The classrooms were filled with learning and dreaming. Students were playing on the playground and eating in the cafeteria. The gates of the rural academy flew open and gunmen demanded everyone go to the courtyard. Someone was able to make a quick phone call to authorities but it was too late. The students were already loaded into trucks and driven off…kidnapped from their refuge of learning. Now imagine the students were white girls.
The lack of outrage from most people in our country concerning the kidnapping of over 200 girls in Nigeria is troubling. This is a trend. Girls of color seem to matter less. My mind wonders back to the abduction of Natalie Holloway in Aruba a few years ago. Here in the United States there were reports of black girl after black girl being abducted…but the media spotlight and our collective conscience stayed on Aruba. Anyone who has lived in the urban areas of our nation know that the news is filled with abductions and murders of black girls…but it is breaking news and a top story when something happens to a white girl. I want to make something abundantly clear…black girls matter…black girls matter because they are beautifully and wonderfully created in the image of a loving God.
Until we arrive at a place where our hearts break and our collective outrage burns at violence perpetuated against all women in every corner of our cosmos…we do not know the God who dares call God’s self…love.
Amen.
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