A: A whole flotilla of self-righteous do-gooders promoting 'awareness' about them! Being politically active used to be the cool thing to do for young adults. Join the SDS, spend your summer registering black people to vote in Mississippi and getting STDs, and we'll take down the Man! As silly and sophomoric as college students were about it, I look back at those days with great fondness. Even though every four years the Young Democrats club goes on rampage with their voter registration drive and self-righteous whining about promoting social justice through voting blue state, politics aren't the main focus anymore. Instead, AWARENESS (sparkle!) is in! Exactly what is AWARENESS?
How to be AWARE:
- Find a cause involving non-white peoples, preferably in a third world country. Be it war or disease, as long as those suffering are distinctly brown in color, you can do no wrong.
- Read up on faulty economic policies. Botswana is a fluke; as we can see from the rest of subSaharan Africa, central planning is obviously the way to go. Spout 'inspirational' quotes from disparate philosophers and literary types to add flavor when you write your term paper on the cause and the policies. Note: The people who said the quotes cannot have any prior knowledge about the topic at hand, otherwise they'd be saying something significantly more intelligent.
- Buy a couple of t-shirts that address your cause. Pair with trendy yet frayed jeans or cargos and chacos. Add African bead necklaces and rolled-up bandana bracelets as necessary. The farther away in geographical distance to the location of your cause the accessories have, the better; you're multicultural!
- Relate everything you say either in class or in conversation to the issue. Unless your friends now avoid you and your teachers roll their eyes when you talk, you haven't worked hard enough.
- Make everyone you know feel bad about anything that happens to them. When your best friend gets into the grad school of her choice, respond with "I bet Sudanese orphans would love the chance to receive an education. But no, the white world has turned its back on them." When your brother's dog dies, you must console him with "That is nothing to the life of an ordinary worker in Namibia whose entire family has died because they couldn't get sufficient medical aid. If only we had universal healthcare..." It is imperative that your info and statistics deviate from reality. Passion means everything here.
- Smile and nod patronizingly whenever a non-white person speaks about the topic at hand. Wipe a tear away from the corner of your eye as they finish. You're a friend to minorities!
- You must balk, however, with moral indignation when anyone suggests policies that would involve the natives actually working out things for themselves and adopting free market principles. Silly natives! Decision making is for college educated American white people! How else could we have that picture for our grad school applications of us spoonfeeding weak black Africans? That picture is key.
- Unless you are going over to the location of your cause, do not, I repeat, DO NOT actually do any work for it. Your job is to raise AWARENESS, the most important part of any social cause. If only more people knew about it, Kitty Genovese would have lived. Limit your activity to posting up Facebook notes and changing your profile pic.
- If you do go overseas, you have to get academic credit so you can write the obligatory reflection paper about how the trip changed your life and you made an everlasting contribution to the natives' lives as well. Include pictures of you holding African babies, the most productive part of your 10 day work trip in which you prove to be incompetent with the most basic building skills. Yes, it would have been more cost-effective to just send the couple thousands of dollars over there instead of spending it on your plane ticket and travel and food expenses, but how else were you supposed to have an experience?
- Three months later, move on. There's another cause waiting to be made aware. You've done your part with this one. And after all, they're only simple-minded colored people. They're so grateful for the 'help' you provided that they'll remember you fondly for the rest of their short lives before the river blindness or rebel snipers finishes them off. You have to make your mark for at least three geographical regions before you graduate.
Congratulations, you've raised AWARENESS. You may not have helped a single person, but at least you can feel superior to everyone else because they don't have your ugly and expensive Toms shoes!
Warning! Look out for the
!