Wednesday, October 10, 2007

And still I rise...


The other morning I was listening to Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane and the subject of the show was the war on women in the east Congo. Top U.N. officials are calling the sexual violence towards these women the worst in the world. Marty’s guests, Christine Karumba, who was born in the Democratic Republican of Congo (DRC) and is now the country director there for Women for Women International, and Stephen Lewis, who is a former United Nations Envoy on Aids in Africa, are calling for the creation of a U.N. Women’s Agency to devise a plan to end this horrific violence in east Congo.

Over and over during the discussion, Moss-Coane asked both her guests and those calling in, why isn’t anything being done? Why isn’t this on anyone’s radar? Why isn’t it the lead story on CNN? And guess what… no one had the courage to simply say, because it’s Black African women who are being ravaged and ultimately, the world could care less about Black women, whether it’s Black women being raped and mutilated in Africa, or a Black woman kidnapped, tortured and raped in West Virginia.

Could the answer to Marty’s questions really be this sad and this simple?

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