50,000 Africans have been killed in Sudan this year — by Arabs who look just like them — how did it come to this?
By William Jelani Cobb
The numbers, beyond a certain threshold, begin to blur into abstraction. The question is one that a four-year-old would ask: how many is 50,000? And how is it different from fifteen thousand — or a hundred? Ponder that question for more than a second and this much becomes clear: mass murder defies our moral grasp. The only apparent and solemn reality is that a mere decade after 500,000 people were slaughtered in the surreal horrifics of Rwanda, the term “genocide” is once again being used to describe an ongoing conflict in Africa.
History is not supposed to repeat itself that fast.
The region of present concern is Western Darfur, the area in Sudan where black Arabs have killed an estimated 50,000 black Africans in the past several months. The adjectives in the preceding sentence are not incorrect: Sudan is witness to the latest in the evolving episodes of murderous ethnic conflict among peoples who are visually indistinguishable from each other...
Please read the entire article:
http://www.africana.com/columns/cobb/ht20041011dafur.asp
By William Jelani Cobb
The numbers, beyond a certain threshold, begin to blur into abstraction. The question is one that a four-year-old would ask: how many is 50,000? And how is it different from fifteen thousand — or a hundred? Ponder that question for more than a second and this much becomes clear: mass murder defies our moral grasp. The only apparent and solemn reality is that a mere decade after 500,000 people were slaughtered in the surreal horrifics of Rwanda, the term “genocide” is once again being used to describe an ongoing conflict in Africa.
History is not supposed to repeat itself that fast.
The region of present concern is Western Darfur, the area in Sudan where black Arabs have killed an estimated 50,000 black Africans in the past several months. The adjectives in the preceding sentence are not incorrect: Sudan is witness to the latest in the evolving episodes of murderous ethnic conflict among peoples who are visually indistinguishable from each other...
Please read the entire article:
http://www.africana.com/columns/cobb/ht20041011dafur.asp