Standards of humanity are not 'black' and 'white'

They look different. Black. Dark. Poor. Foreign. "Savages." They are Africans. 3,000 people die in New York City, and the whole world changes. 800,000 people die in the Rwandan genocide over the course of only three months — a pace of 10,000 every day during that period — and we barely blink, then appoint the person in charge of global peacekeeping operations at the time as the UN Secretary-General. It is absurd that we ask if Africa, an entire continent, is relevant. Do 800 million people have to justify their existence? Do the 130 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa have to justify their innocence? Yet, the political realists of our intellectual elite will reply that the continent is not strategically important. Those who cry out in moral indignation are naïve. Devoting more attention to the continent is shortsighted.

It was Nelson Mandela, in September of last year, who chided the Bush Administration and the "coalition of the willing" for having one standard for "white" countries, and another for "black" ones. He went so far as to say, "But now that you've had black secretary generals like Boutros Boutros Ghali, like Kofi Annan, they do not respect the United Nations." Ah, the Nobel Peace Prize winner should have watched his mouth. What an absurd comment! How dare he accuse, us, the enlightened, the rich, the powerful, of being racist?! We have read Plato. We have freedom. We are the civilized world. You would think that people would not cast aside the remarks of such a venerated figure, but alas, we did, noting the words as the ranting of an old man clamoring for attention.

Is there such a standard? Do we see the world as black and white? Perhaps, Mandela didn't effectively voice the specifics, but he certainly pointed to an important trend that we seem to ignore: dead black people simply do not matter. Last week, the U.N. released a report regarding a fresh massacre in the Ituri Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), documenting that nearly 1,000 people were slaughtered within the space of five to eight hours. Did you hear about it? Although a few days later the U.N. revised the figure to a few hundred (around 300-400) civilians slaughtered — thus, no longer a topic worthy of conversation — it remains the fact that the massacre received scant attention in the media, and on college campuses for that matter. Also startling is the fact that these innocent men, women and children were maimed by machetes. One by one, stabbed, beheaded, wounded, killed.

Last week's massacre in the DRC was just a symptom of Congo's civil war that has resulted in 3.3 million deaths, according to a recent report by the International Rescue Committee. 85 percent of the fatalities resulted from malnutrition and disease due to the conflict. Regarded as Africa's first World War, it has involved over six nations. However, George Rupp, President of the International Rescue Committee, aptly points out: "This is a humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and shocking proportions . . . Yet the crisis has received scant attention from international donors and the media."

It is impossible to capture in one article the breadth of the despair that has befallen the diverse continent of Africa. Starvation, disease, violence, poverty are just a few of the ills that we can associate with the continent. People are suffering and it is our concern. Of course, we cannot absolve the eclectic array of corrupt and despotic leaders that have plagued the continent for decades. Yet, there is both a historic and moral responsibility that lies on the shoulders of the industrialized world. So much of the wealth of the Western World was plundered from Africa, and still is. Whether it was in the form of gems, oil or people, for years it was simply a policy of taking from the "savages." Does the end of colonialism absolve countries of responsibility? Is there no accountability for the thievery and domination that has spurred or contributed to many of the continent's problems?

Fundamentally, however, it is a question of morality and humanity. Throw out the history book, and simply look into the eyes of an African child. We should take hold of the clichéd exhortations of "We are all the same." Black, White, Yellow, Brown. Yet, all our blood runs red. It is high time we realized that each one of us shares the same humanity, and yes, as startling as it seems, there is value to the lives of our African brothers and sisters.

Taufiq Rahim is a Wilson School major from Vancouver, British Columbia.