Andrew Golis

Brandon Terry wrote a great column in today’s Crimson about divesting from Sudan. I highly recommend you read the whole thing, but in case you’re too lazy to check it out, here’s the most important part:

What we are discussing is the genocide of human beings. We may pretend their lives don’t have meaning because they are thousands of miles away in Africa or because they are black or because they don’t live in well-manicured suburbs and watch The OC—but our delusion only changes reality for us, not them. This type of delusion is frightening, really, because it is what our entire culture of disconnect and selfishness and impotence is built on. It is what prevents us from responding adequately to homelessness, poor schools, HIV/AIDS, and a host of other crises that affect “them” and not “us.” We apologize away our inaction and turn our eyes while death and destruction march on somewhere, in some ghetto or foreign country or wherever, that to us is at best an unpleasant mirage in our peripheral vision or at worst somewhere that never really existed at all.

Even though I have been involved in activism on Sudan, the sense of disconnect did not strike me until I spoke at a rally at the State House on Thursday. Before the rally, a woman came up to me and asked, politely, if I was of Sudanese descent. What that question revealed to me, is that if I was in Sudan, living amongst the black Africans in Darfur, I would be just as much of a target as the next person. For no reason, other than by virtue of being born in America, am I granted a different level on the global hierarchy of moral worth.

Read the whole thing and join SeniorGiftPlus!

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