Kids Don't Know Just How Good They Have It
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
It's fun to listen when kids give their version of the world.
No matter how good they have it, they'd like you as a parent to believe they're overworked and generally mistreated.
Ask the average 10-year-old to clean up his room. He looks at you as if you're some kind of monster. He slowly, laboriously starts putting his stuff away. He drags articles of clothing along the floor, walking with a slight stoop, as if dog tired.
Five minutes later, when the arduous task is completed, the fatigue completely leaves him. He runs out of the house - smiling, rejuvenated - ready for a few hours of hard play.
But really, that's what being a child should be. There should be no crushing responsibility, no severe hardships. Childhood should be - more than anything else - fun.
But many childhoods today aren't fun. Even in the U.S. kids are dealing with all sorts of fears, worries and pressures.
And worldwide, children fare much worse.
Recently in the Sudan interior, a couple of Baltimore Sun staffers - one white, one black - paid $500 each to buy two African slaves from an Arab slave trader.
The slaves were boys - ages 10 and 12.
These children were taken from their village six years ago in a raid by the Sudan government-backed Arab militia.
They told their "purchasers" that they were forced to work long hours in the fields - seven days a week. Their only pay was the meager bits of food they were given to eat.
The two boys are back in the hands of their parents, thanks to these two newspaper staffers.
Why, you may ask, would two Baltimore Sun staffers travel to the Sudan in an attempt to buy slaves?
We have none other than Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan to thank.
The episode started when Farrakhan was in the Sudan on one of his America-bashing junkets through fundamentalist Islamic states this spring.
He was asked why he was so critical of U.S. slave practices that ended during the 1800s while basically ignoring the current slave trade in the Sudan.
"Where is the proof?" Farrakhan asked. "If slavery exists, why don't you go, as a member of the press, and look inside Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you found."
That is precisely what the Baltimore Sun staffers did.
The incident makes Farrakhan's "Million Man March" message of compassion and unity ring a bit hollow, doesn't it? [[In-content Ad]]
It's fun to listen when kids give their version of the world.
No matter how good they have it, they'd like you as a parent to believe they're overworked and generally mistreated.
Ask the average 10-year-old to clean up his room. He looks at you as if you're some kind of monster. He slowly, laboriously starts putting his stuff away. He drags articles of clothing along the floor, walking with a slight stoop, as if dog tired.
Five minutes later, when the arduous task is completed, the fatigue completely leaves him. He runs out of the house - smiling, rejuvenated - ready for a few hours of hard play.
But really, that's what being a child should be. There should be no crushing responsibility, no severe hardships. Childhood should be - more than anything else - fun.
But many childhoods today aren't fun. Even in the U.S. kids are dealing with all sorts of fears, worries and pressures.
And worldwide, children fare much worse.
Recently in the Sudan interior, a couple of Baltimore Sun staffers - one white, one black - paid $500 each to buy two African slaves from an Arab slave trader.
The slaves were boys - ages 10 and 12.
These children were taken from their village six years ago in a raid by the Sudan government-backed Arab militia.
They told their "purchasers" that they were forced to work long hours in the fields - seven days a week. Their only pay was the meager bits of food they were given to eat.
The two boys are back in the hands of their parents, thanks to these two newspaper staffers.
Why, you may ask, would two Baltimore Sun staffers travel to the Sudan in an attempt to buy slaves?
We have none other than Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan to thank.
The episode started when Farrakhan was in the Sudan on one of his America-bashing junkets through fundamentalist Islamic states this spring.
He was asked why he was so critical of U.S. slave practices that ended during the 1800s while basically ignoring the current slave trade in the Sudan.
"Where is the proof?" Farrakhan asked. "If slavery exists, why don't you go, as a member of the press, and look inside Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you found."
That is precisely what the Baltimore Sun staffers did.
The incident makes Farrakhan's "Million Man March" message of compassion and unity ring a bit hollow, doesn't it? [[In-content Ad]]