Opinion
 

Color barrier remains formidable

By Warren Domask

What do African-Americans and 11,000 Iraqi civilians have in common?

The only chance their deaths could get attention would be if they were painted white.

On Mar. 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks was the first non-Caucasian to die in the struggle for American independence from Britain. When a group of angry colonists surrounded a small group of scared British soldiers, an unnamed source supposedly shouted "fire." Fear overtook the outnumbered bunch, and they fired into the crowd. Along with four whites, Attucks died for what would eventually become the greatest country in the world. 

When Paul Revere decided to create an engraving of the tragedy, he took a lot of liberties with the facts of the incident. For example, the surrounded bunch of rag-tag, frightened soldiers was replaced by a grinning death squad complete with a sniper resting comfortably in a nearby building as he fired upon the colonists, who were, portrayed as martyrs. The most interesting fact that Revere changed, though, was Attucks' ethnicity ? he was portrayed as white. Revere didn't overlook the fact that Attucks was of African descent; he simply knew the only way people would care would be if the victims were white.

Fast-forward to Oct. 3, 1993, when one of the most intense displays of mainstream America's tendency to put American lives over all others occurred. Peace talks with brutal Somali dictator Mohammed Farah Aidid had proven fruitless, and U.S. and U.N. peacekeeping forces inside the ravaged country were in constant danger. Only one option was left ? the capture of Aidid's chain of command. As a small group of U.S. soldiers moved into the capital city of Mogadishu, a lucky shot from a militia rocket took down a Black Hawk helicopter. In the carnage that followed, 18 military personnel died. Because of their noble sacrifice, as many as 700 members of Aidid's vile militia were killed, certainly saving the lives of countless Somalis.

Instead of focusing on the nobility of their sacrifice, the "liberal media" displayed the images of American corpses being dragged through the streets. The horror of seeing white corpses being desecrated overwhelmed America's sense of duty to the Somali people. 

Under the burden of going against the will of the American public, President Clinton decided soon after that all U.S. troops would be removed from Iraq. The hunt for Aidid, the monster responsible for Somalia's humanitarian crisis, was abandoned. The warlords important enough to be removed from power were left in control, because suffering beyond America's borders was judged not worth ending if it was to cause even a miniscule number of American deaths. 

This attitude applies not only to executive cowardice, but also to executive bluster, as seen today in Iraq. Now the White House can be seen avidly downplaying the number of American deaths in Iraq, going as far as to hide the inflow of flag-draped caskets coming in all too often from overseas.

Apparently, minimal effort is needed to disguise the death toll of Iraqi civilians, and Gen. Tommy Franks has pointed out that "We don't keep a body count."

Although some of the average, American UH students I asked knew the ballpark figure of American deaths in Iraq, almost none knew that the civilian death toll in Iraq has likely topped 11,000. It's important to point out that this statistic has been gathered by a third party ? the research group Project on Defense Alternatives ? as the U.S. military does not make a point to keep track of those who have died while being liberated. 

Since the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has faltered, the new justification for the invasion of Iraq has changed to the liberation of the Iraqi people from the tyrant Saddam Hussein. In the face of this new post-facto justification, Americans should care about nothing more than the safety of said Iraqis. It is horrifying to instead see complete indifference to the fact that the Iraqis are more afraid of us than the tyrant who America came to overthrow. 

Naturally there is another side to the story. Be it My Lai or the Abu Ghraib scandal, there has, on many occasions, been public interest in what is happening to people on the other side of the color line, but in the end America's eyes tend to be blind to people of color instead of colorblind. These travesties have been committed in the name of every American citizen. If America really cares about human life, its population needs to widen its range of views and see that death isn't just a tragedy when it happens to white people. 

Victims, and in the case of Attucks, heroes, come in more than one color.

Domask, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at dccampus@mail.uh.edu