Epi in the News

Very interesting reads... thank you for sharing....

The article from David Verga gives a sense of the power of words and the different ways a seemingly harmless word might be interpreted. I think all of us have ended up using many of those phrases previously- still do for that matter. I agree with what he says regarding the origin of these words and how they are do reflect the base level discrimination.. that is sort of the reality of this world. My concern is that the world is so used to words like "developing country" or "low and middle income country" that majority of times these words tend to be used to get the message across, with the intended emphasis, and not because the author actually has any sort of discriminatory thought in his/her mind. And I really doubt anybody reading these terms actually think that deep to feel any disrespect or negativity from, for example, words like "empower". But I agree... there needs to be a change- in terms of being more specific with what's written rather than using generalized terms.

What do you guys think?

Fathima

When I first read Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" and "Black Skins White Masks" about ten years ago, I shelved the books away to protect my mind from the anger his writings invoked. Although long forgotten, Fanon is not dead, his revolutionary ideas still rage on, and Lioba has properly placed them in the context of Global Health.