I suppose this is how we pay the price for centuries of Western Orientalism, to crib from Edward Said. Since the seventeenth century, it has been a common trope among scholars and leaders to argue that the Middle East and Africa, particularly south of the Sahara, have no “civilization,” and thus no history worth remembering. Only in the last fifty years did that narrative start to shift, and even then, not without resistance. Today, journalists struggle to account for the fact that Europeans and Americans are dying at such a higher rate than in poorer and Blacker countries. The recalcitrance of the West to understand the African and Middle Eastern experiences of this virus is not dissimilar from the nation’s struggles with the notion that Black Lives Matter. As the historian Edward Said noted decades ago, the people of the “Orient” are always just a caricature, filled with rage and misery, or irrational eccentricities.[4] Fun to look at, the way one looks at animals in zoos. Yet this Orientalism the West cannot see them as full human beings, with lives and thoughts and histories that matter. As a consequence, we cut off our ability to share and learn. In this moment, with thousands of Westerners dying every day, maybe we could use a little more cultural humility.

Notes

[1] Hannah Beech and Adam Dean, “No One Knows What Thailand Is Doing Right, but So Far, It’s Working,” The New York Times, August 20, 2020, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/asia/coronavirus-thailand-photos.html; Andy Meek, “Africa Is Fascinating Experts for Having Avoided the Worst of COVID-19 so Far,” BGR (blog), September 29, 2020, https://bgr.com/2020/09/29/coronavirus-update-africa-covid-19-cases-statistics/; Chris Smith and BGR, “Scientists Can’t Explain Puzzling Lack of Coronavirus Outbreaks in Africa,” New York Post, September 4, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/09/04/scientists-cant-explain-puzzling-lack-of-coronavirus-outbreaks-in-africa/.

[2] Smith and BGR, “Scientists Can’t Explain Puzzling Lack of Coronavirus Outbreaks in Africa.”

[3] The Lancet, “COVID-19 in Africa: No Room for Complacency,” The Lancet 395, no. 10238 (May 30, 2020): 1669, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31237-X; Indi Samarajiva, “COVID Underdogs: Sri Lanka,” Medium, June 24, 2020, https://medium.com/indica/covid-underdogs-sri-lanka-db6eca164a35; Indi Samarajiva, “COVID Underdogs: Mongolia,” Medium, July 20, 2020, https://medium.com/indica/covid-underdogs-mongolia-3b0c162427c2.

[4] Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979).