Count to 147.
It’s a bigger number than people realize, especially when it’s used to describe the number of dead ?students in Kenya as of today.
Last week, a small group of militants from the terror group the Shebab walked onto campus at Garissa University, began separating the students by religion and killed the Christian students one by one.
When it was all over, 147 students had been killed before Kenyan military officers were able to hunt down the terrorists.
It is a terrible tragedy for any nation to have to suffer through such a deadly event, but what is more tragic is the rest of the world’s apparent lack of concern for the country. Sure, the story picked up some national headlines and received some coverage, and some in the West were aware it happened. But compared to the “Charlie Hebdo” killings earlier in the year, this story was practically ignored.
Now this is not to say the “Charlie Hebdo” killings were less tragic or that they did not merit the coverage they received. It is simply too often the West ignores the plight of those we don’t understand.
This violence, while devastating to live under, is considered business as usual for Kenya when taken from a Western perspective. The Shebab is an organization that has terrorized the Kenyan people for years, including a siege of one of the fanciest malls in the capital, where they killed 67 people in 2013.
For whatever reason, we in the United States hear these stories but don’t feel the same kind of sympathy for the victims as we do if they were one of us.
Even a failed terrorist attempt here in the U.S. would garner national attention for days to come, but a successful one in Africa or the Middle East is a blip on the news screen.
A single case of Ebola in the U.S. grasps the attention of a nation for weeks, but thousands dying overseas barely catches our eye.
We care exponentially more about American lives and Western lives than we do the lives of those living in Third World nations. Some of that is natural, but the degree to which we have taken it is obscene.
At a certain point we need to come to the realization that either we care about people’s lives or ?we don’t.
A just nation can’t simply sit on the sidelines as hundreds die overseas while we concern ourselves with the meaningless and petty. This attack on Kenyan students should be a wake-up call for the West: it is time to pay attention.
It is time to take notice of the crippling violence that too often consumes these people. It is time ?to care.
Otherwise, if we continue to sit back and ignore it, the evil in the world will eventually start to knock on our door.
