Do you know someone who could tell you the capital of Venezuela? Or someone who knows where Iraq is on a map? It would be extremely difficult to find an average American who could point out more than two African countries on a map, if even that. On the other hand, I’m sure it would be easy to find someone who not only knows where France or Germany are located, but also wants to visit one of these countries.
In my world history class in high school, I was one of the students groaning over having to read about the Songhai Empire when our time could be better spent learning about how racist Europeans were. I can’t really say four years of advanced placement history classes did much to improve my overall cultural appreciation. When I visited the Art Institute of Chicago this past summer, I brushed right past the vacant galleries of African and Asian art to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other Eurocentric tourists and gawk at post-impressionism and abstract art. Even the most progressive among us can’t honestly expect one to pass up the opportunity to see van Goghs and Picassos in order to gaze at work by an artist whose name I can’t even pronounce.
It would be hypocritical of me to pretend I’ve made a conscious effort to learn as much about Asian and African cultures as I have European. I don’t expect to change anyone else’s deeply rooted Eurocentrism in fewer 700 words either. And honestly, there are bigger problems with American views than people preferring one part of an art museum to others. One of these bigger problems is not our understanding of the past, but how it affects our views of the present.
It doesn’t matter if you can’t point out every country on a map; life isn’t a geography test. The problem is many don’t care about what is happening in those countries. American ignorance toward other cultures should not hinder the ability of Americans to know and care about what occurs in other countries.
Around this time last year, the news of Ebola outbreaks became a distant memory once it became evident that a catastrophic Ebola outbreak in the U.S. or Europe became highly improbable. The thing is, the World Health Organization didn’t declare this outbreak of Ebola to be a thing of the past in African countries until May of this year.
This column is not a diminishment of the tragic Paris attacks on Nov. 13, but while we sustain the level of urgency to prevent the loss of innocent lives from occurring again in Europe, Americans and Europeans should also be looking to prevent tragedies of this scale the world-over. A day before the Paris attacks, suicide bombings in Lebanon killed 43 people and injured more than 200 others, but that event, which occurs more often in that region, was basically forgotten.
Terrorist attacks like the one in Paris should never happen, anywhere. If many of us are now urging for change not for the sake of the Mona Lisa or the Eiffel Tower but for the lives of human beings, we need to increase our scope for change to expand to all corners of the world. The famous quote by John Donne goes "any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." A notion written about 400 years ago shouldn’t be qualified with "depending on where they live."
Americans don’t have to possess the urge to visit a country or be fascinated by its artwork to care about the people who live there. The lives of others in all countries should matter to everyone, even if some of us can’t name the capitals of those countries or locate them on a map.
By the way, Venezuela’s capital is Caracas, which had the highest number of homicides last year compared to any other city in the world, and Iraq is at the heart of Southwest Asia, still home to the highest death rate from terrorist attacks.
Joshua Udvardy is a UF engineering freshman. His column appears on Wednesdays.
