Here I go again, treading into dangerous waters. I was
listening to the BBC World News in the wee hours of the morning on my way to
work the other day. On their weekly “health” segment, there was a discussion
concerning a high mortality rate of women in childbirth in South Sudan. The
rate was one-in-seven, according to the BBC, which seems rather higher than
credible; in the past, I’ve pointed out the propensity for women’s advocates to
inflate numbers—usually by multiple factors—that do not seem to be justified by
the available data. Nevertheless, given the known availability of health
services in most of rural sub-Sahara Africa, I will grant that mortality rates
are much higher than in developed countries. The BBC report admits that the
lack of midwives, the long distances required to travel to medal facilities,
and the lack of paved roads contribute to the poor condition pregnant women often
find themselves in. Malnutrition, of course, is also a factor in the difficulty
in giving birth.
The problem comes in when the female BBC reporter
breathlessly insists that the reason for the lack of infrastructure and health
services is—“surprising to those of us who live in Britain” and other Western
countries—that women’s lives are not “valued” in Africa. This is the kind of racist
shibboleth that advocates in the West have tended to use when describing Third
World cultures, in countries where life tends to be harsh no matter who you are
unless you are one of the political and economic elites. I supposed what
disturbed me most about this report was that the lack of logic and common sense
was so blatant; it doesn’t take much thinking see the weakness of the premise. Pregnancy
isn’t the only “disease” in South Sudan, or even the most significant—that
would likely be lack of food. However, there are other life complications that
significantly alter one’s life span, such as heart disease, cancer, various
virus and bacteria-born illnesses—and a little thing like bullets, which I will
discuss later. Lack of clean water and sewage can’t be ignored as well. These
do not discriminate by gender, nor does the lack of health care facilities;
everyone suffers regardless of age or gender. Interestingly, another reason why
the BBC reporter said women’s lives were not “valued” is because there are so
many of them that if one dies, there are plenty more for the suddenly single
man to seek out. This assertion imputes an attitude that no one has a right to
make or assume, even feminists. Logic is ill-served as well; if so many women
are dying, then there should be a shortage, and men should be more concerned
about their mortality. But “logic” in these matters seldom holds much weight
when politics weighs in.
Of course, if you want to talk about the “value” of life, we
could bring up the subject of abortion. It is remarkable to me how so many
self-victimized women in the West wish to benefit from this conversation on
both ends. The reality is that they are a bit hypocritical. “Concern” for women
in Africa does not translate when very well when it comes to “concern” about
the position of racial minorities in this country; over there, they are “victims”;
over here, they are just the repository for various negative appraisals. There
is clearly a question of “value” here, separating people into their “class” where some people are more “valued” than
others. This is not always as simple as proponents in the so-called “meritocracy”
claim, of course. For example where I
work, the skill level to perform a job is similar for each company, yet the
demographic make-up of each are distinct; those that have a largely white work
force tend have more generous compensation than those with largely minority
workforces, even though the work they do are similar in quantity and quality.
We can also see this in service jobs whose main qualification is presenting a “pleasing”
physical front to potential customers, in which white females are usually presumed
to be more “valued”; the less desirable jobs, usually out-of-sight of customers,
may be the province of less “valued” workers. In other jobs, the “qualification”
is who an employer or supervisor feels “comfortable” with, or who they prefer
to work with; although gender can be a factor, race is more obvious,
particularly in small-to-medium businesses. In this case, “value” has no
legitimate meaning.
Returning to argument of “value” in the BBC story, it might
make more “sense” if there were in fact fewer females than males. But this hardly likely the case, because on a
continent beset by conflict in many areas, many are killed in the various armed
forces—which often involves the recruitment of mere boys. If we really wanted
to talk about how lives are “valued,” we might talk about how cheaply the lives
of men who have been sacrificed for various “causes” are throughout history. Most
of the great military conquerors of history had no more motive than personally
glory, with their conquests rarely surviving their deaths. To what purpose, then,
were the lives of the men lost in the interim? Does it even matter? The
American Civil War was brought on by men who could not see the writing on the
wall; like a King Canute, they vainly attempted to stem the tide of history. The
cost was enormous; new estimates place the death toll of Union and Confederate
soldiers at 750,000. The upward estimate takes into account the appalling failure
of armies on both sides to make any effort to insure that every dead soldier
was identified, and next of kin notified. The number of dead was usually (inaccurately)
ascertained by after action troop strength counts; the reality was that half of
all soldiers killed in battle were simply dumped into anonymous graves without
any proper accounting. The lives of these men may have had “value” to their
families, but in the pursuit of political and military ends, they were merely an
abstraction, numbers on a page, to be used and replaced, an instrument of the
folly or ambition of others who themselves did not face the bullets.
The point here is that how a human being is “valued” is not
easily pigeonholed by personal politics. Just because a person feels they are
less “valued” doesn’t mean that in some respects they are in fact more “valued”
than some others in the wider society, often for superficial reasons. And
sometimes being more “valued” in the performance of certain occupations—like soldier—doesn’t
necessarily mean that there is an actual “value” placed on the life of an
individual, only so long that he survives and is useful long enough to be
replaced, becoming just another anonymous, nameless number. In the end, what “value”
is there in that? Even “patriotic”
Americans who claim to respect soldiers fighting insurgent forces in remote
hills and valleys overseas only do so because they are thankful they are not there;
they are too busy looking after their own “value.”
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