Online Only: I'm CONCERNED!

The other day I was walking down Kirkwood Avenue when a bum hailed me with the familiar, "Hey brother, can you spare some change?" I stopped and pondered, then very deliberately drew out my wallet and removed a $50 bill; dangling the "Ulysses" in front of him, I declared to all within earshot, "If 50 people give me high-fives, I'll give this bum $50."\nOK, I didn't actually do that; I might be a knuckle-dragging caveman, but I'm not heartless. I created that illustration to make a point: If it's despicable to taunt the suffering of a homeless man in Bloomington, why is it OK to taunt the suffering of a few hundred thousand Africans on the other side of the world?\nRecently on Facebook, there has been a proliferation of users and groups promising to donate a certain sum of money "to Darfur" if other users meet an arbitrary goal.\nThe people promising this money are obviously not philanthropists; If they were, they would just give the money away without a self-aggrandizing Barnum and Bailey show. What kind of pathetic bloke needs half-a-million virtual high-fives before he can perform a simple act of mercy? Did Madonna go to Malawi to adopt a child because there weren't any starving black orphans in America?\nWhat is meant by donating money "to Darfur?" Are they hiring peacekeepers to stop the Janjaweed? Or are we just giving everyone free lunches and hoping they'll all get along? \nI bring as Exhibit A the refugee camp near Goma, Zaire, between 1994 and 1996. There, in the shadow of the Rwandan genocide, Western aide agencies gladly sheltered several hundred known war criminals at the cost of about $1 million per day for two years. Yeah, lots of people were giving money "to Rwanda," and their generosity was aiding and abetting known fugitives from the law.\nHonestly, what kind of callous capitalists are we if we think we can solve any problem by throwing enough money at it? Anecdotal evidence suggests that the very opposite is true -- that rich, unaccountable organizations are very likely to become corrupt.\nOur "caring" amounts to nothing more than latent racism; we don't care about the suffering of black folks on the other side of the world.\nIf you only care enough to trot it out in conversation from time to time; if you only care enough to click the "Join Group" button on Facebook; if you only care enough to throw the bum a nickel, you only care because it makes you feel good about yourself.\nWhich is to say, you only care about yourself.\nWhat if we actually cared? What if planeloads of American college students showed up on the Sahel of Western Sudan as a band of marauders swept into town?\nYeah, some of us might die. In fact, lots of us might die.\nThen the world would notice because Africans dying isn't news, but fresh-faced American college students dying, now that's news.