SPEAK FREELY- BLACK DOUBLE STANDARD?

I don’t know why this is happening but it is. There’s no doubt about it. There appears to be a double standard when it comes to enforcing peace and liberating innocents.

Let me explain. Earlier this month, I was on my couch watching Bill Maher’s show on HBO. One of the guests, Mia Farrow, was trying to draw attention to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. She had just come back from a visit to a nearby refugee camp. I don’t need to explain the crisis but to those who have forgotten – Sudanese government backed militiamen are raping, dismembering and slaughtering innocent civilians. There are estimates that as many as 2 million have been killed or displaced so far. After the interview with Farrow, another guest, former Representative Joe Scarborough, commented on the crisis but took the conversation in an entirely different direction. Here’s a transcript of his exchange with NPR commentator, John Ridley:

MAHER: That is a shame, that we keep talking about it and nothing seems to – nothing seems to get done.

SCARBOROUGH: You know, back in, I think, 1998, I had a resolution, and we laid out all the particulars – Abe Rosenthal, former editor of the New York Times, came around and was talking about it. At that time, over a million Sudanese had been killed in the civil war – 1998! But, you know, it’s so interesting, we go to Kosovo, we go to Bosnia—

MAHER: Right.

SCARBOROUGH: [overlapping]—we go to Iraq. We’re going to go to Iran. And yet 2 million Rwandans get slaughtered in 1994, we do nothing. The United Nations does nothing. In ’97, ’98, one to two million Sudanese get slaughtered, we do nothing. Why? What’s the difference? [pause]

MAHER: Black guy?

SCARBOROUGH: Black guy?

RIDLEY: Let me jump in right here.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, black guy.

MAHER: Black guy, I think that’s your cue. [laughter]

RIDLEY: It’s about time. You know, I wish I could reduce it to the density of the color of their skin. I don’t know that I can. But the problem is, is when you have the government saying – one of the many reasons to go to Iraq is because he was a bad guy, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.

MAHER: Right.

RIDLEY: There are a lot of bad guys out there. So I can’t say exactly why we’re not doing things in the Sudan. But it bothers me when that’s used as an excuse in Iraq, and clearly that’s not a reason. There’s an excuse and there’s a reason. It’s not a reason to go into the Sudan. That’s where it’s problematic.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, the thing – you talk about Kosovo or Bosnia, and we have a report this past week that, what, how many, many 10,000 white people were slaughtered. They called it genocide. Again, 2 million in Rwanda. Up to 2 million in the Sudan. We do nothing. It’s hard not to say it’s because the people in Sudan don’t look like the majority of Americans.

Just today, the commander-in-charge of Iraq, General David Petraeus, asked for even more troops and yet there’s still not one American boot on the ground in Sudan. Why? I’m not saying the US has to be the world’s police but I would just like to know how we decide when it’s time to act. And which atrocities deserve our attention?

In the rationale for going to war in Iraq, our President said it was in order to find weapons of mass destruction and disarm Saddam. Then he said we have to act because Saddam Hussein was ignoring the UN. Then he said that we have to free the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator “who gasses his own people”. Later, Bush said the lives of millions of freedom seeking people were in the balance. The country… the Congress… and the “Coalition of the Willing” bought into that. And so we acted to pursue a noble cause.

Now in Darfur, we have similar circumstances. Possibly millions of lives are seeking liberty. An unknown number of people are, in fact, slaughtered. We have a government that’s ignoring calls from the UN to let peacekeepers in. And a cruel government is backing “janjaweed” militiamen who are committing atrocities against their own people. The UN says the international community should act. The President called it “genocide.” And the best we can do is to send George Clooney and Angelina Jolie? I know he was Batman and she was Lara Croft but… really? There are more celebrities than UN or US troops on the ground?

What’s the difference? Who decides? Explain to it me. And don’t just say it’s about oil because Sudan is rich in oil too. In fact, it’s one of the main sources of oil to China. Again…who decides when it’s time to act? And which atrocities deserve our attention?