All week, my head embroiled with thoughts of HIV/AIDS in Africa, an exhchange from my favorite TV show of all time, The West Wing, has haunted me. At this point in the series, there is unthinkable genecide (ethnic cleansing, basically) in a fictional African country called Kundu.
In trying to make a decision about whether to send in American troops, President Bartlet asks one of his aides (Will Baily):
Bartlet: "Why does an American life matter more to me than a Kundunese life?"
Baily: "I don't know, sir, but it is."
WHY? Why is this the case? What makes an African life less than an American life? Nothing in our genetics makes us a superior species. I know there's no answer for this, but it keeps swimming around in my brain. And eating at me.
Now a quote from Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom:
"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another." --p. 166
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