Finance: An Unofficial History of Wall Street, American Empire and the Caribbean, 1889-1925 is under review and Pierre is author of The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race.
Jemima Pierre (@BLK_DIASPORAS):
No matter the scale or severity of the outbreak, the Cuban response
should be contrasted with that of the US and Europe. The Cubans have
announced that they are sending an additional 300 doctors and nurses to
Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia to combat the spread of and to help
those infected with Ebola. In total, the Cubans will have 461 healthcare
professionals in West Africa combatting Ebola. This needs to be
contrasted with, on one hand, the military response of the US
government, and, on the other, the commercial response of American
corporations like GlaxoSmithKline who are fast-tracking approval of what
will become, undoubtedly, an extremely profitable vaccine.
Peter James Hudson (@darkfinance):
For those who have been paying attention, the militarization of the
Ebola response is not surprising. What’s not talked about much is the
U.S. militarization of the African continent long before Ebola and the
presumed threat of Boko Haram. The U.S. established AFRICOM (U.S.-Africa
Command) under President George W. Bush back in 2008 for a number of
reasons – not least of which to be prepared for the “threat” of China as
it positions itself in the continuous scramble for African resources.
But under Bush, few African countries wanted to host a U.S. military
base, with the notable exception of Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf. Under Obama, AFRICOM’s presence on the African continent
expanded exponentially, and the U.S. has a military presence (often under the cover of “humanitarianism”) in just about every African country.
Pierre: We honestly think the Western response is
racist and that the U.S. is acting in bad faith. The consistent
privileging of white U.S. and European health care workers and
missionaries needs to be seen as part of a broader context of racist
practices around Africa in general, and the Ebola epidemic in
particular. In the first case, one could accept the excuse that ZMapp is
experimental and manufacturers didn’t want to give it to Africans for a
number of historical and ethical reasons, including the long history of
medical experimentation on people of color. But, then, we find out
that Dr. Sheikh Umar Khan,
a highly skilled and respected Sierra Leonean medical practitioner
[who succumbed to Ebola], was not even told about the experimental
vaccine or given the chance to make a decision on taking it. It must
also be noted that the one U.S. citizen that was said to have died of
the disease was a black man, Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American who had
been working as a consultant to the Liberian government.
Hudson: Even if we put aside the discussion of a
lack of “infrastructure to facilitate vaccination,” when it comes to
dealing with Africa, especially around epidemics, the optics look bad
because the operations, quite simply, are racist. Given the history of
U.S. racist representations of Africa, their cover was egregious. But
then you see highly skilled African professionals like Dr. Khan and Dr. Olivet Buck allowed to die, and white missionaries are saved.
Pierre: We find it dishonest when those in the west
withholding vaccinations for Africans are claiming that they do not want
to “experiment” on black African populations. There’s documented proof
of experiments on African populations by western pharmaceutical
companies. Africans are well aware of this history. And that history,
along with the white west’s actions around Ebola, may also explain why
many are questioning why this disease just suddenly emerged, and why
there was already a secret vaccine in the works.
