Darfur and Black America
By Deacon Art Miller
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As my wife and I approached the mall, we saw a low-lying fog hanging in the distance, beneath it I was able to barely make out a large crowd of shadowy forms. A muted din of music and voices floated towards us as we drew closer. What had first looked like fog turned out to be dust which hung like a cloud a few feet over a mass of people gathered together amidst green signs which declared "Stop the Genocide." It was Sunday April 30, 2006, we were in Washington D.C. From where the crowd assembled, we could see in the distance the dome of the U.S. Congress building gleaming beautifully in the bright spring sunshine. The multitude of people jostled, in near joyous celebration of camaraderie. We had gathered in a unique oneness. All of us, of different religious beliefs and of different ethnicities, drawn together in a passion of determination, assembled as one, to lift our voices to protest the massacre and murder of nearly a half million people of Darfur.

The murders have been so grotesque that the President of the United States George W. Bush had rightly named it "Genocide." Yet, most Americans stood idly by, some uncaring, most unknowingly, because the U.S. media had not brought the slaughter of so many innocents to the forefront. Only minimal coverage of this catastrophe invaded our homes on the six, ten or eleven o'clock news reports.

I first read about it in the spring of 2004 in Time Magazine. The article had mentioned the possibilities of another Rwandan type of mass murders occurring in the Darfur region of the Eastern African Country of Sudan. Troubled with this information I called a friend from The Sudan, and he confirmed the news, Genocide. It was happening again, a genocide, which the International community defines as,

"any acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group",

Again a rancid atrocity invaded humanity. Once more the human species embraced an ugliness that is nearly impossible to imagine. Murder and rape, burning and destruction used as a tool to eliminate a people and most of the world stood idly by.

After discovering the truth of the happenings in Darfur, I wrote my elected officials pushing them to action. I received e-mails from most of them, declaring their anger and disappointment at the inaction of our government, but nothing was actually happening to stop the genocide. Thousands continued to die, and the world stood idly by.

The only effective tool that could possibly awaken our government to action, I believed were the governed, the people of America. To my joy I found there were grass-roots organizations that had taken an active role in trying to bring to light the on-going tragedy. I spoke with church groups both Catholic and non-Catholic, hoping to find one that had developed a plan of action. The local Catholic Worker as well as several college organizations such as Amnesty International had done extensive work in organizing people and I found web sites that articulated well the truths of what was occurring in Sudan. I followed the continuing t ragedy with updates from the Catholic Relief Services website. Finally, I discovered through the Office for Black Catholic Ministries in the Hartford Archdiocese, a group of people who were energetically developing strategies to actively confront the genocide.

The group consisted of several organizations, including not only the Office for Black Catholic Ministries (OBCM), but several prominent Jewish organizations; Jewish Defense League (JDL), Jewish Community Relations Councils, National Council of Jewish Women, as well as The Waterbury NAACP, Interfaith Refugee Center, and the Local Catholic Relief Services Organization.

The Jewish community was actively involved in this initiative, undoubtedly as a result of their own experience of genocide as a catalyst for their concerns, and efforts. I applauded their involvement.

But it was at one of our many meetings when I fielded the question I knew was going to come at one time or another.

"Deacon Art, may I ask, why is the black American community so lightly represented in this effort?"

The Rabbi who asked the question meant no harm. He clearly had seen the need for a larger representation from the African American community. I had wished for a greater number as well, but I understood the meager numbers. I explained to the Rabbi my beliefs.

We, as African Americans were taught for centuries to shun our African roots. We had been taught that Africa was the Dark Continent, inhabited only by savages, who could only be tamed by white folks like the great Bwanas that were depicted in the movies during the 40's, 50's and 60's. We had been systematically and cruelly stripped of our knowledge of the greatness of our heritage. For nearly 400 years we were separated from our legacy and our culture. We did not know our brothers and sisters in Africa.

Additionally, our struggles against slavery, intolerance, and racism for nearly four hundred years, here in America, had skewed our efforts and concerns towards our own survival. It was nigh-on impossible to be actively concerned about the deaths of your lost ancestors in Africa when your brothers and sisters next door are suffering. It is difficult to imagine the pain of your kin 10,000 miles away when you can peer into the eyes of your kin whose sufferings you can intimately breathe in, because they are next door, or are your brother, or sister, or cousin, or aunt, or father, or yourself.

The intimacy of our pain in Black America has superseded in many ways the atrocities our brothers and sisters are enduring far away in a place we do not know and cannot imagine. And yet those who are far away are our brothers and sisters and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers. We are linked by our mutual and common experiences of ugliness and atrocities. We are kin by our pain.

And so here we are Black America, with brothers and sisters worldwide who are suffering as do so many of us. Protesting the atrocities that have been visited upon others does not preclude our standing up for ourselves. It does not diminish our voices for our kin here, when we scream out in outrage for our kin in Africa. I believe our standing as a people in America enhances our global stand. We are called to always lift our voices whenever and wherever any injustice occurs, for we, perhaps more than others, have been the victims of atrocities while others have stood idly by. So my wife and I were drawn to Washington D.C. to stand up, to speak up, and to cry out for our lost kin- as have other Black Americans.

Ultimately, I believe that if God were to give us an eleventh commandment, if our Lord were to reach into our spirits, into our souls to instruct us one more time. I believe that eleventh commandment would read:

Thou Shalt not be a Bystander