Stories from the U.S. Ebola-Xenophobia Front: Bullying, Beating, Boycotting, Shunning
November 3, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Ousmane Drame brought his two sons from Senegal to America, to the Bronx, New York City. He wanted 11-year-old Amadou and 13-year-old Pape to get a good education. What he and his kids found was the ugliness and brutality of xenophobia being whipped up around Ebola.
Drame told news reporters that students at the school his sons attend chanted "Ebola, Ebola" and "Go back home" and beat the two brothers, punching them in the face. (New York Post, October 27, 2014)
Drame said he rushed to the school when they called him to tell him that his sons were getting beaten. He said, "My children were very hurt. Amadou was crying, lying on the floor, more than 10 children on top of him, beating him."
This totally unscientific fear—targeting anyone from Africa as being a carrier of Ebola—is being fanned by the media and various figures in government who promote the view that "American lives are more important than anyone else's."
Drame has talked about how his sons have been treated like pariahs. He said, "If they go to the gym, they say, 'Oh you don't play. Don't touch the ball. You have Ebola. Sit down there.' For two days, they don't touch nobody, they just sit down. It's not just them.”
"All the African children suffer this."
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Staten Island, New York, has the largest Liberian community outside of Africa. There has been a West African market here for more than 20 years. Only a few months ago, there were 22 vendors there. Today there are just five, and the market is empty because people have a totally unfounded fear of buying goods from African sellers. One man said, "People don't want to talk with you, you walk in the street and they yell out, 'African, go back to Africa with your Ebola.'" (CBS News, October 31, 2014)
One Liberian woman in Staten Island says she was forced to take temporary, unpaid leave from her job. Similar things are happening to Liberians around the U.S. In Minnesota, Liberians have been told to leave work because they were simply sneezing or coughing. In New Jersey, some parents pressured school officials who then kept two elementary school students from Rwanda out of school. In Texas, at Navarro College, a public community college, officials mailed letters rejecting international applicants from African countries. (time.com, October 29, 2014) In Connecticut, a family is suing the school district for banning their daughter from class after she returned from Nigeria.
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Harlem in New York has lots of braiding salons where the women who weave hair in the African style and apply hair extensions are mostly from West Africa. In the past two months these businesses have been losing customers at a growing rate—even though the women working in them have not visited their homelands for years. Taxi drivers from West Africa in New York report being shunned by people who think they are going to get Ebola from the inside of the cab. (Voice of America, October 28, 2014)
These are only some of the stories...there are many, many more.
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