Paradoxically, they are and are not “our girls.” It’s easy and natural to want to fold them into our open arms and caress them as our own. Yet we sit perched atop privilege and can utter they are our girls with nary a smidge of reality behind it. As Americans, we lack often lack perspective; we carry on with good intentions colored by our provincial outlook. There is flavor of the day outrage and we lumber back to the fluff of who’s wearing whom and who’s uncoupling, consciously or otherwise. Guilty as charged.
The sentiment of referring to kidnapped Nigerian school girls is earnest and powerful. We see these girls as “our girls” in our hearts, and we are palpably wounded by the news of their abduction and subsequent sale into sex slavery and as child brides. I get it. But it’s so damn easy for us to sit back and just talk. We are so damn good at just talking (again, guilty as charged). We don’t live in this torrid sea of horror. As a girl in America I never feared for my safety. I never felt worthless, disposable. We live a charmed life and fail to even recognize the warts among us in our own country and community. But that’s another story… The news coverage of these girls is so spotty here that we can’t even claim to vicariously let it usurp our being as we know it. This is no lost plane, I suppose.
Imagine if over 200 American girls were facing this same fate.
For that matter, what if they were German, Swiss, Canadian, Australian.
What if they were boys instead of girls?
What about all the child soldiers and the lost boys?
Our collective conscience and our government would be reacting differently.
What about the countless, nameless, voiceless girls Nicholas Kristof so eloquently writes of in Half the Sky? Ditto for Ashley Judd’s moving narrative about her experience with enslaved girls in All That is Bitter and Sweet? What have we done about this?
There’s no sense lamenting what we should have and could have done. The question now is: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? Something has to be done. Being outraged without action is worthless. Moral outrage is an easy cloak to slip on. I know because I do it everyday. Tell me, what can we do? Prayer is a start, but look, it’s just not sufficient.
I had this to say on a friend’s Facebook post in response to someone who said we are just average people who can’t do much. We are all just “average people” who move mountains together. That’s how movements get started. Average people using their voice, their vote.
Please link up any resources here.
Sign the White House petition.
I don’t know if this does anything but you can leave a message for the Secretary of State staff to voice your concern for the girls abducted in Nigeria and support of US action to help. The number is 202-647-4000, option 4.
Keep using your voice. The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls must amplify our collective outrage and showcase our compassion. Girls, whether our own or halfway across the world, matter. Black, brown, white, or red. I am myself a brown girl from halfway across the globe. My station in life was a matter of kismet, stars aligning, and a roll of the proverbial dice. My parents raised me to believe that I matter, that girls matter.
Now look, while it makes my skin prickle just a tish when I hear “they are our girls,” know that my own paradigm colors my perspective. Maybe I’m overly sensitive here. Maybe I’m touchy when I should just accept the notion of compassion from the people who are as horrified as I am. Nonetheless, I don’t mean to judge or preach. I don’t mean to discount the notion. I write this in haste and just want to stroke the keys to make the point that yes, we should regard these kidnapped girls as if they are our own. But what bothers me is that in truth, we as a nation would be acting a whole lot differently if they were.