Why is African violence ignored?

New York Daily News ^ | 4-10-2003 | Stanley Crouch

[jocon307]

A couple of days ago, I went to a lunch to celebrate Paul Theroux's new book, "Dark Star Safari: Overland From Cairo to Cape Town."

"One of the epiphanies of my trip," he writes, "was the realization that where the mode of life had changed significantly in the Africa I had known, it had changed for the worse."

When Theroux and I talked, he observed that he had noticed something very strange in The New York Times in the last couple of days - a short Associated Press story about "966 victims [who] were killed in an April 3 assault on the Roman Catholic mission in Drodro and 14 surrounding villages, 50 miles northeast of Bunia, the provincial capital [of the Democratic Republic of the Congo]."

Theroux was disturbed because he had seen another story in the same edition - twice as long, by my word count - in which great concern was expressed about the declining gorilla and chimpanzee populations of Central Africa; they are being killed off by the Ebola virus and poaching.

To me, his observation is not about a greater concern for animals than for people. It is about the double standard for oppressive behavior. In other words, if those 966 people had been victims of a white colonial regime as opposed to being victims of tribal warfare, it would be a front-page story.

Black journalists, TransAfrica, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the Nation of Islam and every leftist periodical and radio station would be screaming bloody murder, and for good reason: It would be bloody murder. But it takes some imagination to blame everything, yet again, on the white man as opposed to the ever-ready demons of human nature. So such atrocities are met with silence.

That silence was also exposed on Oprah Winfrey's March 12 show about the female sex slaves of Africa who have been kidnapped, raped, mutilated, made into erotic toys and slaughtered by the thousands by tribal warriors and rebel units as brutal as any violent men in recorded history.

Again, if those women were the victims of Europeans, you can be sure American Negroes and their leftist compatriots would, correctly, scream down the moon.

But it seems we have no loud concerns about what is going on in Sierra Leone or Uganda, the two examples discussed on the Winfrey show with Naomi Wolf, the writer and journalist, and Catherine Wiesner, head of child protection programs for the International Rescue Committee in Sierra Leone.

Wolf described what she saw in Sierra Leone as an unprecedented sexual holocaust, then introduced Wiesner, whose team sends videotaped messages between abducted girls and their families. The emotional tapes have led to the release of 50 girls. "It's the most rewarding job I can think of having," Wiesner said.

Such atrocities prove that we need a single standard, let the chips fall where they may. Or we need to shut up and stop pretending we are so concerned about the troubled fates of Africans.

[cyborg]

Do you think every citizen in Africa is responsible for african problems? Not every problem african has is self inflicted, and THAT sentiment can be put upon by every other nation as well.

[farmfriend]

mhking, please post to the Black Conservative thread (I don't know how to do that!)

First, you need to do a separate post with his name in the "To:" box. That way it will come up on his self search. Please, allow me.

[cyborg]

Your ignorance is amazing.

[dfwgator]

We tried it once, in Somalia. Tragically, the fiasco that was Somalia made it politically unfeasible to intervene in Rwanda. Of course when you had a President that only cared about his own poll numbers, that's how it goes.

[dfwgator]

The French have a policy of supporting French-speaking countries against all others. This is why they supported the murderous Hutus in Rwanda, the Tutsis were aided by English-speaking Uganda. When asked about Rwanda, the pig Francois Mitterrand replied, "in a country like Rwanda, a genocide is not that important."

[chasio649]

The answer is culture...why are there crack dealers in black neighborhoods throughout the US? Because they allow it and a lot really don't give a damn. You will be hard pressed to find poor white areas with dirtbags on the corners hawking drugs in the suburbs...cultural...think about it.

[cyborg]

Oh please...stop it. Why is it on FR that people do this? You obviously have never been to a poor white neighborhood on Long Island lately.

[chasio649]

ok..it's not culture..you are so very right....we are all the same..lalalalalalala...

[cyborg]

I know as many white youth smoking crack,heroine, X, crystal meth, as anyone else. You just want to get away with saying that black neighborhoods are rife with drugs and white ones aren't without someone calling you on that.

[cyborg]

I am sure in the end it's about money. I guess I should not expect much out of the government to do something when it counts, esp. in this situation.

[The Great Satan]

Why is African violence ignored?

Like they used to say about the Mafia, "They only kill each other."

[chasio649]

That's exactly what i am saying...and i am sure those little white boys are dressed like hiphop gangsta wannabes...so what does that tell you?

[antaresequity]

Duh...no oil...no money...Cant save every one

[cyborg]

Actually not really. Most are dressed like they're either in the trench coat mafia, grunge metal or well dressed. Your statements make you sound ignorant and prejudiced. You ought to get more information before you say things like that. Not every black neighborhood is your south central fantasy. Not even South-Central LA is the way rap videos portray it. I went to visit my aunt in South Central, and I was amazed how clean, how quiet this part of SC was.

[Rome2000]

Crouch makes way too much sense for a liberal.

He's coming over to our side.

[chasio649]

http://fredoneverything.net/RaceThoughts.shtml


Since i'm ignorant, uninformed and not very worldly...i'll leave you with this to chew on.

[Willie Green]

If it wasn't for the MidEast Oil, the Arab/Israeli conflict would be ignored like the Hutu and Tutsis.

[cyborg]

I never said you were ignorant. I said your statements make you sound ignorant. But this discussion we are having is not on the topic of this thread. I would be more than happy to discuss it in FReepmail with you. Otherwise, I have nothing else to say.