Shaquita Howard is a senior majoring in sociology. She can be contacted at [email protected].Megan Williams is a name known by few people. She is a 20-year-old victim of kidnapping, rape and torture by a group of white males and females in West Virginia. It has been about three weeks since the ordeal, but her story barely made national news.
What or who determines which stories make national news? Williams’ story is by far one of the most tragic that I have heard in the last month. I thought individuals were being a little irrational to say that Michel Vick is getting too much attention, but it is in fact true.
It is official. You have to be a dog to get the type of attention that Vick received. No offense to animal lovers or dogs, because anybody that abuses animals obviously has a problem.
Now as for the people that abuse other humans, that is probably a little less severe.
According to The Associated Press, Williams was forced to eat rat and dog feces and to drink from a toilet. She was stabbed in the leg. Her ankles were slashed, and she endured racial slurs.
Imagine what it would be like to experience any type of assault that may only last about 20 minutes. Now imagine being young, not quite legal and having to experience being assaulted over and over again for more than a week. You are probably hoping for one of two things to happen.
First, you are probably hoping that it will not happen again the next day. Or you are hoping that you will not live to see the next day, just in case it does happen again. That is a nightmare for anyone to have to live through.
Not only did her abductors have criminal records, but according to the AP, they also were not sentenced to the punishment they deserved.
What type of country is this? Someone somewhere is sending mixed messages to a generation that thinks justice is a top priority.
This dilemma cannot be solely blamed on the media, because it is the media that receives feedback from society. America is sending the message that racism is something that is current, but that is often over-looked. Overlooking it does not erase the problem. It only causes it to swell until it gets so out of control that it bursts.
When it bursts, it makes a mess that no government official or law enforcement agency is willing to clean up.
So the question remains. What does it take to get national attention for being treated cruelly in this country? Does it take a rich runaway bride, a white male assaulted by a black male, a pregnant Caucasian with pretty teeth or a dog? I may be unsure about what it takes, but I am aware of what it is less fortunate to be.