Crisis is a cruel teacher. During times of crisis, when people let their guard down, we get to see what’s really behind the facade. Often, it’s not pretty.
That point was made painfully clear when, rather than taking the opportunity to unite and embrace a rising spirit of generosity and togetherness emanating around the globe, the president of the United States made a choice to sow division, publicly labelling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus.”
For many, this persistent mischaracterisation has shattered any remaining hope that maybe, this time, we could do better. But for African people like me, who have witnessed the same phenomenon of attaching a disease to a nationality or ethnicity, it’s not a shock. Besides the virus itself, the only novel thing is that it’s now Asia, and not Africa, that has fallen victim to this malicious xenophobia.
When I think about the calamity the world is experiencing, I think about the bodies that are afflicted by this virus, and by all disease. It is detrimental to the well-being of everyone to pretend that a virus is African or Chinese or American or French.
African people have endured what we might call the viralisation of our continent, even our own bodies, for decades. A host of terrible maladies, Ebola among the most prominent, have been designated as “African diseases” in the collective consciousness.
To most Americans, the Ebola outbreak that occurred from 2014 to 2016 was likely a distant concern, even as it dominated the news cycle for a few weeks and tens of thousands of people died.
Now, as the world swings into action to contain coronavirus, this attitude is not less true, but more so: Many regions are treating the pandemic with such great urgency only because powerful nations are falling victim to it. Yet out of this scramble, a global effort must be made to change how we think about, talk about and understand disease.
The lesson many people still need to learn is that disease is something that afflicts the human body — not the Chinese body, the African body, or the Western body. The moment a disease is regionalised, humanity is erased in a dishonest and dangerous attempt to reduce one another to a nationality.
Myriad manifestations of racism
Perhaps there’s a deeper psychological underpinning, as we try to shield ourselves mentally from anything that might harm us. Perhaps this is simply one of the myriad manifestations of racism, which can be found in virtually every nook of human activity and interest.
The COVID-19 outbreak is proof the virus doesn’t care who you are or where you come from. Many have pointed out that this is an artefact of our newly globalised world; I respectfully disagree. The world has always been globalised, as merchants, traders and scholars brought one another’s culture and goods into contact.
What’s changed is that this particular pandemic has occurred at a time when we’re seeing a profound shift in the way we think about the other. Social media allows us to see and hear first-person accounts from across the globe — from devastation to celebration. We can no longer think about the lives and struggles of the others as independent or insulated from our own. We can no longer relegate their suffering to a set of symptoms whose deeper cause is alien to the world in which we live.
When I began painting on people’s skin, it taught me something indelible about the nature of human beings. My initial thinking was that the body could serve as a canvas, and so it did. But as my work progressed and deepened, I began to see that the body of each individual expressed the painting in a different and unique way. The designs, which tapped deep roots of African culture, came from my brush. But they were given life, and their unique meaning, by the person who carried them.
When I think about the calamity the world is experiencing, I think about the bodies that are afflicted by this virus, and by all disease. It is detrimental to the well-being of everyone to pretend that a virus is African or Chinese or American or French.
But this goes far beyond physical ailments. The world must wake up to this reality so we can collectively address any human challenge, wherever it might appear, rather than neglect it as a regional issue until the moment it becomes a global catastrophe.
There must be an understanding that social ills, economic challenges and, of course, the looming environmental disaster, belong to us all. For better or worse, they are a part of who we are; and we are a part of them.
— Laolu Senbanjo is a Nigerian performance and visual artist, human rights lawyer and activist based in Brooklyn.
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