Walking the Wall

We point to the holocaust as the ultimate example of human atrocity, maybe feeling safer in the relative distance in time–Hotel Rwanda deals with real life incidences that took place in 1994, 12 years…my children were both born before this, time is not a distancing factor for this. Europeans went into the area to colonize and they set up their own caste system, separating out the taller, paler, thinner nosed Africans from the shorter, darker, wider nosed Africans. They used the lighter skinned to rule the country, then left, leaving the darker skinned in power–full of rage over the years of oppression and horrors ensued. I know that this is a simplistic explanation of a complicated situation, but it is horrifying to see what racism and oppression can do to people’s sense of humanity. There were atrocities committed by people of all colors, and acts of heroism done by people of all colors.

Some things that jumped out, just thrown in randomly, probably not completely accurate: 

"How can they not intervene if they see these atrocities," the main character asks of a media person, who replies that they will watch while eating dinner, say "Oh my god that is atrocious" and continue eating their dinner.

"We must shame them into helping us."

"Acts of genocide have happened, but we cannot say when that becomes genocide."

"You are dung to them (European powers) You’re not white, you’re not even a nigger, you are African."

"If I do not make it, you must take our children by the hand, and you must jump off the roof." 

When the rebels were forced out, they left behind nearly one million corpses. 

In the end, during a time when each person would be forgiven for thinking only of themselves and their family, Paul Rusesabagina chose to listen to the deeper instinct imbedded in his soul, he listened to the part of him that is set apart from cruelty and he was instrumental in saving 1268 people.

This movie is very difficult to watch, I do not cry very easily, but I am sitting here with swollen eyes and a pounding headache–and yet I believe that these are the movies that must be watched. We cannot afford to forget what humanity is capable of, we cannot afford to forget the complicity that comes from looking away. We must not forget what it means to look at a person and judge their worthiness, judge their humanity, on the color of the their skin, or their height, or their hair color, or the widths of their noses, or their sexual orientation, or their religion, or any other way we set people aside as "other"–we can never forget that when we take that path, the end of the road is filled with dead bodies.