The real question is: Who thinks that combining the practices under discussion here into a single topic implies something meaningful about Africans as a group or about some hypothesized continent-wide “African culture” in general?
And if the answer is “Nobody”…
…then why are we using that label to discuss them?
After all, we could have perfectly good separate threads about each of these very problematic public-health issues without muddying the waters by dragging in different issues with different contexts, different causes, and different remediation strategies.
No matter what label you wish to use, someone will come by and say it isn’t specific enough. I don’t see why the thread title needs this level of detail when we’ve already talked about many different regions in Africa in this thread alone and specified where they are. And because we’ve talked about many regions, it makes sense to specify we are talking about Africa specifically ie. Not Eurasia, where many practices are similar, but many are not. In other words, a line has to be drawn somewhere. We’re just quibbling on where that line is.
But we don’t need a specifically geographical label at all. The OP is attempting to discuss three, or more like two and a half, separate public health issues:
unhygienic funerary practices that help spread Ebola;
hunting practices that help spread Ebola;
sexual practices that help spread HIV.
The first two can meaningfully be discussed together but the third doesn’t really have anything to do with them, except at the generic level of “people r dumb”, as Hector pointed out.
If you imagine that just because all the people you’re talking about are classified as “Africans” it somehow ties together this combination of issues as a meaningful single thread topic, try imagining it in a different cultural/racial context and see how silly it would be.
E.g., you wouldn’t start writing an OP about high death rates from illegal abortions in Latin America, throw in a spike in HIV infection rates from barebacking parties in New York and Montreal, and title your thread “Troubling health issues in parts of New World cultural practices”.
The implication is that they’re Africa-wide or at least prevelant over large parts of the continent, and that isn’t the case. It’s a regional practice.
Nor is sitting up with the dead or even kissing the dead body a strictly African practice.
It’s not the dissing of the practice I object to, it’s the labelling of particular regional weirdnesses as continental.
Or you could just say “The Liberian practice” and be succinct and accurate enough. Without being disingenuous.
Yeah, but they are pretty transparent tools for saying “I can’t be bothered to learn about this enough to talk about it coherently, but I’m going to run off about it anyway and hope nobody notices.”
Lumping all of Africa together is not a fine point being nitpicked. When we have people from Kenya being harassed for Ebola, it’s about time for us to learn a little geography.
I wasn’t trying any “gotcha” technique at all. I was simply asking you to further define what you meant, because it seemed to me that you were saying that ignorant peasants were too stupid to learn anything that didn’t involve an immediate cause and effect. While I see from your other posts you didn’t mean that, I think that it might be easier to teach than you imply.
Yeah, but in an OP where the one thing is one part, and the second thing is in a very distant, other, unrelated part, it then becomes very clear that, in fact, one is wanting to talk about those endpoints and all the bits in between as a unified entity. That one considers there to exist such a thing as anAfrican culture, in an inclusive sense. Or why would one bring up things that occur in two completely separate cultures?
To emphasize: there is nothing that the culture of Zimbabwe has in common with the culture of Liberia and doesn’t have in common with cultures outside Africa. So why link those two?
I’ve often said that it seems like Americans (and not only Americans, by the way) see the world as divided into white people, black people, Mexicans, Chinese, and Terrorists.
So what do you suggest? I already know a bit about geography, geology and anthropology so does your blanket statement apply to me as well?
Obviously, using an entire continent as a basis for describing a cultural norm is too vague. We are clearly beyond using a single country and in any case, those state lines are blurred by tribal land divisions anyway. West Africa, West Sub-Saharan Africa, Or should we specify which groups and cultural mores specifically?
Here is a non-African funeral practice that was spreading disease, but the disease is now extinct:
Now the last victim is dead, and presumably not had their brain eaten so this disease is gone. I actually find it kind of cool, but imagine if you said funerary cannibalism is ok as long as well cooked but do not eat the brain, and people kept at it. Same deal.
Anyway since I made this topic I have read they believe patient zero for this particular ebola outbreak was a small child that either was bitten by a bat, or consumed or touched bat feces or consumed bat meat. Then when the child died at the child’s funeral eight people were infected with ebola due to the rites and went on to infect everyone else who has it. Now it is hard to fault them, but people currently bribing officials to kiss a corpse have no excuse.
And having experience in a high corruption country where corruption is even present in the most mundane things, it occurred to me that the government workers are probably as inhumane and disrespectful as possible to dead ebola victims bodies. Why? Well of course to get bribes, they usually even have tiers of bribes, if someone looks middle class they can pay for more respectful treatment, if someone looks RICH they can pay to have their dead relative delivered wherever.
So I could absolutely see the issue being made worse not better by those looking for their palm to be greased.
Sure is, I live in Trinidad and have seen signs in Port Of Spain for “Bush Meat Sold Upstairs!” “Bush Meat Inquire Within!” etc. It is more popular around Christmas and New Years, it is often illegally hunted, and is far more expensive than other meats raised on farms.
People don’t eat it for the flavor, they eat it because of cultural beliefs about it conferring luck(like black eyed peas) or vigor or sexual potency. Of course it isn’t chimpanzees, but mostly agouti or monkeys or various other creatures.
I’m not aware of any disease associated with it locally, except for the usual with not properly cooked meat.
(There are unpublicized places selling endangered sea turtle meat, again it is expensive and eaten for beliefs in magical abilities. My BIL’s ex wife bought her daughter some when she was sick, she was like you want to know where I got it and I said I’ll pass.)
Sure, those people are extremely fucking stupid. Considering vaccination rates go down the more wealthy the population(in the USA) they don’t even have the excuse of honest ignorance, they have twenty devices running web browsers in their house they could use to google.
Or if you have an example of me defending anti-vaxxer nutjobs please post it.
Where’d that come from? Nobody accused you of defending anti-vaxxer nutjobs or any other reckless disease spreaders.
It’s just that you seemed excessively baffled by the particuar reckless disease spreaders in your OP:
Which is why I pointed out that if we have so many wealthy and educated first world people irresponsibly ignoring contagion risks, we shouldn’t be taken aback to see such behavior in poor and ill-informed third world people too.
Where’d that come from? Nobody accused you of defending anti-vaxxer nutjobs or any other reckless disease spreaders.