If Africa were white...

Heineken Helen

there would be none of the problems there are now! I just started reading 'shake hands with the devil' by Romeo Dallaire, the UN force commander during the Rwandan conflict. The introduction describes a three year old child covered in dust with flies all over the sores on his body just wandering the road, walking over rotten bodies, that kinda thing. I realised that obviously nowhere did the author say the kid was black... so I tried to pretend he was white... suddenly the book turned into a post apocolyptic fantasy horror! It just wasn't believeable when the kid was white at all. Why is it so easy to take these things in when they're talking about Africa? He explains why he found it impossible to get any help from anybody... cos everybody was focussed on what was going on in the Balkans.

Are we really that fucking shallow? :mad:

Jeremy1012

We pretty much are that shallow. We all talk about how horrific war and poverty are and how we need to give food, water and AIDS medicine to Africa and we try to convince ourselves that we have a genuine concern but how many of us actually lose sleep over it? It's sad to say but most of us feel pretty damn comfortable with the distance we have. Maybe if we saw for ourselves and introduced a human element to it, things would be different.

Heineken Helen

Jeremy1012 wrote:

We pretty much are that shallow. We all talk about how horrific war and poverty are and how we need to give food, water and AIDS medicine to Africa and we try to convince ourselves that we have a genuine concern but how many of us actually lose sleep over it? It's sad to say but most of us feel pretty damn comfortable with the distance we have. Maybe if we saw for ourselves and introduced a human element to it, things would be different.

Probably... I was also thinking about Hotel Rwanda and why IT worked... possibly cos they used a well known American actor and an English actress to play the two main African parts? I just need to understand the psychology behind why people don't actually give a fuck.

Perhaps if Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry starred in a film about what's going on... maybe then people could relate and understand?

Jennytree

Heineken Helen wrote:

I just need to understand the psychology behind why people don't actually give a fuck.

Maybe its not because people don't give a fuck, maybe they're not let give a fuck. The help has to start from higher above in order for a complete turnaround, otherwise they're just walking in circles trying to survive.

Heineken Helen

Jennytree wrote:

Maybe its not because people don't give a fuck, maybe they're not let give a fuck. The help has to start from higher above in order for a complete turnaround, otherwise they're just walking in circles trying to survive.

I don't know... I mean can you really imagine if what happened in Rwanda happened in a white country and we were seeing the news footage... can you imagine the UN saying 'sorry, we can't give you any more soldiers' or 'sorry but we cannot afford to buy your guys PENCILS so they can take notes' :eek:

I think if that were the case, we'd all be in uproar and FORCE those higher up to do something. Like I said, when I imagined they were white it just went completely unbelieveable... and was more like a Stephen King novel

MrMerkinball

Heineken Helen wrote:

there would be none of the problems there are now! I just started reading 'shake hands with the devil' by Romeo Dallaire, the UN force commander during the Rwandan conflict. The introduction describes a three year old child covered in dust with flies all over the sores on his body just wandering the road, walking over rotten bodies, that kinda thing. I realised that obviously nowhere did the author say the kid was black... so I tried to pretend he was white... suddenly the book turned into a post apocolyptic fantasy horror! It just wasn't believeable when the kid was white at all. Why is it so easy to take these things in when they're talking about Africa? He explains why he found it impossible to get any help from anybody... cos everybody was focussed on what was going on in the Balkans.

Are we really that fucking shallow? :mad:

I have actually met Romeo Dallaire. He is a fascinating person. Interesting take you have there Helen.

JordyWordy

Rwanda, Tibet, Congo, East Timor, Ethiopia, Sudan....
why are conflicts anyless important if they happen far away?

maybe its to do with UN being resistant to send troops in certain circumstances (wasnt there a UN refugee camp attacked during the Balkans war?)

i think people can only let a cetain amount of this stuff into their heads or it will consume them. i think they should let it consume them though....

some countries have people starving, others are ravaged by war...policies in Western countries need to address this from the top.

If the WTO was more like the EU and wasnt member driven a lot of the food crises could be avoided too

Heineken Helen

MrMerkinball wrote:

I have actually met Romeo Dallaire. He is a fascinating person. Interesting take you have there Helen.

well I'm only about 100 pages in but so far it sounds like he really tried his best for them and did everything he possibly could within his power... must have been a seriously frustrating time for him :(

Heineken Helen

JordyWordy wrote:

Rwanda, Tibet, Congo, East Timor, Ethiopia, Sudan....
why are conflicts anyless important if they happen far away?

maybe its to do with UN being resistant to send troops in certain circumstances (wasnt there a UN refugee camp attacked during the Balkans war?)

i think people can only let a cetain amount of this stuff into their heads or it will consumer them. i think they should let it consume them though....

some countries have people starving, others are ravaged by war...policy needs to be from top down.

If the WTO was more like the EU and wasnt member driven a lot of the food crises could be avoided too

Oh absolutely... I mean this stemmed from a conversation I had on Friday about the holocaust and how horrific that was... and of course they're right... BUT what's the point in going on about how horrific something was 60 years ago when we're still allowing the same thing happen. I think the feeling is that it's not the same thing at ALL... cos they're not 'civilised' people. In other words, only westerners are important. People can deny that as much as they like but I can't make any other kind of sense out of somebody insisting one case of genocide was worse than another. There is also a sense of the holocaust being much more important than any of the other conflicts. That really bothers me. Not that I think any of them should be given scores or points... but you try telling one victim of genocide that there was actually another one which was worse. Isn't it kinda belittling what they went through?

JordyWordy

Heineken Helen wrote:

There is also a sense of the holocaust being much more important than any of the other conflicts. That really bothers me. Not that I think any of them should be given scores or points... but you try telling one victim of genocide that there was actually another one which was worse. Isn't it kinda belittling what they went through?

Yes, it is. I know exactly what you mean. The "Never Again" type thing? Obviously its a fair attitude, and justified when you see that people like DAvid Irving still exist. BUT the extent to which it is used to promote positive steps to EXERTS Jewish rights over other races is a little at odds with the whole thing imo. but placing some sort of importance over the same thing happening to other groups is quite simply, a form of racism. i thinik i found that thread you were talking about just now, VERY interesting opinions from people there...!

Heineken Helen

JordyWordy wrote:

Yes, it is. I know exactly what you mean. The "Never Again" type thing? its a fair attitude, and justified when you see that people like DAvid Irving still exist, but placing some sort of importance over the same thing happening to other groups is quite simply, a form of racism. i thinik i found that thread you were talking about just now, VERY interesting opinions from people there...!

Absolutely... some people tend to use the 'never again' thing as a 'oh see how much we've learned... and now we're much better people and this won't happen again' :eek: but... eh... it's probably happening somewhere all over the world at any given time. Doesn't matter which dictator managed to kill the most people... any act of genocide should garner equal disgust and be of equal significance... the fact that many seem to be 'less' than this one definitely has to be a form of racism... OF THE WORST KIND... not just calling a group of people a name or putting them down but actually blatently seeing their lives as being inferior to ours and not mattering at all.

Heineken Helen

Hmm... it's interesting to see that a thread about F1 gets 8 times the number of replies, a thread about the mets gets 27 times the number of replies, one about dogs gets 152 times the number of replies... and a thread about Lost gets almost 200 times the amount of replies than one about dying African people!

Perhaps therein lies the answer to my question

GreenTeaDisease

Heineken Helen wrote:

there would be none of the problems there are now! I just started reading 'shake hands with the devil' by Romeo Dallaire, the UN force commander during the Rwandan conflict. The introduction describes a three year old child covered in dust with flies all over the sores on his body just wandering the road, walking over rotten bodies, that kinda thing. I realised that obviously nowhere did the author say the kid was black... so I tried to pretend he was white... suddenly the book turned into a post apocolyptic fantasy horror! It just wasn't believeable when the kid was white at all. Why is it so easy to take these things in when they're talking about Africa? He explains why he found it impossible to get any help from anybody... cos everybody was focussed on what was going on in the Balkans.

Are we really that fucking shallow? :mad:

speak for yourself. it's not easy for many people to "take" be they black, white, or anything else. I would see a description like that as an apocolypitic fantasy horror without having to imagine the kid being white.

reeferchief

Heineken Helen wrote:

Perhaps if Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry starred in a film about what's going on... maybe then people could relate and understand?

Perhaps if some of these and many other super rich actors/musicians/buisnessmen were to donate a million of their money towards the things countries like Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia etc etc need such as medicines, supplies and tried to help build an economy in these countries to evolve them away from being third world, it would have a much larger effect no?

In situatuions like this money and the money it would cost to make a film a few people would watch, would make a much more important statement.

I just wish I could win the lottery, I'd donate a lot more than a million and invest plenty of my own time as well, but such is life.:(

Heineken Helen

GreenTeaDisease wrote:

speak for yourself. it's not easy for many people to "take" be they black, white, or anything else. I would see a description like that as an apocolypitic fantasy horror without having to imagine the kid being white.

Fair enough... but if I were able to see it like that I don't think I could actually cope!

Heineken Helen

reeferchief wrote:

Perhaps if some of these and many other super rich actors/musicians/buisnessmen were to donate a million of their money towards the things countries like Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia etc etc need such as medicines, supplies and tried to help build an economy in these countries to evolve them away from being third world, it would have a much larger effect no?

I just wish I could win the lottery, I'd donate a lot more than a million and invest plenty of my own time as well, but such is life.:(

Oh absolutely... as well meaning as they think they are... I'm sick of celebrities telling us where our money should go... when they're the ones who actually HAVE money. it certainly seems to be the in thing these days.

GreenTeaDisease

Heineken Helen wrote:

Fair enough... but if I were able to see it like that I don't think I could actually cope!

what was it exactly that changed it so much for you when you saw the child as white? is it just that we're so used to seeing images of black children suffering like that?

Heineken Helen

GreenTeaDisease wrote:

what was it exactly that changed it so much for you when you saw the child as white? is it just that we're so used to seeing images of black children suffering like that?

Yes, that's what I was saying... that people become accustomed to it and it just becomes 'yet another black kid with the flies and all'. If the child were white, I think much more people could relate... the kid may remind them of their daughter or a neighbours kid... but Africa just seems so far removed. It's hard to relate those images to anything we know!

GreenTeaDisease

Heineken Helen wrote:

the kid may remind them of their daughter or a neighbours kid...

haha well not if the person in question were black!

Heineken Helen

GreenTeaDisease wrote:

haha well not if the person in question were black!

Or rich... or wearing the same clothes as us... or speaking our language... perhaps the kid in question is wearing an ipod. There are plenty of things that prevent us relating to eachother, race is one of them! What I wanna know is why does this make us care less?

Fifthelement

There are some good points in this post but I think you have to go back further than just the last twenty-five years or so (the first Live-Aid) to put what happens now in Africa and other post-Colonial countries in perspective. I think part of the problem that Western countries have with aid to third-world countries is the fact that when many of these former countries were decolonized the colonists left them without any sustainable infrastructures (I don't mean buildings or things) but left the indigenous peoples without a way of continuing on (not that many of them wanted the reminders of their servitude). Many of the native inhabitants of post-Colonial countries reduced themselves to the us versus them i.e. Hutus versus Tutsi mentality (just as their colonists originally encouraged) it was, and often continues to be, a way of undermining meaningful growth by western standards. Many of these countries are run by corrupt regimes, warlords if you will. Any aid that does come from the UN and other agencies is often left to rot in port or sold to the highest bidders. The 'little' people often do not receive aid. Collective guilt by former colonists or a perceived white paternalistic attitude further erodes serious efforts at combating endemic death and disease in third-world countries.

Just my 2 cents.

Great topic HH.

P.S. Romeo Dallaire is a great man who couldn't deal with what he saw happening. He was forced into retirement due to severe depression brought on by his experiences in Africa. His book is an amazing wake-up call.