– Serious problem –
Moussa Kourouma, a taxi driver from Guinea, said children from the community face a “serious problem.” Bullying and parents out at work made it easy for them to drop out of school and drift onto the streets, he said.
As president of a Guinea community association, he said the family of a five-year-old boy, who tested negative for Ebola in New York on Monday, are too frightened to return to their home in the Bronx.
“They cannot come back to where they were living because the neighbourhood over there doesn’t want to receive them,” he said.
Kourouma said immigrants from the three afflicted countries were scared to go to hospital when they were sick or admit their origin to customers.
One customer threatened to get out of his cab as soon as he discovered he was from Guinea, he said.
“If you say you’re from Guinea or Liberia or Sierra Leone, nobody got time for you,” he told the news conference. “We have a serious problem.” READ: Australia suspends immigration from Ebola-hit nations
Stephanie Arthur, chair of the civil engagement committee of the AAC, told AFP that she had no precise number of incidents but said Ebola exacerbated bullying many African children already face because of their origin.
Neither was it just in New York. Children had also been harassed and called Ebola in Texas, she said.
“This greatly impacts our quality of life as Africans,” she told reporters.
“I want to challenge the media, I want to challenge health professionals to accurately report how this virus is transmitted. This fear mongering hurts this community,” she added.
According to the Immigration Policy Centre, the African foreign-born population in the United States doubled in size between 2000 and 2010.
Nearly half of African immigrants are naturalized US citizens, and the largest African communities are in California, New York, Texas, Maryland and Virginia.
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