(U-WIRE) WACO, Texas – As we hear stories about how victims in New Orleans are dying from simple things like a lack of clean water, it looks more and more like what’s been happening in Africa for years. It smacks of ignorance to talk about how much people are suffering in New Orleans when such travesties are the day-to-day reality for thousands, if not millions, of Africans.

America and Europe turned a mostly blind eye to the Rwandan genocides in the 1990s. More recently, civil war in Sudan displaced more than 4 million people. The AIDS epidemic has been raging in Africa for years and few have tried to solve it. People in Africa are dying because of simple things like not having clean water, starvation and improper medical supplies.

It’s great that people have moved to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It’s absolutely necessary for us to keep helping our American brothers and sisters.

But death is death.

Just because a group of people is separated by water doesn’t let us off the hook for saving their lives. People in the Baylor University community and beyond need to keep thinking about suffering around the world. If we don’t help now, history will blame the Western world for not stopping mass genocide and starvation.

Don’t let America be remembered as ignoring genocide.

Staff Editorial

The Lariat (Baylor U.)