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The core of the issue is the problem of colonial mentality. I suppose we would all like to brush it under the rug by saying it's difficult to pin down who real

The core of the issue is the problem of colonial mentality. I suppose we would all like to brush it under the rug by saying it's difficult to pin down who really "discovered" Ebola, but I think this only perpetuates and helps internalise colonialism. I think a more clear cut case on the issue how the music industry ripped off Chuck Berry and repackaged him as Elvis Presley. The more we ignore and "justify" the issue with intellectualism, the farther away we all get from a real solution.

dmix 7y ago
There's countless examples of this phenomenon happening while having nothing to do with 'colonialism', blaming that as the primary cause that needs to be addressed seems like selective reasoning. Even AIDs was "co-discovered" (meaning first to identify it as a retrovirus and published in a paper) by a team in France and one in the US around the same time, and only the French team got a nobel prize 25yrs later which was controversial for similar reasons that it's a difficult thing to identify (also note it takes a long time to get this sort of credit). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier
nkozyra 7y ago
> The core of the issue is the problem of colonial mentality. I suppose we would all like to brush it under the rug by saying it's difficult to pin down who really "discovered" Ebola I agree and addressed that. I don't disagree that colonialism's dark past plays a significant role in these things, but my larger point is "discovery" is always a hotly contested concept. I'm certainly not attempting to justify or mitigate it, that's specifically the reason I talked about colonialism first. It's important to frame much of our present day as being in the shadow of 19th and 20th century European exploitation abroad.
throw_m239339 7y ago
It has absolutely nothing to do with "colonialism" as an intersectional buzzword. People take credit for other people's discoveries all the time(Edison for instance), and in this article this isn't even the case. The person who actually identified the virus "ebola" isn't the black guy that took blood samples of infected patients. Saying otherwise is rewriting history to fit an intersectional narrative, which is no better than what you call colonial mentality. Should teams get credit for discoveries instead of individuals? Sure and both people should get recognition. But let's not be hyperbolic here or claim this is the result of "colonialism", whatever it means in the mouth of people who use that word out of context. I'm baffled as to how some people always fall for that old intersectional shtick of claiming there is racism,sexism,colonialism everywhere and in everything, just because someone says so. It completely weakens the meaning of these words and turn them into insignificant weasel words because after all they apply to anything...
- leftyted 7y ago
  > It completely weakens the meaning of these words and turn them into insignificant weasel words because after all they apply to anything... Exactly right. "When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing."
- danharaj 7y ago
  You seem to be using intersectional as a general pejorative.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  Let's not mince words here. The person who recognized Ebola and thought it was worth analyzing is a man who holds a phd in virology in microbiology and to this day contributes and advises on Ebola research. Saying he's essentially just a black guy (or an idiot, as another comment here did) is massively downplaying who he is and what he does. He identified Ebola by being aware that it was different from other diseases he had dealt with and sent it off to a lab for further examination. By your argument the only people that would ever get credit are the people in the labs, not the people doing fieldwork and recognizing new diseases as they appear.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > The person who actually identified the virus "ebola" isn't the black guy that took blood samples of infected patients. Ooooh man, your use of a racial descriptor in a generally dismissive sentence doesn't seem neccessary. What would be changed by omitting the word "black" here? > I'm baffled as to how some people always fall for that old intersectional shtick of claiming there is racism,sexism,colonialism everywhere and in everything, just because someone says so. I'm not saying this is never overplayed, but have you considered that racism, sexism, and colonialism might actually be more pervasive than you're giving them credit for? Women and black people score lower on math tests when reminded of these categorizatons in a questionaire before the test, while men, white people, and asians score higher (asians get more of a boost than white people). We're all neural networks navigating a complex maze of cultural biases we don't understand, and we internalise some of those biases as we go whether we're aware of it or not. It's difficult.

dmix 7y ago

There's countless examples of this phenomenon happening while having nothing to do with 'colonialism', blaming that as the primary cause that needs to be addressed seems like selective reasoning. Even AIDs was "co-discovered" (meaning first to identify it as a retrovirus and published in a paper) by a team in France and one in the US around the same time, and only the French team got a nobel prize 25yrs later which was controversial for similar reasons that it's a difficult thing to identify (also note it takes a long time to get this sort of credit). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier

nkozyra 7y ago

> The core of the issue is the problem of colonial mentality. I suppose we would all like to brush it under the rug by saying it's difficult to pin down who really "discovered" Ebola I agree and addressed that. I don't disagree that colonialism's dark past plays a significant role in these things, but my larger point is "discovery" is always a hotly contested concept. I'm certainly not attempting to justify or mitigate it, that's specifically the reason I talked about colonialism first. It's important to frame much of our present day as being in the shadow of 19th and 20th century European exploitation abroad.

throw_m239339 7y ago

It has absolutely nothing to do with "colonialism" as an intersectional buzzword. People take credit for other people's discoveries all the time(Edison for instance), and in this article this isn't even the case. The person who actually identified the virus "ebola" isn't the black guy that took blood samples of infected patients. Saying otherwise is rewriting history to fit an intersectional narrative, which is no better than what you call colonial mentality. Should teams get credit for discoveries instead of individuals? Sure and both people should get recognition. But let's not be hyperbolic here or claim this is the result of "colonialism", whatever it means in the mouth of people who use that word out of context. I'm baffled as to how some people always fall for that old intersectional shtick of claiming there is racism,sexism,colonialism everywhere and in everything, just because someone says so. It completely weakens the meaning of these words and turn them into insignificant weasel words because after all they apply to anything...

leftyted 7y ago
> It completely weakens the meaning of these words and turn them into insignificant weasel words because after all they apply to anything... Exactly right. "When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing."
danharaj 7y ago
You seem to be using intersectional as a general pejorative.
fzeroracer 7y ago
Let's not mince words here. The person who recognized Ebola and thought it was worth analyzing is a man who holds a phd in virology in microbiology and to this day contributes and advises on Ebola research. Saying he's essentially just a black guy (or an idiot, as another comment here did) is massively downplaying who he is and what he does. He identified Ebola by being aware that it was different from other diseases he had dealt with and sent it off to a lab for further examination. By your argument the only people that would ever get credit are the people in the labs, not the people doing fieldwork and recognizing new diseases as they appear.
blotter_paper 7y ago
> The person who actually identified the virus "ebola" isn't the black guy that took blood samples of infected patients. Ooooh man, your use of a racial descriptor in a generally dismissive sentence doesn't seem neccessary. What would be changed by omitting the word "black" here? > I'm baffled as to how some people always fall for that old intersectional shtick of claiming there is racism,sexism,colonialism everywhere and in everything, just because someone says so. I'm not saying this is never overplayed, but have you considered that racism, sexism, and colonialism might actually be more pervasive than you're giving them credit for? Women and black people score lower on math tests when reminded of these categorizatons in a questionaire before the test, while men, white people, and asians score higher (asians get more of a boost than white people). We're all neural networks navigating a complex maze of cultural biases we don't understand, and we internalise some of those biases as we go whether we're aware of it or not. It's difficult.