One Powerful Illustration Shows Exactly What's Wrong With How the West Talks About Ebola

 

"Us" versus "them." For Carrilho, the nature of the Western media hysteria over Ebola underscores a more pernicious trend in how the West views the rest of the world. More than any other event in recent memory, the Ebola epidemic has brought to light America's lingering and simmering fear of "the other." The media circus is doing more than perpetuating the idea that America may become victim to a deadly epidemic — they're implying the country's very purity is at risk. 

"In the Western media," said Carrilho, "there are First World diseases and Third World diseases, and the attention devoted to the latter depends on the threat they pose to us, not on a universal measure of human suffering." We see that logic at play when people tie Ebola to immigration, or insist that the country's borders get heavily policed for undesirable elements.  Ebola is a "Third World disease," a concept the news industry has capitalized upon and exploited.

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One Powerful Illustration Shows Exactly What's Wrong With How the West Talks About Ebola - Mic