A thousand ignored words

If a picture's worth a thousand words, then maybe public concern about genocide in Sudan has been slow rising simply because the images of dust-covered and emaciated Sudanese children begin with a phrase America has become all too indifferent to: poor Africans dying.\nWhether it's page-one photographs of dust-covered children fleeing their homes in Khartoum or 10 second clips of emaciated children starving in famine-ravaged Kenya, the traumatic images of brown people in distress only reinforces the subconscious belief that, like the sky is blue and water is wet, Africa is in crisis.\nYesterday, thousands rallied on the nation's mall demanding the Bush administration do more to quell violence in Sudan's Darfur region, where already at least 200,000 have died in conflict. The situation is a complex one in which Sudanese troops and government-funded militia have been raping, killing and forcing from their homes black African men, children and women since 2003.\nPresident Bush declared the atrocities happening in Darfur as genocide in 2004, but ralliers say he hasn't done enough to end the violence. This, however, is not a column about slow-moving white men in high-positions. This is a piece about a shamefully apathetic public of which I guiltily include myself.\nFor the past three years, I've seen the same heart-wrenching footage of veiled women carrying their crying babies through dusty refugee camps and yet I've never written a piece about their situation. I'd excused myself from reading anything but the first few paragraphs of stories on conflict in Sudan simply because I was turned off by the acronyms, the treaties and the layers of background information.\nI busied myself with smaller issues of discrimination and prejudice happening here on this campus and in this nation instead of confronting the deaths of thousands, the poverty of millions and the civil unrest of an entire nation simply because it was easier. \nAnd just as it's been easier for me to ignore the situation in my writing, it's been easier for the American public to talk about ever-rising gas prices rather than ever-rising death tolls. We simply refuse to accept paying 10 cents more on the gallon, but we can, however, accept death, poverty and chaos elsewhere in the world. \nSadly, tragedy in third-world nations, particularly in Africa, is not only accepted but expected. If that were not the case then it would have been impossible for the United States -- its government and much of its public -- to witness the genocide of an entire group of people and not move with increased urgency.\nHow can a nation who watched "Hotel Rwanda" with disgust, sit around and see the real life sequel playing out right before its eyes?\nIt's because before Oprah interviewed actor Don Cheadle for his role as Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who saved the lives of nearly 1,200 people during the mid-1990s killings that killed nearly 1 million people, dead Rwandans then were like the dead Sudanese today -- just another group of poor Africans dying.