I saw a news video the other day on ABC.com. An elderly African-American man was crossing a street in Hartford, Connecticut and a car swerved into the left lane to pass another car and hit the man, tossing him like a rag doll. He landed in the middle of the road and lay there. All of this was caught on a traffic camera a block away. The car that hit him did not slow down. In fact, it sped away and turned down a side street to get away from the scene. If all of that wasn’t disturbing enough, car after car drove by the man’s unmoving body, most of them had to actually slow down and drive around him. He was laying across the center line of the road. THEY SLOWED AND DROVE AROUND HIM!! Not a single car stopped to see if he was all right. The only good thing I can say is that they didn’t drive over him like road kill. Finally, a police officer driving down that road saw him and turned his lights on. No one called 911, the officer just happened to be driving that way. The man survived the accident, but he is now paralyzed. The traffic camera was too far away to get the license plate of the perpetrator, and currently no one is coming forward as a witness.
Would this all have been different if it was a white victim in a rich suburb, rather than a person of color in a poor, violent neighborhood? I believe it would have, but that is not the point. No matter how violent and disassociated from reality the people of this nation have become, there was always at least some care for the welfare of our fellow human. After 9/11, Katrina, and other disasters in this nation, we saw an incredible outpouring of compassion and care from the people of this nation. But now, have we fallen so far that we are frustratedly driving around injured bodies in the street? All I could think was, “Oh my God, this can’t be real!” I could not believe that people could be so sub-human. Have we learned nothing from the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, or Croatia? We live in a nation where the life, liberty, and freedom of every individual is said to be sacred. To see such a lack of care for a human life makes me want to weep. I’m sure God is weeping at a divine level. But, seriously, can we expect any less in an abortive society?
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