'Black lives don’t matter'

Ebola is declared a public health emergency of international concern in Congo. I don’t know how much more is done beyond this declaration, besides the necessary, because nothing much beyond the PHEIC is reported.

The point in question is Notre Dame was reported more widely and the donations that poured in for it, even more. Where is the reportage while 650 people died in the recent outbreak and 12 cases are reported daily? Where are the tears of the world, the kind of tears that were shed for Notre Dame? People all over the world were posting about the Notre Dame fire and how tragic it is to see the monument destroyed, people who weren’t even remotely associated with the structure. I am not saying that Notre Dame should not get the wide coverage it did. My point is to highlight how biased and even racist we can get with regards to coverage, tears and donations.

The lives of coloured people, especially the blacks, never had any importance anyway. So if there was an outbreak in the US, there’d be so much hue and cry, that the world would be upside down. But Ebola, no. Why should anyone bother? It affects the black people on another planet called Africa. And therefore when there was an outbreak in 2014, a recurrence can happen 5 years later and there is still no vaccine. Because black lives don’t matter.

Joyce D
By email